I've never believed in New York, but at least now they have another good offensive option besides Trae, which they haven't had before. The East is pretty deep, so while it's possible, I wouldn't bet on it just because of the number of hurdles they have to get through.
I think Blackwell or Malik Hightower could play the 3 or 4 for them. In real life you'd have Hightower be the 3 on defense, 4 on offense, but I think one of the downfalls of 2k is the pillars they put dudes in, like they just become tied to playing only the position that they are listed as, which bothers me. Like shifting a guy from PF to SF will result in a 2-4 point change in their rating, which then has the CPU take them out of the rotation. It's a flawed system in many ways. As for playoff hopes, they've been fading recently as Qualls has been out still, so this might be something that helps them better next year.
I'll peak behind the scenes on Toronto: I don't think they can make the playoffs so I made the trade for Wallace thinking they'd use him as a piece for next year. I'd move him to be a full-time five and consider him a small ball center. Not too many big centers in the NBA right now so they could probably survive it.
And yeah, East is loaded. There will be at least 2 teams that will miss the playoffs but be good enough to be there, and I wouldn't be surprised to see some competitive series in the first round and maybe an upset. Records don't really matter when judging a team's talent level in the conference.