Multiple Former Knicks Named Century’s Top Players

The New York Knicks have rediscovered the balance between league-wide relevance and approval, finally putting together a team worth of dancing with other NBA contenders entering the back-half of the 2020s.

It's the sort of position they spent years yearning for, recklessly signing and swapping for over-the-hill stars for the two decades the preceded this one. They desperately and repeatedly attempted to right the ship during the slump that was the 2000s, and similarly struck out in building around Carmelo Anthony during the 2010s. They brought big, Hall of Fame names on, but no one to lift the Knicks back to championship glory.

Two of those stars-turned-role players made deserved appearances on CBS Sports' list of the 25 best players of the 21st century, a commemoration of the last 25 years of the best that the NBA's had to offer. Jason Kidd came in at No 17, and Tracy McGrady made the cut at No. 21.

Kidd's Knicks tenure isn't the first portion of his career that many fans will associate with the 10x All-Star-turned head coach, but his one season in New York served as his NBA swan song. After years of guiding elite offenses with his creatively consistent playmaking, he settled in as the veteran presence, passing and shooting when he saw fit.

"A testament to his work ethic, Kidd went from a virtual non-shooter early in his career to the top 10 in career 3-pointers made at the time of his retirement," Colin Ward-Henninger wrote. "Whatever your team needed, on either end, Kidd gave it to you with maximum effort and precision."

He was a key figure on the last great Knicks team of the 2010s. The 54 games he won alongside Anthony, JR Smith, Tyson Chandler, Amar'e Stoudemire and Raymond Felton was the most they'd won all century, and remains the number to beat for the revamped Knicks of recent years.

Kidd was far from the only legend to stop by New York near the end of an illustrious NBA career, with another one of the 2000's most recognizable figures in Tracy McGrady similarly boasting a one-and-done Knicks run on his resume.