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    The Knicks Stumbled Last Season. Here’s How They Can Recover.

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    With free agency beginning, the Knicks have several options to build on what’s working and to move on from what is not.Good news for Knicks fans: The franchise has lured one of the best free agents, a rare occurrence for the team this century.The bad news: It’s a weak free-agent class, and this top free agent — the 25-year-old point guard Jalen Brunson — has never made an All-Star team. He has agreed to sign with the Knicks for $104 million over four seasons, his agents Aaron Mintz and Sam Rose told ESPN. Rose is the son of the team’s president, Leon Rose.That’s a hefty investment to make in a player who, in his best of four seasons with the Dallas Mavericks, averaged 16.3 points and 4.8 assists per game. He has been a full-time starter for just one season. But Brunson represents a significant upgrade at point guard, a position where the Knicks have long struggled to find playmakers. In the last two decades, Knicks starting point guards have included Chris Duhon, Toney Douglas, Trey Burke and Pablo Prigioni. Brunson has an excellent floater game in the paint, he’s a reliable shooter and he can break down a defense and put pressure at the rim.Brunson’s father, Rick, who briefly played for the team in the late-1990s, also is expected to be an assistant coach on the team next season. The Knicks have not announced his hiring, but in early June multiple reports said they were nearing a deal. The team did not respond to a request for comment.With the younger Brunson running the floor, the Knicks could be a dangerous playoff team, like they were in 2020-21, or one of the worst teams in the Eastern Conference, like they were last season. That’s how much variance there is with the roster as free agency signings begin Wednesday.Jalen Brunson started 61 games for the Dallas Mavericks last season, averaging 16.3 points per game for the season, the most in his career.Jed Jacobsohn/Associated PressThe conundrum facing the Knicks is that their rotation players are talented but flawed. Brunson, in essence, embodies this. He can score in bunches, but he isn’t a quality defender. He’s almost assuredly not good enough to be the best player on a contending team, and it’s not certain that his ceiling is much higher than what he showed last season.The 22-year-old RJ Barrett, who is entering his fourth season, has not shown enough consistency to be a cornerstone. He’s good at getting to the rim but not at finishing, and his jumper needs work. The other young hopes, including power forward Obi Toppin, 24, and point guard Immanuel Quickley, 23, have alternated between being solid contributors and being liabilities. Toppin cuts and runs the floor well, but he is a below-average shooter and struggles defensively. Quickley was better at running the offense during his second season in 2021-22, but he is an inefficient scorer and his size makes him an easy target on defense.Last season was — charitably — a step back for the Knicks. They seemed to be finally finding their way out of the darkness with their 2021 postseason run. They signed Julius Randle to a pricey contract extension and gave new deals to the veterans Derrick Rose, Alec Burks and Nerlens Noel. Then, they missed the playoffs last season, and the weight of those new deals felt heavier. Randle struggled last season, and the veterans didn’t play well enough to merit being part of the team long term.Mitchell Robinson, the 24-year-old center, is another good example of the team’s talented-but-flawed issue. He is an excellent rim protector and lob threat around the rim, but he has no offensive range to speak of and hasn’t improved much in four seasons. Still, the Knicks have agreed to bring him back on a four-year, $60 million deal, his agents Thad Foucher and Joe Smith told ESPN.The Knicks will need to make salary-cap space to sign Brunson, and that likely means moving on from some of the ill-fitting veterans. But beyond that, the Knicks need to add players who can help them rise out of mediocrity — the worst place to be in the N.B.A. They aren’t bad enough to receive high draft picks but aren’t not good enough to justify their biggest contracts.Quality veterans looking to chase a ring most likely would not take a pay cut to join them because the Knicks don’t have a roster that can realistically contend for a championship at the moment. If a star becomes available, say a Kevin Durant or a Kyrie Irving, the Knicks probably won’t have the best package to offer: not the best young prospects, not the highest draft picks, just a mishmash of middling pieces. It’s hard to see the ceiling for this team as anything higher than a low seed in the playoffs.But the N.B.A. is an increasingly fluid league, and there is a real reason to believe the Knicks can overcome their deficiencies and surpass expectations.The Knicks likely will start the season with Brunson, Randle and Barrett as the primary ballhandlers. Even with their weaknesses, that’s a better-than-average group of playmakers in today’s N.B.A. Brunson’s ability to penetrate will take pressure off Randle, who could use more time not being the primary attack point on the offense. Brunson’s shooting will create more space for him and Randle to operate around the basket. If Randle has some of that pressure relieved, he can put more energy toward his other strengths, such as rebounding and passing. Maybe the Knicks will get the All-Star version of Randle back.And Brunson’s arrival should also make life easier for Barrett. He had a bigger role in the offense after the All-Star break last season and averaged 24.5 points, 6.2 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game. He shot only 40.1 percent from the field in those games — talented but flawed! — but he showed potential as the No. 1 option. If Barrett can bring a passable efficiency to the game, he becomes a borderline All-Star alongside Randle.To complement that core, the Knicks need consistent shooting around them. They already have someone who can help with that in Evan Fournier, who shot 38.9 percent from deep last year. Quickley didn’t shoot well last year, but in his rookie year, he also shot 38.9 percent from 3.Rose, who was injured for much of last season, also should be able to help. With the Knicks, Rose has been a surprisingly good shooter and another body to help break down defenses. At 33, and with a lengthy injury history, he likely can’t be the sixth man off the bench, but his return will be a welcome sight for the team. There is a world in which a closing lineup of Randle, Barrett, Brunson, Fournier and Rose is extremely difficult to defend.There is some light beyond this year — some being the operative word. The Knicks have a pile of first-round draft picks in coming years, including picks from Dallas, Washington and Detroit. Next year, the Knicks could have four first-round picks. Several of the picks have conditions, which lowers their value. And if the Knicks keep being OK but not great, their own draft picks most likely would fall in the mid-to-late first round, which also reduces their value.But having a stockpile of picks is better than having none, and the Knicks could use some of them in a trade instead of holding them to select intriguing prospects. The agreement to sign Brunson to a major deal suggests the Knicks are trying to win now. Leon Rose rarely speaks publicly, so the Knicks’ broader strategy is unclear.The Knicks were one of the worst teams in the league for years, but they still have the core pieces that helped them secure home-court advantage in the playoffs just two seasons ago. The Knicks are not a superteam, but in today’s N.B.A., that might be OK. More

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      The Knicks’ Struggles Go Deeper Than Kemba Walker

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      A surprising reconsideration of the lineup that pushed Walker out of the rotation could help with some of the team’s issues, but not all of them.Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau has long been known as resistant to change, particularly in the way he uses his starters. He’s often been criticized for playing them for too many minutes, rain or shine, whether or not they are performing well.So it was surprising this week, a quarter of a way through the season, when Thibodeau said that he was pulling the plug on Kemba Walker as the starting point guard in favor of Alec Burks, a reserve for most of his career and not a traditional point guard. And it wasn’t just that Walker, a four-time All-Star who signed with the Knicks in the summer, was being yanked from the lineup. Thibodeau told reporters that Walker would be out of the rotation entirely.Changing a starter this early in the season is significant, particularly when it’s one with Walker’s résumé. At 31, Walker, in theory, should still be in his athletic prime.But Thibodeau was trying to correct for an urgent, and frequent, problem: Knicks starters putting the team in a hole that the bench has to dig it out of. If playoff teams are consistently hurt by any part of their roster, it’s usually a thin bench. But for the Knicks, the starters — even beyond Walker — are the reason they are a fringe playoff team instead of near the top of the Eastern Conference standings.Tuesday night’s game against the Nets was illustrative. Down 1 point at halftime, the Nets came out of the break with a blistering 14-0 run against the Knicks’ starters minus guard RJ Barrett, who missed the second half with an unspecified illness. The starters climbed back into the game and briefly took the lead. But the Knicks lost the 112-110 thriller in Brooklyn — in part because coming out of halftime flat left the team playing the Nets (15-6) from behind for most of the second half.Julius Randle regularly draws multiple defenders.Michelle Farsi/Getty ImagesThis wasn’t an exception. In a Nov. 10 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, the reigning champions, the Knicks went down double digits in the first quarter. Even against the Houston Rockets, one of the worst teams in the N.B.A., the Knicks fell behind 18-11 in the first quarter before tying the game by halftime and winning. The next night, Nov. 21, against Chicago, the Bulls raced out to a 20-8 start en route to victory.The starting lineup the Knicks (11-10) have played for much of the season — Walker, Barrett, Evan Fournier, Julius Randle and Mitchell Robinson — hasn’t just struggled. Its net rating — a measure of how much better or worse a team or group is than their opponents — is negative 15.7, according to the league’s tracking numbers. That places this unit among the worst starting or bench lineups in the N.B.A.The evidence was becoming undeniable. Thibodeau needed to try something else.Walker wasn’t the sole issue, but he was a big part of the problem. He’s averaging 11.7 points per game on 42.9 percent shooting from the field, and an excellent 41.3 percent from 3-point range. But Walker’s play took a nosedive in November after a hot start. In 12 games last month, Walker shot only 29.6 percent from deep. If his 3s aren’t falling, there isn’t much else he’s doing on the court.Because of chronic knee issues in recent years, Walker has lost his explosive first step, so he’s not able to get to the rim as effectively. And because of his height — Walker is listed at 6 feet tall — and slower foot speed, Walker was targeted on defense. The only way to justify keeping him on the court would be if he spread the floor with his shooting, and he is no longer doing that.Inserting Burks into the starting lineup for Walker makes some things easier for the Knicks. He’s bigger — listed at 6-foot-6 — which makes him a more versatile defender. On Tuesday night, he was just as likely to guard the 6-foot-5 James Harden as the quick rookie guard Cameron Thomas, who is 6-foot-3. Early in the third quarter, Burks blocked a Patty Mills 3-pointer — easier for him than for Walker.“You’re able to switch 1 through 4,” Derrick Rose, the Knicks reserve guard, said of Burks’s insertion into the lineup. “You’re more versatile. I mean, A.B. is a hell of a player. A playmaker. A great shooter.”But Burks doesn’t fully solve a starting lineup problem that led Thibodeau to increasingly rely on the bench late in games. The Knicks don’t have much of a fast-break offense and often depend on isolations to get their points — which would be fine if their shooters did more work on their own to get open rather than just standing still. The team is near the top of the league in contested shots and toward the bottom in wide-open ones.Fournier’s stats dipped in November like Walker’s did, causing Thibodeau to barely use him in key moments late in games. Thibodeau did call his number on Tuesday night against the Nets, and Fournier rewarded him by hitting a game-tying 3-pointer with 18 seconds left. But overall, Fournier shot 5 for 12 for 13 points in 22 minutes, with no rebounds or assists. Like with Walker, if Fournier isn’t consistently a 3-point threat, there’s little reason for him to be on the floor.Randle, the team’s best player, has faced an onslaught of double teams without reliable shooting around him, and he has struggled. Randle is shooting only 41.7 percent from the field and 32.5 percent from 3 — all below his career averages. All of Barrett’s numbers have declined from last year as well. Barrett has improved his finishing around the rim, but his shooting has always been his biggest question mark, one he appeared to answer last year when he shot 40.1 percent from deep. Now he’s at 32.1 percent. (For his part, Barrett also started slowly last year, only to pick it up in the second half of the season.)Thibodeau was not in the mood to discuss the lineup change after Tuesday’s loss. Asked about it, Thibodeau expressed anger at the game’s officiating and then left the news conference after just one question.The saving grace for the Knicks has been their bench trio of Rose, Obi Toppin and Immanuel Quickley. The team is third in the N.B.A. in bench scoring. Toppin is a sorely needed threat at the rim and in transition and does something the Knicks generally don’t do well: cut. Quickley and Rose have provided quality shooting, especially late in games, and Rose has been one of the few Knicks effective at getting to the rim.Swapping Walker for Burks swap has already paid dividends. He scored 25 and 23 points in the last two games, his only two starts of the season. And the Knicks may need to make more adjustments. More lineup changes mean the increased potential for hurt feelings among veteran players, but as Thibodeau said before the game on Tuesday: “You have to put winning first.” More

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      Knicks Beat Celtics in Opener in Double Overtime

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      A double-overtime thriller against the Boston Celtics in the season opener had 11 lead changes and 10 ties.When the typically gruff Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau took the podium on Wednesday night, he did something out of character. He opened his news conference with a smile.He had just sat — or rather, stood — through a double-overtime thriller to start the season against the Boston Celtics, a game that featured 11 lead changes and 10 ties. It was the first time that a Knicks home opener went into double overtime.“The good thing is, at the end of the day, we got the win,” Thibodeau said of the Knicks’ pulling out the 138-134 victory.It was only a regular-season game, but it felt like the basketball equivalent of the Iliad. There were star performances on both sides, like Jaylen Brown’s career-high 46 points for the Celtics after his recent bout with Covid-19, and Julius Randle’s 35 points, picking up right where he left off from carrying the Knicks last season. Even before halftime of opening night, Randle’s performance had the Garden crowd chanting “M-V-P!” again.There was peak basketball, like Robert Williams III, the Celtics center, scoring 16 points on only five shots, and his Knicks counterpart, Mitchell Robinson, doing virtually the same thing on the other end.And there was absolutely atrocious basketball, like the Knicks’ making a defensive miscue to free Celtics guard Marcus Smart for an improbable (and uncontested) 3-pointer that tied the score at the regulation buzzer and sent the game to overtime.Not to be outdone, the Celtics missed a wide open dunk and layup that could have sealed the game in the second overtime.Both teams were without key players: the Celtics without Josh Richardson and Al Horford, and the Knicks without Taj Gibson and Nerlens Noel. And while there aren’t many conclusions that can be drawn from only one game, especially the first one, Wednesday night made clear that there are some options on the new-look Knicks that they didn’t have last season.Last year, the Knicks had difficulty taking pressure off Randle, particularly with shooting the ball from the perimeter to create space for him late in games. The signing of Evan Fournier, a 28-year-old in his 10th N.B.A. season, appears to have given the Knicks a human release valve.Fournier made six 3-pointers on Wednesday night, including one in the final minute of the second overtime to give the Knicks the lead for good. He finished with 32 points, much to the relief of a grateful Randle. He was another valuable option in crunchtime that had to be accounted for.“He came up super clutch in those overtimes,” Randle said. “Hit some big shots. So I just wanted to keep finding him. But Evan is great, man. He’s really smart. We talked after the game. There’s things that we feel like we can do better and work on. He has an extremely high IQ.”The Knicks also saw good signs from Obi Toppin, who came off the bench with 14 points in 28 minutes, the most he had played in a game so far in his career. The Knicks were 4 points better with Toppin on the floor, and his strong play allowed the team to play small and move Randle to the center position. That gave the Knicks a lineup that was more nimble.“Obi is really learning how to become an N.B.A. player,” Fournier said. “From what I saw from him last year, he’s really getting better and better. He understands how to make himself efficient.”It was how Toppin made his presence felt that is likely to encourage Thibodeau to make him a permanent part of the rotation. He routinely put the Celtics’ defense on its heels through sheer energy and running the floor at full sprint to create opportunities for himself. Toppin, now in his second season, missed all three of his 3-pointers and is not yet a reliable shooter, but on Wednesday he made enough smart cuts to compensate for it.“Juice tells me when I’m on the court with him, if I see that he has the rebound, take off,” Toppin said, referring to Randle. “That’s what I do best. I run the floor. Every chance I get, I’m getting out in the open floor.”That will be useful for the Knicks, who were middle of the road in pace last year. Toppin’s efforts were rewarded.“Man, hearing your name chanted in the Garden is amazing,” Toppin said. “It’s an unbelievable experience I can’t even explain. It’s just something you’ve got to live through.”Jaylen Brown had a career-high 46 points for the Celtics.Frank Franklin Ii/Associated PressThis was the kind of regular-season atmosphere that hadn’t been possible during the pandemic, even if it was only one game starting a long slog of a season.But in a competitive Eastern Conference against a division rival, one game could be the difference between having home court advantage and not, as the Knicks themselves found out last year to their benefit. With high aspirations, every victory matters.“I don’t think we escaped,” Randle said. “We made some mental mistakes, errors or whatever. At the end of the day, we found a way to win a game.” More

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      The Knicks Are Ready for a Sequel. The Good Kind.

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      What is this feeling, so sudden and new?A surprisingly successful run last season helped the Knicks recapture the city’s imagination, much like the team had done in 1990s New York. That era of Knicks basketball is so beloved that it has spawned documentaries, books and endless nostalgia, even though it ended without a championship. The heydays of Patrick Ewing, John Starks and Latrell Sprewell re-established the team as a marquee franchise, a luster that has eroded over the last two decades of mostly despair for the tortured fan base.“After so many years of the Knickerbockers being an accident waiting to happen, you didn’t really watch them — you rubbernecked them, like you would a fender bender on the West Side Highway,” said Steve Somers, the popular radio host for WFAN. “Now, the Knickerbockers are generating some new, reborn excitement and enthusiasm.”These Knicks will attempt to build on last year’s success as they begin the season at home against the Boston Celtics on Wednesday. They’ll likely be one of two types of follow-ups: ideally, “The Godfather: Part II” — a quality sequel that builds on the original — or “The Godfather: Part III” — a rudderless ship.“It’s certainly not easy to do one year, but the second year is where that work ethic, the culture comes into place,” said Chris Dudley, who was a reserve center for the Knicks from 1997 to 2000. “Because too often you see teams have a great year and then they kind of forget a little bit how hard it was to get there and they slide back.”But if there’s one person intimately familiar with trying to sustain great play in New York, it is the man shepherding this iteration of Knicks basketball and restoring the franchise to the glory days Dudley saw up close.“There’s a strong connection from this Knicks team to when I played there in Tom Thibodeau,” Dudley said, referring to the Knicks head coach. “He fit right into that mentality of: ‘Hey, we’ve got a job to do. Let’s get it done.’ That’s the work ethic, the culture.”Thibodeau was an assistant coach for the Knicks from 1996 to 2003, meaning that as he reveled in the rise of an empire he also felt the embers when it began to crash and burn. In his first season as head coach last year, Thibodeau lifted the Knicks’ defense to fourth in the league from 23rd. The Knicks opted for a more physical style rather than finesse — a Thibodeau staple, and one Knicks fans grew to appreciate both last year and when it came from the sharp elbows of Anthony Mason and Charles Oakley in the 1990s.“Culture” for a team is, as the typically no-nonsense Thibodeau noted to reporters after a preseason practice, an ambiguous buzzword. Whatever the best word is, the Knicks have begun to shift the narrative about themselves in relatively short order after decades of futility.They have a young star in Julius Randle, a budding star in RJ Barrett, and dynamic up-and-comers in Immanuel Quickley and Obi Toppin. This off-season, the Knicks signed quality veterans in Kemba Walker and Evan Fournier to bolster their stable of experienced role players, like Taj Gibson and Alec Burks.Kemba Walker, left, and Evan Fournier, center, should relieve some of the offensive pressure on Julius Randle, right.Adam Hunger/Associated Press“What is culture? Culture is what you do every day,” Thibodeau said. “It’s not any one particular thing. It’s how you approach everything. Draft. Free agency. Trades. Player development. Practice. Travel. Summer program. It’s not blitzing the pick-and-roll.”Toppin is entering his second season as the rare Knick who has only known playing for a winning version of the team. “Our culture is competing every single day to help the next person,” Toppin said. “White Team is helping Blue Team. Blue Team is helping Green Team. Everybody is helping each other in practice so that, when it comes to the game, everyone is ready.”There is an organizational cohesiveness — at least outwardly — that was lacking before Thibodeau and Leon Rose, the team president since March 2020, took the lead.“It just goes to show you when you put direction in, and then you get a quality coach that stresses defense and unselfishness, those are things that help get wins,” said Rick Brunson, who appeared in 69 games for the Knicks between 1998 and 2001. “And then you put a product out there, it becomes magical.”James L. Dolan, the team’s mercurial owner with a reputation for impulsive and often detrimental meddling, has mostly stayed out of the limelight. Thibodeau said Dolan “has given us everything we’ve asked for.”Among the moves the Knicks made this summer: signing Randle to a long-term extension instead of letting a looming free agency saga play out, and inking Walker to a bargain deal after the Oklahoma City Thunder bought him out. The last time the Knicks had a young All-Star to build around in Kristaps Porzingis, they unexpectedly traded him in 2019 for a return that, even at the time, seemed paltry. None of the players the Knicks acquired in that deal are still with the team.Now the Knicks have a new challenge: to prove they’re not a fluke.“Consistency and sustaining what made you win in the first place is always a challenge,” said Stan Van Gundy, a TNT analyst who has coached four N.B.A. teams. His brother, Jeff, was the coach of the Knicks when they last made the finals, in 1999. “But I think the way it needs to be done, and certainly the way Tom will do it, is you continue to do all of those things that got you there in the first place.”There are plenty of reasons to believe the Knicks’ ceiling is even higher this season: They’ve given Randle more offensive weapons (Walker, Fournier) to take the pressure off him after the team struggled on that end last year. Mitchell Robinson, the 23-year-old center, will, if healthy, add another dimension as a shot blocking rim-runner, which the Knicks missed in the playoffs against the Atlanta Hawks. And with two other Eastern Conference contending teams in flux as a result of a possible trade (Ben Simmons and the Philadelphia 76ers) or an unvaccinated player (the Nets’ Kyrie Irving), there is a real opportunity for the Knicks to level up.Still, as Ernie Grunfeld, the architect of the Knicks throughout most of the 1990s, can attest, “You need to win.”“New York is about winning. And they’re doing that,” he added, “New York wants a team that plays hard and leaves everything out on the floor and plays together and plays basketball the right way.”That’s what his Dot Com Bubble-era Knicks teams gave the crowds at Madison Square Garden, he said.“It was electric. It was a great place to be,” Grunfeld said. “We were competitive every night. We were a team that other teams feared playing against. They were celebrities everywhere. It was a happening place in New York at the time.”As much as many N.B.A. observers pay tribute to the blue-collar persona of Thibodeau’s teams, his coaching record is more complicated. He’s had a history of quickly wearing out his welcome and not being able to build off success.Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau had success in his first season, but he quickly wore out his welcome in past coaching forays.Frank Franklin II/Associated PressThibodeau led a resurrection in 2010-11 in his first year as a head coach of the Chicago Bulls. They had the best record in the N.B.A. (62-20) but lost to the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals in five games. It ended up being the only time the team advanced past the second round in five seasons under Thibodeau. While it was the second most successful stretch in Bulls history, it was marred by injuries and Thibodeau’s clashes with the front office.Then came a roller-coaster tenure in Minnesota, during which Jimmy Butler, then the team’s best player, became alienated and demanded to be traded. Thibodeau was sent packing in the middle of his third season. A common criticism in both locations was that Thibodeau’s gruff style grated on players and management alike and that he tended to overplay his stars, leaving them tired down the stretch. Last year, Randle was No. 1 in the league in minutes played. Old habits die hard.So do old reputations.The burst of optimism surrounding this team echoes that of the 2012-13 Knicks led by Carmelo Anthony, who finished the regular season with a 54-28 record and won a playoff series. In the off-season afterward, their biggest move was trading for Andrea Bargnani, who played poorly, and the Knicks missed the playoffs. Phil Jackson took over the team the next year, ushering in a new period of inefficacy for the team.The current Knicks seem different. There is, for now, front office and roster continuity. The off-season didn’t feature any impulsive trades or long-term contracts for past-their-prime players that would limit cap flexibility. Players like Toppin are showing real development, as was indicated in the Knicks’ preseason opener when he showed off his ball handling. The Knicks should be better.But if they’re not? If last season was a flash in the pan — a Penn Station-size tease — the path forward for the Knicks becomes much murkier. More

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      The Root of the Knicks’ Success? Caring When They Didn’t Have To.

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      In a season of uncertainty, the Knicks gave fans, and opponents, one thing to count on: “They were coming to play,” one observer said.Of all the postseason-ensuring victories across the Knicks’ grand reawakening of a regular season, none rose to the level of their most compelling, collective triumph. That would be the defeat of every team’s most formidable opponent: the coronavirus pandemic.Like most teams in all sports, they have had their brushes with Covid-19. But at least until a swing out West that always loomed as a caveat to their playoff seeding, the Knicks could be counted on to “show up every night,” to quote a dearly departed season ticket holder I long knew.Some N.B.A. teams did little to improve on borderline playoff rosters or gutted them completely. Others that figured to be measurably superior to the Knicks have wobbled under the weight of too many nights when they didn’t show up — physically or spiritually.The N.B.A. this season has experienced an acute blowout problem, on pace late last month for more games after the All-Star break decided by 20 or more points since 1967-68. Let Jeff Van Gundy, the loquacious network analyst and former Knicks coach, begin to explain.“In a trying season for everybody — with testing and Covid, injuries and load management — you just haven’t known who’s going to be there, night in and night out,” he said in a telephone interview. “But with the Knicks, you have known, for the most part, they were coming to play.”This is where the hiring of Tom Thibodeau as coach was seamlessly set to pandemic conditions. Especially for what Van Gundy called “the whole crowd thing,” meaning that because there were no fans in arenas for most of the season, there has largely been no external force helping teams hold on to the rope after falling behind.Thibodeau was clear from the start: He wasn’t interested in coaching a team on training wheels, instead subscribing to the maxim that the best teaching environment is a winning one.Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesFrom no fans to some fans, these Knicks didn’t much need to be incentivized by a Madison Square Garden crowd. The coach’s baritone voice has been more than enough.Who among the emerging young players (RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley), veterans on expiring contracts (Reggie Bullock, Alec Burks) or reacquainted Thibodeau loyalists (Taj Gibson, Derrick Rose) was not going to be all-in with an old-school taskmaster, in his first year on the job?Van Gundy, who had Thibodeau on his Knicks staff two decades ago during the last multiseason period of Knicks relevance, mentioned an unnamed coach who told him that the higher the level of basketball you reach, winning during the regular season tends to “matter less and less to the players.” Maybe that’s an exaggeration, or simply not true. But with these Knicks, Van Gundy said, “the care factor has been exceptionally high.”Forgive the nostalgia, but their season has been reminiscent of 1982-83, when Hubie Brown rolled into town with a reputation much like Thibodeau’s, preaching defense and devotion, albeit in an exacting voice that over time grew discordant.Bernard King was the star of Hubie Brown’s 1982-83 Knicks team.Bill Kostroun/Associated PressBrown’s first Knicks team lost 26 of its first 40 games, then caught fire, won 24 of 30 and steamed into the playoffs to win a round (for the record, against the Nets).As with Julius Randle now, Bernard King was their lone star then, the one indispensable Knick, wearing the same No. 30. While other teams have required an Etch A Sketch to chart their stars’ nightly lineup availability, Randle has lost one game to injury and none to rest, leading the league in minutes played.Load management is generally for the established elite, not for a guy in the midst of a remarkable breakout season, and who began it with a partially guaranteed salary for 2021-22.Beyond Randle, Leon Rose, the team’s president, built a deep roster of interchangeable parts, ready for a condensed schedule promising to be marred by pandemic unpredictability. When the starting center Mitchell Robinson went down, the peripatetic young veteran Nerlens Noel stepped up. When Burks, a strong contributor to the team’s improved offense, was out because of virus protocols, Rose and Bullock picked up the scoring pace.“In the regular season, you can’t be top-heavy, you need depth, which Leon did a great job with,” Van Gundy said. “In the playoffs, you need greatness.”Watching the Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic dismantle the Knicks in Denver last week may well have been a playoff preview. But wherever the Knicks’ season goes from here, it has been all the more astonishing when considering how little they have to show for their last five lottery picks, all top 10.Julius Randle colliding into Nuggets forward Paul Millsap in Denver on Wednesday.Ron Chenoy/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBasically, it’s the ever-improving Barrett, at least until Obi Toppin gets to prove he is more than the second coming of Kenny Walker, better known as Sky. Kristaps Porzingis? Long gone. Frank Ntilikina and Kevin Knox? Might as well be.Here, again, is where the Thibodeau hiring has been a timely blessing. You may have argued last fall that this would be the perfect season to sacrifice achievement for player development, with few paying customers to please. I know I did. Why not find out once and for all about Ntilikina and Knox? Why not turn Toppin and Quickley loose from Day 1?Thibodeau was clear from the start: He wasn’t interested in coaching a team on training wheels, instead subscribing to the maxim that the best teaching environment is a winning one.Peter Roby, a childhood friend of Thibodeau’s, who in 1985 hired him for the coaching staff at Harvard, likes to playfully remind people of how Thibodeau, the acclaimed defensive guru, was known in his “knucklehead” youth for never passing up a shot. But in a recent telephone interview, he brought up Thibodeau’s age, 63, old enough to have been introduced to the pro game by the Knicks’ early 1970s championship team.Those Knicks were all about ball sharing and defense, the kind of championship DNA, Roby said, that Thibodeau associates with the franchise, even if it hasn’t won a title since the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.“Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley — those are his Knicks,” Roby said.His father’s Knicks, as well. Thibodeau wanted this generation-connective job too much to embark on a five-year plan that could easily disintegrate, given the organization’s trademark volatility under the ownership of James L. Dolan.Even with few or no fans, the Knicks have played hard.Pool photo by ElsaHe also knows how easily an N.B.A. head coach his age can overnight be downgraded from outstanding to outdated with one twist of fate — what befell Brown after King tore up a knee at the height of his scoring prowess in 1985.Chasing pickup games with Thibodeau while growing up in New Britain, Conn., a border town where sports passion is split between Boston and New York, Roby also chose the Knicks over the Celtics. As a former athletic director at Northeastern and current interim athletic director at Dartmouth, he’s long been closer to Boston but is a bigger Knicks fan than ever, thanks to his old pal.“Can you imagine what it would be like if they were playing in front of a full Garden house?” Roby said.We can, but perhaps we shouldn’t. Not yet. Because who knows what comes next, when the high-achieving role players, Derrick Rose included, will demand their free-agent rewards. When road games — such as Friday night’s in Phoenix, where the Knicks faltered late in front of 8,063 fans — may again require competing with a full-throated cacophony. When expectation will become part of the equation and, yes, when Thibodeau’s voice could begin to grate.Stirring to life a long-slumbering franchise, the story of the season has been harmony for coach and players, all while withstanding, even foiling, the daunting challenge of a pandemic. More

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      On the Road Again at All-Star Weekend

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMarc Stein On BasketballOn the Road Again at All-Star WeekendPlenty of stars expressed concern about playing in the All-Star Game, but it proved to be an important trip for Nikola Vucevic and for a columnist eager to resume traveling.For Nikola Vucevic of the Orlando Magic, the All-Star festivities were a chance to reconnect with a few friends. He played 19 minutes in the game and finished second in the skills competition. Credit…Dale Zanine/USA Today Sports, via ReutersMarch 10, 2021, 9:00 a.m. ETSunday’s 70th N.B.A. All-Star Game was repeatedly described as one almost all of us could have done without.The almost disclaimer got thrown in for people like Boran Rajcic, Stefan Vulevic and the Orlando Magic’s Nikola Vucevic. Like the league’s broadcast partners at Turner Sports, and the historically Black colleges and universities that gained so much from the weekend, Vucevcic and his close friends savored the experience.Vucevic and fellow All-Stars were allowed to bring up to four guests into the bubble environment that the N.B.A. conceived in Atlanta in hopes of staging Sunday’s competitions safely and hushing the naysayers who feared that the one-day format could devolve into some sort of superspreader event. After deciding with his wife, Nikoleta, that it would be wiser for her and their two young children to stay home this year, Vucevic figured he would be commemorating the second All-Star appearance of his career as a party of one.Rajcic and Vulevic wouldn’t let it happen.Rajcic drove to Georgia from California and made stops in Phoenix and Dallas along the way to register the requisite league-mandated negative tests for Covid-19 at official N.B.A. team testing facilities. Vulevic drove in six hours from Virginia to double the size of Vucevic’s fan club. So moved by those efforts, Vucevic arranged to stay over Sunday night before returning to Orlando — unlike the many All-Stars who left town immediately after the game by private jet — to maximize his time with the guys.Time together had to suffice as the primary source of entertainment, since they were posted up in a downtown hotel that, per N.B.A. rules, those cleared to enter were not allowed to leave.“I actually had a pretty nice balcony with my room,” Vucevic said. “We just hung out, played music, caught up.”Rajcic, who was the best man in Vucevic’s wedding, and Vulevic were adamant that they had to be in Atlanta, whatever it took, to make the most of what might prove to be the high point of Vucevic’s trying season. Vucevic, at 30, is producing career-best personal numbers so robust that he earned an All-Star spot despite injury-ravaged Orlando falling to 14th in the Eastern Conference at 13-23. A 6-foot-11 Montenegrin center, he is averaging 24.6 points and 11.6 rebounds while shooting 41.2 percent from 3-point range, which explains why the Boston Celtics — who openly covet a big man with shooting range — are mentioned often among the multiple playoff teams interested in acquiring Vucevic before the March 25 trade deadline.I was not aware of a room-with-balcony-option at my Atlanta hotel, but I could understand the pull Rajcic and Vulevic felt to make the trip. Before boarding a Georgia-bound flight last Friday night, I hadn’t left my Dallas base to attend an N.B.A. function of any kind since leaving the Walt Disney World bubble last September. This assignment struck me as the must-see occasion to end that drought. I was convinced of it despite the unappetizing prospect of pandemic air travel and knowing that the mere 50 members of the news media that would be credentialed at State Farm Arena, compared with the usual 1,000-plus that the league credentials, would get nowhere near the players or the floor like we ultimately did in the Disney bubble.When I strolled the streets surrounding the Atlanta Hawks’ home on Saturday afternoon, there was zero All-Star energy in the air and, unlike a typical N.B.A. production, very little signage to signal what would be happening Sunday night. Sunday’s walk to the game was even more disorienting, thanks to a police presence in the area that completely cleared out the arena’s perimeter. Maybe the N.B.A. and Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Atlanta mayor, were unable to dissuade locals and out-of-towners from congregating at unaffiliated parties thrown Friday and Saturday night as they had hoped, but by game day it was very much the closed-to-the-public, made-for-television event that the league intended.I knew going in that I would be granted access to a decent seat in a confined section of the arena behind one of the baskets and little else, but I’m glad I went. If the game was going to go ahead, after LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, James Harden and various other stars had all spoken out so forcefully against the league’s intentions to stuff three days’ worth of All-Star festivities into a one-night Turner bonanza, I felt a responsibility to get there as well and see as much as I could with my own eyes — just in case something went badly askew.Those superspreader fears were apparently averted when Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons were kept isolated from the other All-Stars after it was discovered that before leaving Philadelphia they had been exposed to a barber who had tested positive for Covid-19. The announcement that Embiid and Simmons were being pulled from Sunday’s game stoked a fresh round of apprehension and resistance among players, but my sense was that most participants came away appreciative of the experience.“There’s obviously a big balancing act, and I know Adam Silver tried to articulate that throughout this process, and obviously us as players, we have reactions to everything that happens because it’s our world and we’re living in it,” Golden State’s Stephen Curry said. “I still had a great time out there.”Credit…Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images“There’s obviously a big balancing act, and I know Adam Silver tried to articulate that throughout this process, and obviously us as players, we have reactions to everything that happens because it’s our world and we’re living in it,” Golden State’s Stephen Curry said. “I still had a great time out there.”Portland’s Damian Lillard added: “It had to be done, and we got it done. We showed up and did what we needed to do.”Whether All-Star 2021 really was or wasn’t a must is the point on which this whole debate hinged. Perhaps you will recall how succinctly Kawhi Leonard of the Los Angeles Clippers summed it up in early February.“We all know why we’re playing it,” Leonard said then. “There’s money on the line.”I, too, thought the risks taken to preserve Turner’s projected windfall of up to $30 million, on top of the untold millions that the N.B.A. and its players avoided losing through an outright cancellation, were ill-advised. Yet I must concede, with hindsight, that it’s a stretch to parrot the line that routinely dismisses the All-Star Game as “just” an exhibition. TNT treats it as the jewel of its annual N.B.A. coverage, bigger than any single playoff game on its air, while Silver said the league was expecting a global television audience of more than 100 million people, along with more than a billion social media views and engagements.No mere exhibition game generates that sort of hoopla. All-Star games don’t count — except that the N.B.A. can rightfully say they do.Like everything else in the league (and the world) these days, it’s complicated — and often inherently risky over the past year. Few understand that better than Silver, who is back in New York now for what could be another nervy week as the 400-plus players who were not in Atlanta gradually return to their teams. Coming out of a break is when the N.B.A. has typically had a surge in positive Covid-19 cases.It likewise figures to be a week filled with somber reflection given Thursday’s looming one-year anniversary of the N.B.A.’s shutdown in response to the coronavirus outbreak. I interviewed Silver recently for a one-year-later project that ran in Monday’s editions of The New York Times, which featured Silver sharing some of his thinking and takeaways from March 11, 2020.“When I made that decision that night to shut down, I thought of it more as a hiatus, because it was a realization that however long we’re shut down, we need to put in place a whole new set of protocols to deal with this emerging virus,” Silver said in last month’s interview. “It wasn’t so much that, all right, the world has stopped.“At that moment,” Silver said, “I did not have a sense that we would be having this conversation almost a year later and we still would not be back to business as usual.”The 70th All-Star Game, however you felt about it, was the latest illustration of exactly that. It became such a divisive issue because business as usual has been replaced by pandemic life for longer than most of us ever imagined.The Scoop @TheSteinLineMarch 8There is optimism within the Lakers that they will get strong consideration from Andre Drummond if Drummond ultimately leaves the Cavaliers via buyout, league sources say.Cleveland’s preference, of course, remains trading Drummond elsewhere before the March 25 trade deadline.March 6The NBA has sent out roughly 200 letters with cease-and-desist orders to various party promoters in the Atlanta area that have used the league’s All-Star logo and event name in connection with unaffiliated events scheduled this weekend, league spokesman tells ⁦‪@NYTSports⁩The most notable aspect of the letters, of course, is that they suggest there are at least 200 parties going on in the area this weekend after Atlanta Mayor @KeishaBottoms urged the local citizenry not to hold All-Star events when the NBA is not interacting with the public at allThis newsletter is OUR newsletter. So please weigh in with what you’d like to see here. To get your hoops-loving friends and family involved, please forward this email to them so they can jump in the conversation. If you’re not a subscriber, you can sign up here.Corner ThreeImmanuel Quickley is off to a promising start for the Knicks, but Obi Toppin is still adjusting to the speed of the pro game.Credit…Pool photo by John MinchilloYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.(Responses may be lightly edited or condensed for clarity.)Q: You recently wrote an article about the surprising New York Knicks. Knicks fans are excited about Immanuel Quickley, but this Knicks fan is puzzled about the play of Obi Toppin. What is your sense of the hype he got when drafted and the reality of his play to date? — Rich Helfont (Port Washington, N.Y.)Stein: The hype hasn’t helped Toppin’s cause, but the Knicks’ circumstances have changed since draft night in November, too. No one expected Julius Randle to play at an All-Star level. Toppin was drafted as a potential Randle replacement by a front office that suddenly finds itself trying to determine whether Randle’s glorious half-season makes him a cornerstone player they have to keep.I thought there was a decent chance that the Knicks would take Tyrese Haliburton at No. 8 rather than Toppin, but they felt a greater need in the frontcourt, with RJ Barrett projected to be a more significant contributor to the Knicks’ future than Randle.The most troubling aspect of Toppin’s slow start is that, at age 23, he was thought to be more N.B.A.-ready than most rookies. Even Derrick Rose, whose recent return to the Knicks has clearly helped Toppin when they play together, mentioned recently that Toppin is still adjusting to the speed of the N.B.A. game. The ultratight turnaround from draft night to the start of Toppin’s first N.B.A. training camp, with no summer league, appeared to snuff out the supposed experience edge.Q: Is there any concern about dilution of the N.B.A.’s brand due to the oversaturation of the alternate jerseys teams wear every year? The recent orange-versus-red clash between the Hawks and Thunder seemed like a humorous, and unfortunate, result of league guidelines that allow teams to wear clashing colors instead of the traditional light-versus dark contrast. Is anyone at league headquarters worried that the Lakers wearing blue on another team’s blue court, or Miami dressing like the Pittsburgh Steelers or cotton candy on any given night, or Milwaukee wearing two shades of blue that have never been part of the Bucks’ aesthetic cheapens the history of these teams and the league? — Michael McAfee (Austin, Texas)Stein: As a fellow traditionalist, I decided to let your whole rant run, even though I suspect you knew the answer before you sent in the question. The league and its teams clearly hold no such concerns about printing an array of new jerseys every season. It must be profitable or they wouldn’t do it.If it were up to sappy me, of course, teams would all be wearing what they wore in the 1970s and 1980s (when applicable) and Mitchell & Ness would remake and market everything the Buffalo Braves wore from 1973-74 through 1977-78. But I, like you, clearly am not the target audience for today’s jersey manufacturers.I will say, though, that I really do like the San Antonio Spurs’ new Fiesta scheme. That’s pretty much the lone modern design I am drawn to.Q: If a replacement All-Star gets replaced, does it go in the record books that they made the All-Star team? — @RivelBrian from TwitterStein: Excellent question about precisely the sort of record-book minutiae that this newsletter cherishes.I checked with the league office and, yes, Phoenix’s Devin Booker will be recorded as an All-Star for the second successive season, even though he was chosen as a replacement for the injured Anthony Davis of the Los Angeles Lakers and then had to be replaced by Utah’s Mike Conley because of a sprained left knee.Conley thus exits the Best Player To Never Earn All-Star Status debate, leaving behind the likes of 1980s (and 1990s) stalwarts Derek Harper, Ron Harper, Rod Strickland, Byron Scott and Cedric Maxwell, along with Jason Terry and Lamar Odom from the more recent past, and Portland’s CJ McCollum as the most deserving current veteran player.Booker will surely carry a chip into next season even with the league now recognizing him as a two-time All-Star, because he was an injury-replacement selection both times after being snubbed by Western Conference coaches two seasons in a row. McCollum, in his eighth season, was also playing at an All-Star level when he sustained a fractured left foot on Jan. 16.Numbers GameWith Deandre Ayton anchoring the team’s defense and Devin Booker and Chris Paul thriving on offense, the Phoenix Suns are one of just two teams ranked in the N.B.A.’s top-ten in both offensive and defensive efficiency. Credit…Ronald Martinez/Getty Images2As the second half of the season begins with two games on Wednesday, only two teams rank in the top 10 in both offensive and defensive efficiency: Utah and Phoenix. The Jazz, at No. 4 in both categories, are the only team in the league that ranks in the top five in both. The Suns are No. 8 in offensive efficiency and No. 3 in defensive efficiency.99.4After two consecutive seasons in which pace leaguewide crept past 100 possessions per 48 minutes for the first time since 1988-89, that figure is down ever so slightly. Entering Wednesday’s play, teams are averaging 99.4 possessions per 48 minutes, according to Stathead.3The Lakers, Clippers and Nets are the only teams in the 30-team N.B.A. that have not had a game postponed this season according to the league’s health and safety protocols. The league had to postpone 31 games during the season’s first half because at least one team could not field the requisite eight players in uniform as a result of positive tests for Covid-19 or, more frequently, because of issues with contact tracing.6Only five of the six actually played in the All-Star Game after Philadelphia’s Ben Simmons was sidelined by the N.B.A.’s contact tracing rules, but this season’s six All-Stars listed as left-handers tied a league record: James Harden (Nets), Julius Randle (Knicks), Domantas Sabonis (Indiana), Simmons (Philadelphia), Zion Williamson (New Orleans) and the late addition Mike Conley (Utah).14Leave it to my trusty friends at Stathead to be able to dial up the history that shows there were also six lefties in the 1973 All-Star Game in Chicago: Tiny Archibald (Kansas City-Omaha), Dave Cowens (Boston), Gail Goodrich (Los Angeles Lakers), Bob Lanier (Detroit), Jack Marin (Houston) and Lenny Wilkens (Cleveland). Yet it must be noted that All-Star rosters swelled from 12 to 14 from 1970-71 through 1972-73, when the N.B.A. briefly stipulated that each team in the 17-team league had to be represented in the All-Star Game. The 1973 game in Chicago was the league’s last of three in a row with 28 All-Stars rather than 24. Fan voting for the five starters began in 1974-75.Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Leon Rose Approach: Way Too Quiet, But Effective for Knicks (So Far)

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.LeBron and Anthony DavisThe N.B.A. Wanted HerMissing Klay ThompsonKobe the #GirlDadAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyon PRO BasketballThe Leon Rose Approach: Way Too Quiet, But Effective for Knicks (So Far)As the team president for the past year, Rose has let the Knicks’ on-court flickers of progress do most of his talking.Leon Rose, center, a former player agent, attended his first game as the Knicks’ team president, above, on March 2, 2020.Credit…Kathy Willens/Associated PressFeb. 28, 2021Updated 8:26 p.m. ETThe Knicks had just sullied their better than expected start with a loss at home to the Miami Heat, but the more pressing topic on Feb. 7 was a looming trade. A deal with the Detroit Pistons was about to position the Knicks’ Tom Thibodeau to coach Derrick Rose for the third time.The trade, though, was not yet official, so Thibodeau was not yet ready to discuss the player’s arrival with reporters — not even after their happy stints together in Chicago and Minnesota.“In terms of the roster, that’s a Leon question,” Thibodeau said, referring interest in the topic to Leon Rose, the Knicks’ team president.It was quite the deflection from the defense-loving coach.Leon Rose, you see, makes himself available to field media queries about as scarcely as any N.B.A. executive running a front office ever has. Tuesday will be one full year on the job for Rose, who didn’t even hold an introductory news conference. Apart from a brief interview with the team’s play-by-play man, Mike Breen, on the MSG Network in June 2020, Rose has only once spoken to reporters, during the team’s Zoom session in July 2020 to formally announce Thibodeau’s hiring.A public sense of Rose’s vision for how to build a team, how he plans to lead the Knicks back to sustained prominence for the first time since the 1990s, thus remains murky.Our request for Rose to break from that policy for this article was predictably declined by a team spokesman — even as the Rose regime, presiding over one of the league’s first-half surprise teams, has some good things to trumpet. Few predicted that these Knicks would contend for a postseason berth, but the present is going well enough that Rose has faced scant pressure to expound on the moves he has made or on his future plans.“I see orange-and-blue skies again,” the filmmaker Spike Lee, who is known as one of the Knicks’ biggest fans, said in a telephone interview. “I’m very, very encouraged.”Perhaps this is one time he should be. On March 2, 2020, Rose attended his first game in his new role, but the Knicks’ victory over Houston — in their 61st of 66 games in a coronavirus-interrupted season — was overshadowed by a messy dispute between the team’s owner, James L. Dolan, and Lee over the entrance that he used at Madison Square Garden. This March: Julius Randle’s breakout season earned him a spot in next Sunday’s All-Star Game; Thibodeau’s schemes and throaty exhortations have steered the Knicks to the league’s third-ranked defense; and tangible positivity is bubbling about the possibility of the team securing just its fifth playoff berth during Dolan’s 20 seasons in charge.It also helps that after seven consecutive nonplayoff seasons, Rose has presided over more hits than misses so far. That starts with the hiring of Thibodeau, whose demanding style has clicked more seamlessly than anticipated with an inexperienced roster. The Knicks entered Sunday’s game at Detroit at 17-17, which was good enough not only for a share of fourth place in the Eastern Conference, but also to shift focus away from Dolan, last season’s dreadful headlines about his clashing with Lee and the much-panned hiring of Steve Stoute as a branding consultant.“Knick fans, we’re optimistic,” Lee said. “We see hope. We haven’t seen that in a while.”Within the N.B.A., most observers say it would be unfair to grade Rose on one year of work even if the Knicks (with 13 of their 17 wins against sub-.500 teams) weren’t capitalizing on the East’s famously forgiving nature. Rose’s detractors, or skeptics of his ability to succeed in the transition from player agent at Creative Artists Agency to team builder with no front-office experience, surely see he deserves more time to shape the roster.An urge to say that the Knicks erred in November by drafting Obi Toppin at No. 8 over all rather than taking the electric guard Tyrese Haliburton, who went at No. 12 to Sacramento, is tempered by the possibility that Rose may also have unearthed a true sleeper by acquiring the rights to the No. 25 overall pick, Immanuel Quickley, who (sorry, can’t resist) quickly established himself as a fan favorite. The Knicks made a hard push in free agency to sign Gordon Hayward — at Thibodeau’s urging — but won plaudits when they did not overreact after Hayward chose Charlotte. Rose maintained the financial flexibility to be a player in free agency this summer instead.Although that free-agent class will not be as inviting as once thought, after several stars signed contract extensions before this season, hopeful vibes are unexpectedly circulating ahead of schedule. Thibodeau’s New York team is bunched record-wise with established teams like Toronto, Miami and Boston, despite up-and-down play from RJ Barrett, the Knicks’ top draft choice in 2019, and a broken hand sustained by the athletic center Mitchell Robinson.The newly acquired guard Derrick Rose, driving against the Kings’ De’Aaron Fox, top left, has bolstered a roster that lacks playmaking and perimeter shooting.Credit…John Minchillo/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe trade for Derrick Rose initially inspired fears that Quickley’s development could suffer, on top of Toppin’s slow start and the apparent gaffes of previous regimes, which burned top-10 picks on Kevin Knox (two spots ahead of Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander) and Frank Ntilikina (five spots ahead of Utah’s Donovan Mitchell and six ahead of Miami’s Bam Adebayo). Yet Derrick Rose, in his second stint as a Knick, has settled well to strengthen a roster that lacks playmaking and perimeter shooting. Some of the snickering that would typically greet Thibodeau’s reunion with Rose, his former first option in Chicago, has been drowned out by what Thibodeau is coaxing out of a group that finished 23rd in defensive efficiency last season.“Like all the great Knick teams, they’re playing defense,” Lee said.Yet one suspects that the sunny outlook, even among the Knicks’ long-term loyalists, is fleeting — especially with the Nets seemingly collecting superstars for sport across New York’s East River.Rose, who The New York Times reported in November earns an estimated $8 million annually, and his top aide, William Wesley, who is known as Worldwide Wes, will ultimately be judged on how swiftly they can deliver at least one player in the talent ZIP code of the Nets’ Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving. If the Nets play to their potential and emerge as true title contenders, sticking to Rose’s current methodical approach, sensible as it sounds, will take discipline the Knicks aren’t exactly known for.The media strategy, in the interim, appears to be letting the on-court flickers of progress (and Thibodeau) do the talking. Rose and Wesley are accustomed to operating this way after maintaining very low profiles during their C.A.A. days, but it actually takes the franchise back in some ways to pre-Dolan times. Pat Riley and then Jeff Van Gundy were the frontmen as coaches, largely because of the star center Patrick Ewing’s aversion to the spotlight.When Toppin became the first draft pick of this new era, Rose limited the sharing of his thought process behind the selection to a written statement that said little more than “Obi was someone we really coveted.” When the Knicks were criticized for their apparent infatuation with players represented by C.A.A. or Kentucky alumni who had played for John Calipari, who is close to both Rose and Wesley, it was left to Thibodeau to insist that it’s “more coincidental” than the news media suggests.In a letter to season-ticket holders a year ago, Rose wrote: “Nothing about this is easy, or quick, so I ask for your continued patience. What I promise you in return is that I will be honest and forthright.” The reality, of course, is that forthrightness has never been a hallmark of Dolan’s ownership, but who is going to complain apart from sportswriters when the Knicks are playing like plucky overachievers?If this is really the start of something — if Rose has staying power after all the false dawns that have felled supposed saviors on the court (Amare Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony and Kristaps Porzingis) and off (Donnie Walsh, Mike D’Antoni and Phil Jackson) — only the scribes are bound to remember Rose’s letter from when he got to Gotham.Lee insisted, furthermore, that the fans understand why they are so rarely briefed.“You know where that’s coming from,” Lee said. “That’s an edict from up top. I’m not happy about it, but there’s someone else calling those shots. We’re used to it by now. And he’s not selling the team, so what are we going to do?”“Orange-and-blue skies,” Lee added with a laugh.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More