I think that Phil will have a positive impact. While analytics will have a increasingly important role, they're not there yet, nearly to the point of providing evaluation over a (good) scout. It's still difficult to parse out a player's contribution from his coaching, environment, and teammates. So for player evaluation (as opposed to just measuring contribution for a player in a specific situation), they'll miss out somewhat on analytics but not tremendously.
From the standpoint of player recruitment, it could be huge.
Triangle offense is legit. It may not be cool around the league to say you're running the triangle, but ultimately it's just an offense with a lot of intelligent motion, and the Knicks would benefit from it.
Another angle is that there is someone in management who theoretically has the stature to challenge Dolan's supposed involvement in basketball operations - so even if Phil isn't a savior, if this alone is true it is a positive.