Former Knicks Scorer Wants to See Team Unleashed

The New York Knicks have finally convinced much of the rest of the NBA that they're capable of feasibly contending for a championship, and one former player has taken note.

Andrea Bargnani hasn't been associated with the team in a long time. The first overall pick in the 2006 NBA Draft was once one of the biggest names on the Knicks, a scorer with star upside who failed to live up to his potential with his second NBA team. He was one of the many reasons why the once-exciting Knicks of the early 2010s flamed out in the unimpressive remainder of the decade, but he's still happy to see they've found their mojo back.

"I'm very happy for the Knicks because I played there and because Leon [Rose] is the guy there now," Bargnani said in an interview.

"The team is very good. I think it's about time that they unleash the potential of the team. Because for many years, if you take every player, seeing every player, the team has been very good for many years, but it was never able to perform at a high level and be a winning team. So now it is, and I am very happy for them."

The pre-Rose front office is to blame for their long wait back to positive relevance, with their constant swing and misses in attempting to build a contender in consolidating the Carmelo Anthony era resulting in a failed roster.

Bargnani, once a 20+ point per game scorer, failed to translate that same shooting touch from the Toronto Raptors, where he spent his first seven years. He averaged 13.9 points in two injury-plagued seasons with the Knicks, appearing in just 71 games before they let him walk to the Brooklyn Nets.

He's not wrong about the present state of the Knicks, though. They've come a long way since he was an NBA mainstay, even replacing the one-time All-NBA scorer in Anthony with the Knicks' newest avatar, Jalen Brunson. He's now tasked with leading one of the most talented supporting casts in the league, a far cry from the oddball assortment of veterans and journeymen who occupied New York's locker room a decade ago.

The NBA's biggest market seemed underutilized during Bargnani's time, enough to the point that even he noticed it as an active player, and he sounds willing to look to the future alongside his former team.