As the New Year unfolds, the New York Knicks find themselves in a familiar position, echoing the start of the season with a pressing question on everyone’s minds:

Are they capable of achieving greatness?

With the season’s first half drawing to a close, the Knicks are poised for a significant showdown against the Detroit Pistons on Monday night. This matchup presents an opportunity to gauge their progress. So far, the Knicks have shown promise, displaying depth and youthfulness in their roster. There is a noticeable synergy among the players, with Jalen Brunson frequently stepping into the spotlight to deliver standout performances. Additionally, coach Mike Brown has seamlessly adjusted to the high-pressure environment of New York, as though he’s been thriving on this stage for years.

This season, the Eastern Conference has not quite lived up to expectations — the Pistons being a notable exception. The Cavaliers are still trying to find their rhythm, while the Celtics, despite missing Jayson Tatum, are surprisingly competitive, maintaining a strong position alongside the Knicks at the No. 3 spot.

If the Knicks aspire to be truly great, they must aim to conquer the East. This means eventually surpassing the Pistons and staying ahead of Jaylen Brown and the Celtics. They also need to demonstrate, possibly even this month, that they can compete at a higher level than last season. Previously, they resembled a basketball version of the Yankees: dominating weaker teams but faltering against elite competition, as seen when they were overpowered by the Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals.

The narrative of last season’s Game 1 — when Tyrese Haliburton’s buzzer-beater dramatically sealed a win — lingers. Yet, it’s clear that the Pacers were the superior team by then, consistently outpacing the Knicks since January 1, 2025. The margin wasn’t vast, but it was significant enough. The Knicks, much like their baseball counterparts, need to overcome this hurdle to move forward.

Put it this way, all this time before we get anywhere near the postseason: We need to see across the next few if the Knicks can consistently beat serious teams. In that way, maybe we’ll get a sense of just how seriously we can take them, more seriously than we ever took the Yankees even when they were getting to 94 wins.

There is also still a world of time for the Knicks to look like more than what they are right now, a middle-of-the-pack defensive team, trying to work around the fact that their two best and most visible players — Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns — still don’t guard nearly enough at two of the most important positions on the floor. OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges and even Josh Hart, let’s face it, can only do so much to cover for them.

In the last two weeks alone, even as the Knicks had gotten themselves to a record of 23-10 through Wednesday night’s loss to the Spurs, they gave up 125 points in beating the Heat, 124 in beating the Cavs on Christmas Day, 125 in beating the Hawks last Saturday, 125 as they were doing the same to the Pelicans. Then they got rung up for 134 by the Spurs as they rang in the New Year, even after Victor Wembanyama left the game. By the way? By then, Wembanyama had scored 31 points in 24 minutes. This was on the same night when Julian Champagnie, a St. John’s kid, torched Brown’s team for 36 points, doing what he wanted and going where he wanted all game long.

The Knicks — who had just beaten the Spurs in Vegas to win the Adam Silver Cup — should have taken the game once Wembanyama sat down with a knee. But this time Brunson missed the kinds of shots he so often makes and the Knicks got clipped at the end of what would have been a serious win against a serious team for them, even with Wembanyama sitting out the last 10 minutes and change.

Here are some of the things Coach Brown had to say about all of that:

“They just outworked us in a lot of different ways,” Brown said. “[Spurs coach Mitch Johnson] kicked my ass, the rest of the team kicked our ass, we all got our ass kicked today so you got to give San Antonio a ton of credit.”

There was also this:

“I was a little disappointed in our guys because it was almost like we didn’t respect [Champagnie]. We didn’t pick him up in transition… We know he’s a hot player and that’s what he does, but he just kept getting look after look after look after look after look that were wide open. You give him a lot of credit because he knocked the shots down, but I was really, really disappointed in the way we defended him.”

Brown’s team didn’t do much defending on De’Aaron Fox, either, when Champagnie wasn’t making another 3-pointer. Just like that, down the stretch, what could have been a really nice statement win by the Knicks turned into one for a young Spurs team that doesn’t seem to be afraid of the Thunder or anybody else. So this time the Knicks didn’t steal a close one. Maybe there can be a better statement in Detroit on Monday night against the team that has been the best in the conference so far.

The Knicks are all we have right now. And have been so much fun to watch. And really, really good. But great? There’s shorthand for that, with so much of the long season still to be played:

TBD.