Fine with PG’s ‘D’ talk
TORONTO — Surprisingly, Jeff Hornacek’s response early Sunday to Derrick Rose telling the Knicks head coach how he can perform his job better wasn’t something along the lines of “how about you just show up for work and do your own job.”
Instead, Jeff Hornacek seemed to take Rose’s suggestion that he push the team harder on defense in stride, calling it “typical talk.”
On the contrary, it’s not typical for a player who went AWOL on Monday to be advising a coach how to do his job five days later.
Moreover, Hornacek isn’t in charge of the defense. Knicks president Phil Jackson placed that responsibility on Kurt Rambis in November, naming the former interim head coach the Knicks defensive coordinator.
Maybe that’s part of the confusion. Rose is looking for more direction on the defensive end and yet he’s not addressing the coach in charge of defense.
“I think (Rose) is probably just talking more of maybe calling guys out,” Hornacek said. “I don’t know if we necessarily have to do that. We work on things in practice every day, it’s kind of the same stuff. Everyone is guilty of it. You can go down the line.
“Maybe (I should be) harping on them a little more. Maybe it comes to the point where you have to take guys out if they continue to do it over and over. I think that’s what he’s getting at.”
On Saturday, Rose said he’d like to see Hornacek stress the defense the way his former coach in Chicago, Tom Thibodeau, once did.
“We were just talking about defensive schemes, what I see with our defense, what he thinks our problems are,” Rose said. “I just told him, ‘It’s defense. Our defense triggers a lot of things.’ And I told him he has to be on us hard about defense every day. Like, beat it in our heads where we get tired of hearing him talking about it.”
Coincidentally, Rose has struggled on the defensive end for much of the season. In Wednesday’s disastrous loss to Philadelphia, Rose was a minus-21 during his 32 minutes on the floor.
“We’re all in this together,” Hornacek said. “It’s just talk. We’re not 36-4. There are always things we can talk about it. It’s always good to see and hear what they’re thinking.”
That almost sounded as if Hornacek was fine with Rose going public with his issues about the Knicks defensively and the communication between the players and the coaching staff. The timing was odd considering that last Monday Rose went AWOL before a game against New Orleans and didn’t notify the team.
When asked if under the circumstances, maybe it is best for Rose to lay low for a while, Hornacek continued to defend his point guard.
“Again, it’s just basic after practice talk,” he said. “Heck, I had talks like that with Jerry Sloan. It’s everybody trying to get it figured out when you’re not one of the top teams in the league. That’s stuff that coaches talk about with players. It’s always good to hear.”