What Are The New York Knicks Doing?

With the addition of Derrick Rose to the team, what exactly are the New York Knicks doing?

We have hit the time of year where essentially every NBA franchise has reason to be optimistic. The contending teams still have their core together, an injection of rookies has arrived to help the struggling teams and Kevin Durant still hasn’t decided where he’s going to play yet.

If you’re a New York Knicks fan, however, you’ve got to be quite concerned right now. Yes, they’ve got a superstar in Carmelo Anthony, and yes, they’ve got a young up and comer in Kristaps Porzingis. Heck, they’ve even gotten Derrick Rose on board for next season.

That’s getting your business done early, before other teams have even had a chance to decide what they want to do with their rosters. But in acquiring Rose, are the Knicks primed to take the next step? Or have they just committed a mistake we’ve seen them make all too many times?

If you ask me, this is such a classic Knicks move to make, that it’s almost comedic in the way it was done. There are two ways to look at every move in the NBA though, so let’s look at what positives we can find as a starting point.

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Really there are only two that I can see, potentially three if your views on Rose are more optimistic than the entire Chicago Bulls front office combined. The first is that, in signing Rose, the Knicks may be able to convince Durant to come and play for them.

I don’t buy that for even a second. Why would Durant want to leave a situation in Oklahoma City with the Thunder where he’s playing with a top-five floor general in Russell Westbrook to play with an injury-plagued player like Rose?

He might want to play in New York, in a big market. He might even be interested in teaming up with Anthony as well.

But he’s already crossed over into mainstream media in a small market in Oklahoma City and the Thunder are a much better-equipped team to challenge for titles than the Knicks.

If Durant did want to join the Knicks, Rose would surely be an afterthought. To think he may be the deciding factor in a top five talent like Durant joining the organization is foolish.

The other real positive is that Rose is essentially a rental, albeit an expensive one. If things don’t work out this season, they can let the player walk next summer, and move on without him.

That’s the one saving grace here. This may be a classic Knicks move, picking up an aging/injured/controversial player (in Rose’s case, it’s injury), but they are not tied to him in the long term if they don’t want to be.

The final positive is that Rose did show moments of his old self last season, while averaging 16.4 points per game (the lowest mark since the year after he came back from injury).

Perhaps he and Anthony can light a fire under one another and form the most dynamic duo in the Eastern Conference?

If those are the main positives you’re taking a big gamble here. Looking at the drawbacks then, and there’s some big ones, while others are less obvious until you look at the reasoning behind having such a negative view on the trade.

Since returning from tearing his anterior cruciate ligament in the 2012 playoffs, Rose has missed 201 of a possible 328 games. Worse still, in those games he has played, he has not been the same player who was voted MVP in 2010-11, the youngest player to ever win the award.

The Knicks also parted with Robin Lopez to get their man, a potentially costly mistaken given how important he is to their front line. Like Rose he is 27, entering the supposed prime of his career.

Unlike Rose, he has appeared  in every regular-season game for his team three out of the last four seasons.

That’s the kind of durability Rose can only dream of these days and they just gave it away to a direct competitor in the Bulls who will value what he brings to the court on both ends. They did shed themselves of Jose Calderon, but moving Jerian Grant this early into his career is a small risk.

Really though, what are the Knicks trying to achieve with this move? If it’s to win now, then make the brave call to ship out Porzingis and do as the Cleveland Cavaliers did when they moved Andrew Wiggins to bring in Kevin Love.

Wiggins already is a player with All-Star potential, but Love was an established star.

He had his detractors in Cleveland, but his defending of Stephen Curry late in Game 7 is part of the reason the Cavaliers are celebrating a championship right now.

Moving Porzingis would not be a popular move, or probably even the right one, but did they just bring in Rose to continue rebuilding around their young player?

My guess is they did not sell Rose on that vision, and it’s no secret Anthony wants to be in the thick of the postseason action as his career begins to wind down.

Adding another veteran with that injury record who is in line to make $21 million next season doesn’t seem smart no matter how you look at it.

Why didn’t the Knicks get involved in a trade for Jeff Teague? Teague is a member of the Indiana Pacers now and a similar deal to the one the Knicks struck with the Bulls would have surely brought Teague to The Big Apple from the Atlanta Hawks instead.

This is especially true if unrestricted free agent Al Horford ends up leaving Atlanta as many feel he might, Lopez is not a bad replacement. Going after Mike Conley would also appear to have made more sense as well.

Getting him is no guarantee, but in these two examples alone, we can see that there were younger, more healthy, options available to New York. Even George Hill (who went to the Utah Jazz in that Teague deal) or Jeremy Lin would have been safer, cheaper bets.

There’s also a lot to be said for the fact the Bulls let him go as well. Superstar players don’t simply move teams in the league, it rarely happens. If you’ve got one, or better yet two, you hold onto them and do whatever it takes to make it work between your franchise and star player.

This is a star-driven league after all, and it’s the reason why teams like the Sacramento Kings have held onto a guy like DeMarcus Cousins for so long.

He’s fought with referees, teammates, coaches and taken plays off, but without him, the Kings are irrelevant.

By that same token, if you look back over the last decade in the league, big names have only left team once they became free agents.

Those that did actually get traded (Love, Anthony, Deron Williams) had already expressed a desire to leave once their contract was up.

Movement of superstars under contract is rare. Now, while Rose is indeed entering the last year of his deal, the Bulls would have been quietly confident of keeping the hometown kid, if they’d wanted to.

Instead they agreed to let him go, and while one man’s trash can potentially be another man’s treasure, you have to realize that the Bulls felt they could go no further with Rose as their leader. They cut ties with a guy they feel has his best days in the NBA behind him.

We thought the New York Knicks had turned a corner with the appointment of Phil Jackson at the helm and a supposed newfound vision of being more pragmatic with what kind of players the team signed.

Instead, what we got was a panic move of sorts, born out of the fact the Knicks are stuck between the present (Anthony) and the future (Porzingis).

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You can add Derrick Rose to the list of players the team should have stayed away from, one that includes the likes of Latrell Sprewell, Antonio McDyess, Stephon Marbury and Eddy Curry. Players whose names still carry weight, but who will fail to reinvigorate this great franchise.