The New York Knicks have certainly had an up-and-down start to their 2021-22 campaign. After looking like a potential juggernaut and starting 5-1, the team has since gone 2-4 over their next six, including some concerning trends with the starters and the bench.

Those trends were especially evident against the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday night, with the Knicks' starters digging a hole as deep as 24 points before the reserves checked in in the second half and managed to draw even, before eventually running out of gas and losing, 112-100.

Two tweets can basically sum up the two main points that need to be made about the Knicks' starters and the bench right now. Here's the first from The Ringer's Dan Devine:

That's… really bad. Tom Thibodeau is famous (or, depending on who you talk to, infamous) for utilizing his starting lineups as much as humanly possible, oftentimes being accused of running the wheels off of his players throughout a season via high minute totals.

In this case, he's doing just that, except he's also harming the team by playing the combination of five guys that are one of the worst units in the league right now. In fact, of all of the most-played five-man combos in the NBA right now, they're the only group that's a net negative, and a huge one at that, sporting a -14.4 net rating in 205 minutes together:

via NBA Stats

Unfortunately, Thibs' stubbornness often knows no bounds, and that leads to him sticking with things for much longer than he should (just look at last year's decision to stick with Elfrid Payton as a starter all the way through the playoffs — a bit like . That said, SNY's Ian Begley, who's generally about as in the know as anybody, seems to think maybe this starting lineup's leash won't be as long as last season's:

But if the starting unit continues to trend the wrong way, I don’t think [Thibodeau will] stick with his starting five as long as he did last season.

Time will tell if perhaps Thibodeau has less patience this season given the increased expectations for this year's Knicks.

Which leads us to the second tweet:

The bench's efficacy was in full effect on Wednesday against the Bucks, as after the starters dug the Knicks into a 24-point hole in the third quarter, that Derrick Rose/Immanuel Quickley/Alec Burks/Obi Toppin/Taj Gibson unit broke them out of the funk and came all the way back to tie the game in the fourth.

Unfortunately, with Thibodeau not feeling comfortable putting any of the starters back in (or punishing them, or both), the reserves eventually ran out of steam, with some of them (Rose and Burks) playing as many as 18 minutes straight to end the game.

Now, there's a reason good bench units tend to succeed — they're not generally facing the best players that the opposition has to offer. So it's not to say that the Knicks' bench should completely supplant the starters and be a rousing success or something. But there's definitely a case to be made that, as Begley alluded to, a change to the starting group could be the shot in the arm that the Knicks need to break out of their current funk.

Quickley probably makes the most sense to transition to the starters in place of Walker — he's scoring efficiently now (.485/.471/.900 over his last four games), he's very effective with or without the ball, and his passing acumen has been on full display with the bench. Perhaps most importantly, he hasn't been tentative, which has been a huge problem with the starting lineup during the times when they're struggling most.

Walker, meanwhile, has looked like the worst fear of many Knicks fans. After looking like he was turning a corner just five games ago, Walker's last four have been putrid: 4.8 points on .229/.105/1.000 shooting splits (and only 0.3 free throw attempts per game to get to that 1.000 number) and three assists in 22 minutes per game. The advanced numbers don't love Walker, either — according to Basketball-Reference, Walker's on/off impact makes the Knicks a cumulative 23.7 points worse when he's on the floor vs. when he's sitting.

Things aren't much better for back court mate Evan Fournier, either: also per B-Ref, Fournier is making the Knicks a cumulative 11.8 points worse when he's on the court vs. when he sits so far this season. So perhaps a double switch could be in order, promoting both Rose and Quickley to the starting lineup.

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It's an extremely small sample size, but a lineup of Rose/Quickley/RJ Barrett/Julius Randle/Mitchell Robinson has played 10 possessions together this year, and, per Cleaning the Glass, they're a whopping +66.7 points per 100 possessions better than their opponents in that span.

However, going back to last season, it's possible to see how that four-man unit fared with Nerlens Noel on last year's squad. The answer? Extremely well!

Unfortunately, it's still not a huge sample size thanks to Thibs' reluctance to mix starters and bench players, but it at least in some way confirms that Rose, Quickley, Barrett, Randle and a rim protector is a good combination.

Now, the most likely outcome here is that Thibs starts Rose over Walker and doesn't touch anything else. Optics-wise, it would be pretty bad on the Knicks' part to bench their top two offseason acquisitions, including their second-highest paid player (Fournier).

But in a vacuum, it makes too much sense to not try to mix things up and put two of the Knicks' most effective players in the starting lineup for two players that have been struggling. And perhaps coming off the bench would allow Walker and Fournier to get their grooves back against other teams' second units.