After the initial shock that Phil Jackson and the Knicks had chosen Jeff Hornacek over a trio of likelier candidates to be the team’s next head coach, a flurry of inevitable questions floated to the surface.

Will the 53-year-old Hornacek, the former All-Star guard and Phoenix Suns coach, have true autonomy to design an offense in New York? If he does move away from Jackson’s preferred triangle system, is the Knicks’ roster equipped to play the way he wants? And what is his philosophy on defense, where the Knicks have statistically...