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Enough dogma: This New York Knicks' offseason must not be about one offensive scheme or another.

It mustn't be about analytics; it mustn't be about not being about analytics. It mustn't be "win now" or "tank—I mean, development year." No Oprah Winfrey-style giveaway of draft picks; no weekly invocation that picks are sacrosanct and untradeable.

Put in the simplest and most complex terms: This season must be about making a team—and all the crunchy, silky, chewy, sticky stuff that goes into one.

Particularly, it must be about the sloppiest goop of all: personalities.

The Knicks have just completed a season in which they finished far enough from both first place and last place to ensure all players and fans, regardless of competing personal objectives, could be equally unhappy.

Their best player fell with a devastating injury and was nowhere near the bench the remainder of the season. Their player with the highest guaranteed salary was quite literally banished after losing patience with a coach who wouldn't put him on the active roster. The team had flipped into "dysfunctional" territory.

By firing head coach Jeff Hornacek, the New York head office has another chance to become functional—a tall order in New York.

Here's what they should be looking for to avoid immediately bumbling into the usual tomfoolery.