With the NBA All-Star break over, the focus now turns to the final third of the regular season, which gets underway on Thursday night.
With that in mind, Bleacher Report unveiled updated win-loss projections. The New York Knicks have a particularly positive forecast, as they're one of four Eastern Conference teams to finish with 50 wins, hitting the landmark squarely, albeit with a little wariness thanks to injuries that caused them to lose their last four entering the exhibition break.
"It's tough to project a path forward for the Knicks without knowing when their injury issues will go away," Bleacher Report's Zach Buckley writes. "If they did, it wouldn't be shocking to see them climb as high as the No. 2 seed given their collective talent."
"Things could be dicey if the Knicks keeping having so many recognizable faces in street clothes, but they'll get healthier as they go, and they'll rack up plenty of wins in the process. Remember, they've gone 12-2 in games Anunoby has played, and they've won his 500 minutes by a staggering 252 points."
Under that prediction, the Knicks (33-22) would go 17-10 the rest of the way. That would also place them fourth on the East playoff bracket behind Boston, Cleveland, and Milwaukee.
New York has not won 50 games in a single season since 2012-13 when it won 54 en route to a second-place finish in the East.
New York has flourished, thanks to the efforts of first-time All-Star Jalen Brunson but the team has sorely missed the contributions of starters OG Anunoby, Julius Randle, and Mitchell Robinson, all of whom are out until further notice due to a variety of injuries. If and when they're able to return, the Knicks are poised to carry one of the deepest rotations in the NBA, especially after acquiring Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks at the trade deadline.
The Knicks' first post-break game will staged on Thursday against the Philadelphia 76ers (7 p.m. ET, MSG).
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