These are the N.B.A.’s aristocrats. The Clippers possess Kawhi Leonard, who won the league championship last season with the Toronto Raptors, and his pacesetter, Paul George. The Lakers possess the lordly LeBron James and the munificently talented Anthony Davis, and they own the second-best record in the league.

That the Knicks, a team that pans for wins with the determination of a luckless miner, lost came as no surprise. We have entered the third decade of the 21st century, and the Knicks have recorded precisely four winning season records since it began.

That said, this season of late has offered glimmerings of something less than despair.

The new coach, Mike Miller, a basketball lifer, has installed a new system with better spacing. An offense that once slogged up and down has quickened the pace. The Knicks Film School, a collection of perceptive hoop obsessives, has noted that the Knicks turn the ball over less, shoot more accurately and score more often. A few of the young players — Barrett; Mitchell Robinson, an Elongated Man leaper of a center; and Frank Ntilikina, the Rwandan-French guard with the praying mantis arms — have improved. And Julius Randle, a powerful young man freed of the disastrous conceit that he could play point forward and distribute the ball, has become a reliable scorer and rebounder.

This said, it is best not to take too seriously the palaver of opposing coaches. The Lakers’ coach, Frank Vogel, 46, talked before the game of the Knicks as a “deceptive” 10-26 team. I thought to myself: Righto. Had a few things broken right, this team might have been 12-24.

Vogel noted that the Knicks have “no marquee superstars.” He might have added that the Knicks also lack non-marquee superstars, and stars too. They have some young players who with proper diets and work habits could become fine N.B.A. players in a year, or two, or three.