Why unproven executive Rose is the most important Knick of all
LEON ROSE watched the ugliness from his courtside Garden seat, in the middle of his otherwise charmed first full season running an NBA team. Knicks-Heat was everything it was in the Nineties — tense, physical, and rough on the eyes, with many possessions played under a fourthand-1 cloud of Big Ten dust. Oh, and it was relevant too, for the first time in forever.
One scarred veteran of the most meaningful KnicksHeat days, Jeff Van Gundy, had called the home team’s roster “still incredibly limited” before the game while praising the work of Tom Thibodeau and Rose in lifting the Knicks to fourth place in the East. Rose would see just about every limitation in that roster — now made thinner by the loss of
Mitchell Robinson — while absorbing a 98-88 defeat to an opponent that had dropped six in a row.
In the end, the game represented another piece of circumstantial evidence that this will be the most crucial head-tohead matchup between Miami and New York over the next three or four years:
Pat Riley vs. Leon Rose. Miami had one of Thibodeau’s most beloved former players, Jimmy Butler, on its side Monday night, and the Knicks did not, and that pretty much explains the final score. Butler delivered 27 points and was dominant in the Heat’s runaway 39-point third quarter. He is a Riley hire, of course, who immediately took the Heat to last year’s Finals, extending a long and distinguished run of talent acquisition for Miami’s president that has separated him from nearly the entire pack.
Riley is an historic NBA figure who long ago built the Heat into a destination for marquee players serious about competing for championships. Rose? He’s a newbie ex-agent who might be the next great New York sports executive. Or he might be the next Brodie Van Wagenen, minus the cool hair.
“The only honest answer about Leon is, ‘We’ll see,’ ” Van Gundy said Monday. “He’s never had the opportunity. He made a smart hire in Tom Thibodeau. [Immanuel] Quickley seems like one of the better draft choices. [Obi] Toppin is to be determined. The signings of [Nerlens] Noel and [Alec] Burks were terrific. The trade for Derrick Rose was terrific. I don’t know what more you can expect.
“But every step in the NBA is hard when you’re going from competitive to goodness to greatness to a championship. The next step is always harder.”
And nobody has any idea if Rose is capable of taking it.
Monday night’s loss notwithstanding, we already know Thibodeau can coach with Erik Spoelstra and the best of the rest in the Eastern Conference. He might wear out his welcome in New York like he wore out his welcome in Chicago and Minnesota, but he’s going to wear out a lot of opponents before he does.
Can you win a championship with Tom Thibodeau as your coach? The evidence says yes, you can.
But by Thibodeau’s own admission, the man or woman who coaches the players is not as important as the man or woman who acquires them. In December, when asked about star power in the wake of Milwaukee’s $228 million supermax signing of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Thibs said the Knicks needed “to be very aggressive in seeking out those opportunities. They just don’t happen by accident. You have to make them happen.”
If Thibodeau did not mean to publicly challenge his longtime friend, Rose, it sure sounded like he did.
Deep down, Thibs knows the Knicks will not win a title in the coming seasons if Julius Randle remains their best player. Randle deserves
nothing but praise for making himself an All-Star, for taking his craft as seriously as he does. But look at the kind of stars who do win rings, and then look at Randle. It doesn’t add up.
RJ Barrett isn’t even 21, and he’s improving, and he should develop into a good starter on a good team. Only at some point, the Knicks will have to acquire Brooklyn-type difference-makers via an executive who can close the deal. Pat Riley has been a Mariano Rivera-like closer in Miami, and over the last 15 seasons, his Heat have appeared in six NBA Finals, winning half of them.
Over the last 20 seasons, the Knicks have made it to the conference semifinals a grand total of once, and lost.
Year in, year out, Knicks executives have failed to persuade elite players to accept the challenge of ending the franchise’s biblical title drought. Everyone was going to want to play for Phil Jackson because, well, he’s Phil Jackson. Steve Mills was said to have more connections than he could count, and David Fizdale arrived with all of that Miami credibility and LeBron James’s imprimatur. Jim Dolan’s Knicks have been great at signing the recruiters, and not-so-great at signing the recruits.
Rose and his partner, William “World Wide Wes” Wesley, are the latest execs who are supposed to reverse the trend, with so many Kentucky products and CAA clients that the Knicks should be renamed the New York Wild-CAAts. Maybe Rose will follow the road traveled by Bob Myers of Golden State and Rob Pelinka of the Lakers, exagents turned NBA champs. Or maybe he’ll follow Van Wagenen back into celebrity representation.
The roster will ultimately decide. If the Knicks want to win a title sometime this century, they’ll eventually need better players. And right now, nobody has a clue if Leon Rose is capable of acquiring them.