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As the trade deadline approached, Leon Rose’s performance was just like his team’s — quiet, ineffective and lacking a coherent plan. The Knicks went down looking while a lot of big and loud dealmaking unfolded around them, leaving Rose’s program heading nowhere fast.
At the very least Thursday, Rose needed to clear some perimeter space for Cam Reddish, given that the Knicks’ president was the one who, you know, surrendered a first-round pick for him. But nobody wanted Rose’s players or Rose’s contracts, and one quick survey of the standings will explain why.
The Knicks were in 12th place in the East heading into Thursday night’s game at Golden State. They had lost 10 of 12, and any sense of confidence that they’ll rally for a berth in the unwashed play-in tournament.
In other words, the Knicks are a bad team. And executives generally don’t covet players from bad teams.
Early last season, when asked about his desire to acquire stars, Tom Thibodeau said his front office needed “to be very aggressive in seeking out those opportunities. They just don’t happen by accident. You have to make them happen.”
Nobody was asking Rose at this deadline to make a seismic deal happen. He was never going to rock the league the way Brooklyn and Philly did in the James Harden-Ben Simmons trade.
But Rose had to do something, anything, to change or at least tweak this roster and provide something of a reset. If nobody wanted Julius Randle, Evan Fournier, Kemba Walker, Nerlens Noel and Alec Burks in deals big and small, Rose should go plant himself in front of a mirror. He’s the one who signed or re-signed all those guys last summer.
Truth is, a lot of Knicks are having disappointing seasons, with Randle and Thibodeau at the front of the line. Rose is having a worse year than all of them. He acquired a small, aging, injured, non-defending point guard in Walker for a coach who didn’t want a small, aging, injured, non-defending point guard. The Knicks president gave Fournier a four-year, $78 million deal, and then tried to trade him not even four months into his Knicks career.
Some Rose supporters might argue he deserves credit for quickly identifying a bad fit and being willing to cut his losses. But Fournier had played nine NBA seasons and more than 550 games before joining the Knicks. Wasn’t that enough time for Rose to evaluate him and figure out if he matched up with the team’s needs?
And what are the Knicks to do with young Mr. Reddish? Derrick Rose will be returning to claim his minutes, and perhaps Walker will be bought out when he does. That doesn’t help Reddish or Leon Rose, who can’t justify sacrificing a first-round pick for someone who will be glued to Thibodeau’s bench when everyone is healthy.
If his coach didn’t want Reddish to begin with, why did Rose acquire him? Thibodeau and his former CAA agent are supposed to be longtime friends. Sometimes they have the funniest ways of showing it.
Well, at least RJ Barrett is ascending toward seemingly sure NBA stardom, and Rose can fall back on that, right? Not so fast. Though Steve Mills filled up the box score with all sorts of front-office mistakes, he’s the one who deserves credit for drafting Barrett third overall in 2019.
In fairness, Rose can take a bow for hiring Thibodeau, and for making the complementary moves that helped inspire last season’s 41-31 breakthrough. That can’t be taken away from him.
And yet his work ever since has raised fresh doubts about whether this agent turned front-office novice has a handle on what he’s doing. In the offseason, Rose let go of a player Thibodeau wanted to keep (Reggie Bullock) and brought in two that didn’t fit the Thibs prototype. Meanwhile, Randle regressed at an alarming rate, and the result has been a season that all but dishonors the magical one that preceded it. These Knicks are so vulnerable, they’ve appeared lost without Derrick Rose, a 33-year-old playmaker with bum wheels.
“I like our team,” Thibodeau insisted before the deadline. That would put him in a small minority of Knicks fans.
“If something can make us better,” Thibs said of management, “they’ll certainly consider it.”
Thibs is forever answering for the Knicks’ woes and, to a lesser extent, so are the players. But Leon Rose has made a habit of hiding from public accountability. The Post requested an interview with him for this column through a Knicks spokesman, and was told the team would inform the media later Thursday night if Rose was doing any talking.
Leon Rose sure had some explaining to do, as his career takes a dangerous turn toward the kind of New York front-office endgame that greeted another former CAA agent, Brodie Van Wagenen. A lot of Knicks are having bad years. Just not as bad as Rose’s.
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