‘COOKIN’’ SOMETHING SPECIAL
Rose’s Knicks trade deadline approach was recipe for success, now and later
Josh Hart recounted the terms of the deal in real time.
His conclusion?
Leon Rose is cookin’.
Four hours ahead of Thursday’s 3 p.m. NBA trade deadline, the Knicks dealt four players (Quentin Grimes, Evan Fournier, Ryan Arcidiacono and Malachi Flynn) and two second-round picks to the Detroit Pistons for vaunted bench scorer Bojan Bogdanovic and former Knicks playmaker Alec Burks.
The Knicks needed the contracts of Fournier and Flynn for salary-matching reasons, but losing Grimes, a capable threeand-D wing in the third year of his rookie deal, and Arcidiacano, beloved among his Villanova cohort, including rotation mainstays Hart, Jalen Brunson and Donte DiVincenzo, hit home at Madison Square Garden.
Basketball, however, is a business — and Rose’s Knicks are in the business of winning.
He traded homegrown firstround picks RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley on New Year’s Day in the OG Anunoby trade with the Toronto Raptors, which also netted Precious Achiuwa.
Just like the Anunoby deal, Thursday’s trade was a no-brainer.
It’s the all-too familiar feeling of another home run for a Knicks front office with a steady, yet undeniable track record of improving the roster via a mid-season trade.
“Obviously, I hate to see my guy, Archy go,” said Hart. “Obviously, you hate to see anybody go. Obviously, that’s our guy. But nah, I think that was a really good trade in terms of what we needed.”
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Breaking news: The private jet did not land in time.
Hart only wanted one thing for a battered Knicks roster sporting just eight players for Thursday’s matchup against the Dallas Mavericks: for the private jet — “the P.J.” — to make its way.
That is, for Burks and Bogdanovic — who had been acquired just hours before he spoke to media — to miraculously arrive at MSG in time for tipoff.
A pipe dream.
With Anunoby (right elbow surgery), Jalen Brunson (sprained right ankle), Julius Randle (dislocated right shoulder) and Mitchell Robinson (left ankle surgery) all out due to injury, the Deadline-Day Knicks deployed just eight players against the Mavericks.
Two of those players (Jacob Toppin and Charlie Brown Jr.) are on two-way contracts, called up from the Westchester Knicks. The 38-year-old Taj Gibson logged 22 minutes as one of the remaining six available players.
Isaiah Hartenstein was healthy, too, until he left the game at halftime after aggravating an
Achilles injury.
Hart braced himself for a heavy minutes load, but under these circumstances, the sheer thought of double-overtime sent him off the deep end.
“Oh, f—k. If they do that [double OT], y’all gonna start seeing me hacking, arguing calls,” said Hart. “I think we’ve got [NBA official] Zach Zarba. … Y’all might see my walk up to Zach; I might just slap Zach, get a quick tech and get out of here.
“Yeah, if we go to double-overtime, Zach, he got one coming.”
What’s coming off as an extreme course of action is, in reality, a cry for help. And thanks to Rose, help is on the way, though not in enough time to spare Hart’s legs on Thursday.
Hart is averaging 39.6 minutes across the six games both Randle and Anunoby have missed since the Jan. 27 matchup against the Miami Heat. And when Brunson couldn’t go on Thursday, Hart — after hyperextending his knee on Tuesday against the Memphis Grizzlies — played 42 minutes.
“I’s tired, boss. That’s how I’m feeling,” Hart said ahead of tipoff on Thursday. “But nah, I’m cool. … We gonna push the body today.”
This is where New York’s nextman-up ethos reaches an inflection point.
DiVincenzo and Achiuwa are averaging 40.5 and 40 minutes, respectively, since Randle and Anunoby went down.
With Brunson out on Thursday, Miles McBride played 45 of a possible 48 minutes against the Mavericks.
The immediacy of the trade makes the move a win, now, for the win-now Knicks.
Not only are Burks and Bogdanovic able-bodied — something a large chunk of the Knick rotation cannot say — but they are scorers and play-makers who will infuse offensive production into a barren New York lineup.
“Leon and his staff, their job is to always look at what opportunities are out there, and does something make sense that can make our team better?” Thibodeau said pregame. “And if it does, then you take a good hard look at it. And sometimes, the price is too high and you don’t do it.
“This, it felt like it made sense. It made sense for Detroit, as well, so a good trade for both teams. And it fits what we need right now, but it also fits us going forward.
Going forward? Now that’s a scary thought. Particularly if the Knicks can get healthy.
Basketball pundits are fawning over Rose’s course of mid-season action. Sure, Bogdanovic and Burks provide immediate relief for a depleted Knicks team.
Bigger picture, the Knicks addressed their biggest need in a world where they’re at 100% strength: bench depth.
Acquiring Anunoby super-charged the starting lineup by injecting a dominant defensive force who stabilized the Knick offense with three-point shooting and strong finishing at the rim.
Trading Quickley and Barrett, however, removed the two players who captained the second unit. The Knicks rank second-tolast behind only the Phoenix Suns in bench scoring since acquiring Anunoby on New Year’s Day.
In acquiring Bogdanovic and Burks, the Knicks now have instant offense off the bench when Randle, Anunoby and Brunson return to the starting lineup.
Bogdanovic and Burks have combined to average 32 points per game in their last
season-and-a-half as teammates in Detroit.
Both are L.A.S.E.R.S. — or high-volume, high-efficiency three-point shooters — in a threepoint heavy Thibodeau offense.
Both boast playoff pedigree, too, with Bogdanovic playing on Donovan Mitchell’s Utah Jazz teams, and Burks combining to play 22 playoff games over the course of his career, including five with the Knicks in 2021.
Hart sees the road to a lighter minutes load. So does DiVincenzo.
“You can rely on them to play big minutes,” said Hart. “If I’m not playing well, and OG has to play 38, and Bojan’s gotta play 38, [if] I play 15, well, cool. We have the luxury to do that. And that’s what you want: being able to get into adverse situations and have the luxury of guys being able to step up, play big minutes and have other guys. If it’s not their night, they’re cool with sitting.”
“Proven scorers, proven vets and proven shooters,” added DiVincenzo. “Think it will help us with our depth. What gives us a unique lineup this year once we get them is any given night really you might have some play 30, you might have some guys play 16, 17 if somebody has it going.”
Suddenly, the Knicks — who are optimistic about having a fully healthy roster with a good number of regular-season games left before the playoffs — could have a starting five of Brunson-DiVincenzo-Anunoby-Randle-Hartenstein, then have McBride, Burks, Bogdanovic, Hart, Achiuwa and Robinson coming off the bench.
That doesn’t include Jericho Sims, who survived a hectic trade deadline and gives Thibodeau 12 players to choose from to fill his dedicated nine-man rotation.
“Yeah, I like the makeup of our team. A lot,” he said. “I like our young guys a lot: Jericho and Deuce. Those guys have added a lot to our team. Then if you look at how all it fits together, we added a lot of shooting, which is much needed.”
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Hart spoke this into fruition. After all, history is on Rose’s side when it comes to mid-season trades.
The Knicks were 11-14 when they traded for Derrick Rose at the 2021 NBA trade deadline and finished that season 41-31.
They won nine straight after trading for Hart midway through last season, and the returns on the Anunoby deal are through the roof: The Knicks are 16-4 since the trade and own the second-best record in all of basketball since Jan. 1.
“I don’t know, I feel like we’re a pretty good post-trade team, if you know what I mean,” Hart joked when the Knicks won their first three games after the Anunoby deal. “Maybe we can make some more trades. No one in here. Maybe 2040 picks or something like that, keep it rolling until the trade deadline and we can’t do it anymore.”
The Knicks wanted to keep things rolling. They also wanted to roll into the offseason armed with enough capital to meet the high asking price a superstar suddenly available for trade might command.
Bogdanovic provides an influx of offense now, but he is also due a $19 million salary in the final year of his deal next season. The $19 million figure mirrors Fournier’s non-guaranteed salary cap hit for the 2024-25 season.
The difference, of course, is while Fournier is past his prime as an NBA player, Bogdanovic is a 20 point-per game scorer.
While he is exactly what the doctor ordered for an ailing Knicks team, New York can use Bogdanovic’s contract to match salary if a superstar-level player becomes available on the trade market this summer.
Also, the Knicks only surrendered second-round picks in both the Raptors and Pistons deals.
They own not only each of their own first-round picks through 2031, but also the Mavericks’ top-10 protected first in 2024, Milwaukee’s top-four protected first-rounder in 2025, and a future first-round pick each from both the Detroit Pistons and the Washington Wizards.
In short, Rose found a way not only to maximize New York’s current pursuit of an appearance in the Eastern Conference Finals — or beyond — but also to simultaneously keep the Knicks well positioned to acquire a star in a trade this summer.
Or as Hart simply put: “I think Leon and the front office was cookin’ today.”