INSIDE ROSE’S GARDEN
Behind the scenes of how Leon & Co. have made Knicks relevant again
IT WAS time for the 2020 NBA Draft’s 23rd pick. The Knicks were on the clock.
“We need Quickley, get Quickley,” William Wesley repeated, over and over and over and over. Wesley — the ubiquitous consultant/adviser/star-whisperer/power broker whose reputation has earned him the moniker “World Wide Wes” — had joined the Knicks as an executive vice president and senior adviser in June and had spent the months since pushing Kentucky guard Immanuel Quickley at every turn. He knew that the Boston Celtics, picking at No. 26, had worked out Quickley and came away impressed. He was worried they’d steal his guy. He wanted the Knicks to pounce.
Others in the war room weren’t so sure. The team’s scouts had a handful of players ranked ahead of Quickley, who was widely projected as a second-round pick. Brock Aller, the recently hired vice president and chief strategist, believed if the Knicks were going to reach for a player, they should at least trade back a few slots.
Sitting at the front of the gym in the team’s Westchester County practice facility, team president Leon Rose, a former agent hired a few months earlier and presiding over his first draft, took it all in. The group had conducted a dry run the previous night, with Aller calling out hypothetical trade offers to help Rose prepare (“Isn’t that your job to answer?” Rose would occasionally joke). So far, the draft had gone according to plan. The Knicks had scooped up their primary target, Dayton big man Obi Toppin, at No. 8, with Rose visibly thrilled when the Cleveland Cavaliers, a team rumored to be interested in Toppin, passed on him at No. 5. Now Aller, who’d been working the phones all day, told Rose he had a deal lined up with the Minnesota Timberwolves — they were willing to swap picks 25 and 33 in order to move up to 23.
The group went back and forth. Wesley grew louder and more animated. The clock approached zero.
“Let’s do the trade,” Rose said. He fumbled a couple times as he tried unlocking his iPhone to call in the deal. There were about 10 seconds to spare.
Wesley had entered the night giddy, FaceTiming friends and passing out key lime pies from a bakery he loves in Margate, N.J. But now he was furious. He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. His face twisted into a frown. He stood up and paced around the room.
“Coach says we need shooting, Quickley’s the best shooter,” he said out loud, referring to Tom Thibodeau, who due to the NBA’s COVID-19 health and safety protocols had to participate in the draft via Zoom. Wesley joined Walt Perrin, the team’s assistant general manager, Aller and Rose for a huddle at the front of the room. Wesley kept pushing his case. Finally, Rose relented. A few minutes later, NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced that Quickley was being selected with the 25th pick.
Five months later, Quickley has proven to be a revelation. “The steal of the draft,” former Memphis Grizzlies executive John Hollinger wrote in a column for The Athletic. His presence has helped the Knicks — a team that has won just one playoff series this century, that hasn’t made the playoffs since 2013, that before the season was pegged by oddsmakers as the favorites to finish last — entered Rose’s first All-Star break with an 19-18 record, good for fifth in the East.
Quickley’s not the sole reason the Knicks are playing their best basketball in nearly a decade. But the back-and-forth that led to his selection is telling. No moment over Rose’s first year at the helm better represents his vision.
THE Knicks’ decision last winter to hand Rose the reins surprised many around the league. He was one of the NBA’s most respected agents, a person with fans throughout the league. “One of the smartest people the Knicks have had in years,” an NBA source with close Knicks ties said. But still, running a basketball team — especially the Knicks — is a different sort of job that requires a different set of skills. Many wondered how Rose would approach this new terrain as he tried to succeed where so many others have failed.
So far, he’s played his cards close; he hasn’t held a press conference since taking the job (and along with Wesley, Aller and Thibodeau, declined through the Knicks to be interviewed for this story) and doesn’t do much talking off the record, either. But take one look at his hires and you can identify what Rose has decided to rely on most.
He and Wesley have been close friends for more than 30 years. Aller grew close to
Rose while working for the Cavaliers and to Wesley when the two lived in Detroit. Thibodeau was Rose’s longtime client and, as he said during his introductory press conference, “[Rose and Wesley have] been involved in just about every major decision that I’ve made.”
Aller, Thibodeau and Wesley each boast different skills. Wesley’s the relationships guy. Aller’s all about asset management. Thibodeau can squeeze an NBA win out of a D-III roster. Rose’s bet is that by combining their skill sets, by leveraging Wesley’s connections and Aller’s strategic thinking and Thibodeau’s willingness to sell his soul if it meant he’d win that night’s game, by creating a system of checks and balances and then having Rose filter it all before making a final call, this group can rebuild the Knicks.
It’s an ambitious plan, but also a dangerous one. How often will Rose be able to say no to his friends? And how much clashing can these friendships endure?
The good news for Knicks fans is that, based on interviews with more than a dozen NBA sources, all with different connections to the Knicks, it appears that Rose has successfully threaded these needles.
For a front office that for years has struggled with infighting, especially among its last regime when those loyal to nowformer team president Steve Mills often clashed with those brought in by general manager Scott Perry, this is a major step. Even if the process hasn’t always been smooth.
THE Knicks entered the offseason with more than $40 million in cap space, one of the largest numbers in the league. But how to utilize that space became a subject of tension between Thibodeau and Aller.
For Thibodeau, a Connecticut native and former Knicks assistant, the job was a dream come true. It’s one of the reasons he was interested, despite, as he put it during his introductory press conference, “When you see your [net rating from the previous season] is a minus-6.54, you realize there’s a lot of work.”
“But Thibs is two types of people,” a longtime friend said. “The person who says something in the lead-up, and then the person who becomes consumed with getting things he wants to help him win games.”
It didn’t take long for Thibodeau to begin angling for roster upgrades.
“I think, as a head coach, the only thing you want is a voice,” he said in September. “I’ve known Leon and Wes for a long time, so they’ve asked my opinion on a number of things. Doesn’t mean that they’re always going to do what I ask them to do, but I think there’s a trust factor there.”