The New York Knicks are on pace to be better this year than they were last season, but that doesn’t necessarily mean things are better.

While the Knicks’ on-court product has been markedly better than last year, their placement in the standings doesn’t reflect that.

The Athletic insider James Edwards III is concerned that the Knicks won’t make much progress in the postseason this spring.

“This current iteration of New York basketball wasn’t put together just to be really good, though. It was constructed to be the best, or one of the best. And, technically, as things stand now, the Knicks are. But the regular season doesn’t define how a team with New York’s commitment is labeled. This team’s success was always going to be determined in the postseason. The Knicks need to shake their second-round bugaboos. They need to justify the decisions made to mortgage their future, and the only way to do that is by succeeding in the present, more specifically when basketball matters in a few months,” Edwards writes.

“Up until this point, though, New York hasn’t done anything to suggest this postseason will be any different. Of course, there’s still time to figure that out, but losing twice to the Boston Celtics by a combined 50 points has clouded what the Knicks have done in totality. So has losing to Cleveland and Oklahoma City (twice), the league’s other top dogs.”

Perhaps things will change between now and the end of the regular season, but for the time being, the Knicks have not given their fans and critics reason to believe that they will move further in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

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