NEW YORK — From his perch on the Knicks’ Mount Rushmore, Walt Frazier looked down to consider all of the wonderful possibilities for a team that has Derrick Rose, even if he no longer resembles the same player who ran away with the 2010-11 NBA MVP Award. Rose’s absence during virtually all of the preseason, as he sat in a courtroom in Los Angeles while facing rape allegations in a civil lawsuit, was an all-around ugly ordeal. From a basketball perspective, it was about the last thing the Knicks needed.
“It could take two weeks to get everyone on the same page,” Frazier, the color analyst on MSG telecasts, told Sporting News on Thursday night in Barclays Center at the Knicks’ preseason finale. “We haven’t seen how all the new pieces fit.”
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Then laughing, Frazier said, “Hey, I’m hoping they will.”
It’s a universal sentiment, stretching from Frazier to his old teammate, Phil Jackson, now running the show, to the thousands of Knicks fans who wonder whether Rose can hit it off with Carmelo Anthony and get the Knicks back in the playoffs for the first time since 2013.
Preseason didn’t exactly help matters. Brandon Jennings, brought in over the offseason to be the new sixth man, ran the team as Rose was away for 16 days in a Los Angeles courtroom. Rose missed the final five preseason games and a number of valuable practices. Of all the NBA teams needing to use the preseason to gain a measure of cohesion and chemistry, it’s this one, with a new coach, a new system and three new starters as Joakim Noah and Courtney Lee join Rose, Anthony and Kristaps Porzingis.
The Knicks got blindsided, never expecting Rose to miss so much critical time as lurid details of his case made for an embarrassing two weeks for both team and player. He won the case that was splattered for days on the front pages of the New York tabloids. The jury found that he and two friends were not liable in a $21.5 million lawsuit in which his ex-girlfriend claimed she had been drugged and gang-raped. After the trial, he posed for pictures with jurors, not the greatest optic, but for Rose the player, the preseason was a losing proposition.
“We all know,” Jennings said, “playing in games are different than practices.”
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Now the games Rose will play in will count in the standings, as the Knicks open the season in Cleveland on Tuesday against the defending champion Cavaliers. Their starting five last played together for a limited stretch of the preseason opener, Oct. 4 in Houston, so it’s fair to assume they won’t be in sync for LeBron James and the Cavs as they raise their first-ever championship banner.
It’s the start of a tough stretch, with four games against four playoff teams from last season — the Grizzlies, Pistons and Rockets are the others — and then some serious competition over the first three weeks of the season against the Bulls, Jazz, Celtics, Raptors and Mavericks.
“He’ll try to learn by fire,” Hornacek said of Rose.
In his first crisis in New York, Hornacek has held up fairly well, as Rose’s continued absence became a constant theme of his press sessions. At times, he didn’t sound very convincing, as when he tried to argue that Rose and Carmelo Anthony are familiar from playing together in one All-Star game, in 2012, and that experience would help speed the process. New York isn’t buying it, unless Hornacek is using the same offense that Tom Thibodeau did for the East.
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But then Hornacek made all the sense in the world when he said of Rose’s return that it’s not as if the team just traded for him and he was learning the offense from scratch. He was around for informal workouts and in training camp. “Guys who have played basketball and have played for years, this stuff is not that complicated,” Hornacek said.
It shouldn’t be, but with the Knicks, nothing ever comes easily. Especially winning. Putting aside all of the conjecture about whether Hornacek has to use Jackson’s antiquated Triangle Offense, which Hornacek prefers to call, “Triangle aspects,” the Knicks are going to be a Broadway hit, or a monster flop, depending first on how their two stars co-exist.
“If guys want to make it work, then it will work,” said Frazier, the living link to the only titles the franchise has ever won, in 1970 and 1973. “That’s always the deal, right?”
Anthony is 32 and in his 14th year in the league. His scoring averages have dipped for three consecutive seasons. He needs to make this work. The fans’ love affair with him isn’t what it was when he made the Garden his arena of choice in 2011. Three straight losing seasons without a playoff berth have served to diminish that.
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Those same fans know that Anthony has had his best seasons when he’s played with a very different kind of point guard than Rose, long a ball-dominant scorer in his days in Chicago. Anthony had his greatest success as a pro in Denver after the team brought in Chauncey Billups to start the 2008-09 season. Five seasons after his Finals MVP performance in Detroit’s upset of the Lakers, Billups’ firm hand kept Anthony in line as he orchestrated the offense in leading the Nuggets to only their third-ever Western Conference Finals.
As a Knick, Anthony enjoyed his best season, from a personal standpoint, in 2013 when Jason Kidd, two years removed from winning a title in Dallas, came to the Garden to run the locker room. Along with other veterans, including Rasheed Wallace and Kurt Thomas, a slower version of Kidd still held a commanding presence to guide Anthony, and even resident wild child J.R. Smith, who won Sixth Man of the Year. The Knicks advanced to the second round of the playoffs for the first time since 2000. After getting out of the first round for only the second time, Anthony finished third in the MVP voting, his highest finish ever.
Anthony is now older, coming off a record third gold medal for Team USA last summer, and is showing signs of slowing down. So he could use a helping hand from Rose, as he readily admits. He just doesn’t know if it will work to the degree that it did with Billups and Kidd.
“I try not to compare him to the other guys I’ve played with,” Anthony said late Thursday night. “I’ve only played one game with Derrick, so I really don’t know what to expect. I don’t know how it’s going to play out, to be quite honest with you. But the only thing I can do is try to make it work. It’s going to be up to us to go out there and buy in.”
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They both need to buy in because the Knicks just don’t move the NBA needle and haven’t for a long time. Anthony thinks that Rose needed to get out of Chicago after more downs than ups after winning the MVP when he was only 22, the youngest player to ever win the award and smoke a field that included LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. But remember, it was the Bulls who gave up on Rose when they traded the one-time hometown hero.
“Having a chance to start fresh will spark him,” Anthony said.
It’s all just a theory now because only a handful of days from the 70th season in team history, no one has any real idea of how good the Knicks will be, even if Rose and Joakim Noah avoid injuries. The silver lining to Rose’s extended absence is that several other teams in the East, vying for one of the last couple of playoff spots, also might not hit the ground running.
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The Pistons lost starting point guard Reggie Jackson for up to two months on Oct. 5 with tendinitis in his left knee. The Bucks saw an integral part of their starting five, Khris Middleton, go down with a torn hamstring that could sideline him until March. Rose’s old team is trying to incorporate several new players, including Dwyane Wade and Rajon Rondo. The Hornets are working in new players after losing Courtney Lee (Knicks), Jeremy Lin (Nets) and Al Jefferson (Pacers). But those four teams don’t have new coaches scrambling to get their systems installed, either.
“If this all comes together,” Walt Frazier was saying, “then we could have a big year.”
A big NBA year in New York, for a change.