NEW YORK — The best point guard at Madison Square Garden on Monday night won’t be the first player taken overall in the 2008 draft, the one who made Chicago think that he was going to get it back to the NBA Finals for the first time since Michael Jordan.
The best playmaker won’t be Derrick Rose, but Russell Westbrook, taken three picks after Rose and now performing at a level where he’s linked to the great Oscar Robertson and would have fit right in with Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.
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Knicks fans will flock to the Garden (7:30 p.m. ET) to watch Westbrook put up another triple-double, which is what he has to do just about every night to give Billy Donovan and the Thunder a fighting chance to post a win. But Rose is also giving Knicks fans a reason to come out and see his new team.
He’s not the old Rose. That player was last seen in Chicago in 2011, when he was the youngest MVP in league history at only 22 years of age. This is the hard, cruel fact he has come to accept as he’s still on the mend, trying to resurrect his career.
“That vintage (Rose) is gone, man,” Rose said after a game this past week against the Blazers, when he had his signature moment with the Knicks by hitting the game-winning jumper. “I told you, the question should be, can I hoop? I can hoop. I can play the game of basketball.”
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Just not like he used to — and not like Westbrook can night in and night out. That may be a bitter realization for Rose, who outplayed Westbrook in the 2008 Final Four and looked like an equal if not a better player for the first four seasons of their careers. But we know the story of Rose's injuries.
The arrow on Westbrook’s career is pointing straight up, his ceiling unlimited. He’s still a streaky shooter and prone to turning the ball over in the most pressurized playoff moments, as everyone saw in the infamous meltdown in Game 6 against the Warriors last spring.
But he’s the reason the Thunder has been able to survive the loss of Kevin Durant as well as it has, so far. There is no candidate for the All-Star Game for Westbrook to throw the ball to now, much less an MVP candidate. But the Thunder still has a chance to win any game, even against the Warriors, Cavaliers, Clippers and Spurs, because Westbrook never shows up and just goes through the motions. He will do anything to get his team a win and so far that has meant leading the league in scoring. His six triple-doubles lead the league, and even Robertson, the toughest critic going, thinks his record of averaging a triple-double over an entire season is within Westbrook’s reach.
''I think he's a throwback player,'' said Denver coach Mike Malone after Westbrook passed for 18 assists, the NBA high this season, in addition to scoring 36 points and getting 12 rebounds, in the Thunder’s OT win last Friday. ''I think he's a guy that would have excelled back in the `80s, which is my favorite period of the NBA, when (there wasn't) all this lovey-dovey, hug-and-kissing and no hard fouls. There were real rivalries and everything earned and every game you won had to be earned.''
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So many players from the 1980s don’t like the way players conduct themselves now, whether it was Durant’s decision to leave Westbrook to join forces with the Warriors or how Malone described how many interact with each other. They loathe the pre-game love-fests. So they can relate to Westbrook, scowling and driven and only best buddies with his teammates. Jordan has been impressed to the point where traveled to Oklahoma City earlier this month to help induct him into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.
“When I watch him play,” Jordan said at the dais, “I see a lot of resemblance of his passion for the game of basketball, the way I played the game of basketball.”
The highest praise used to be directed at Rose, back when he could explode to the basket, play above the rim and do so with reckless abandon. The Bulls took him with the No. 1 overall pick in a year when the Heat had the worst record in the NBA but had loser’s luck and slid to No. 2 in the lottery. The night he saw his chances for the player he craved go by the boards, Pat Riley was livid with how the drawing turned out. He took Michael Beasley second overall.
No, he didn’t see Westbrook coming, no more than anyone did, except for Oklahoma City’s Sam Presti.
As Riley had to make-do with Beasley's on- and off-court issues, Rose became the next big deal. In his third season, with a lot of help from then-coach Tom Thibodeau, he carried the Bulls to 62 wins, more than LeBron James’ Miami Heat, and the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference. The following season, Rose had the first of three major knee injuries. And other point guards, including Westbrook, began passing him.
“It’s all legs, man,” Rose said last week, tracing his decline. “You have one injury, and that kind of resets everything. Let alone you have three. … This entire time, these three or four years, I’m playing catch-up.”
It’s virtually an impossible task given the competition and what the point-guard position means to the NBA today. You lose a step and suddenly you’re trying to chase down 10 better players.
He’s doing it in New York because the Bulls were done with Rose. Back in 2011, it seemed impossible that the hometown kid would ever fall out of favor. But he did, whether it was because the Bulls didn’t want to go through his civil trial for rape with an ex-girlfriend; or because they knew it was time to turn the team over to Jimmy Butler. He’s also a free agent in July, and there’s been talk that the Bulls didn’t want to give him a new max deal. So the last thing they wanted was to have him around all of this season, with so much talk about whether they’d give him the money he craves — and probably will get from the Knicks, provided he has no setbacks with his knees.
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The Knicks rolled the dice on Rose in a low-risk, high-reward trade with the Bulls last summer. Phil Jackson felt he could part with Jerian Grant, Robin Lopez and Jose Calderon, none of whom was moving the needle in New York.
If he stays upright, Rose could get Jackson and the Knicks back to the playoffs. So far, Rose has been what Jackson is looking for: a proven playmaker who can get to the basket when he is not getting the ball to Carmelo Anthony and Kristaps Porzingis. Rose still is ball-dominant, and there’s an inherent risk in that in a contract year. And while he may never have the same explosion that he was known for before his knees failed, the fact remains that Knicks fans have not seen a premier talent at the position since Walt Frazier more than 40 years ago.
That brings us back to Monday's matchup. Rose and Westbrook once were changing the position, the leaders of a hyper-athletic, bigger new breed of point guards that also included John Wall and Kyrie Irving, the two point guards taken first overall in the three years after Rose. Rose and Westbrook had the same natural cross-conference rivalry of LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, perhaps even more equal in talent.
That version of the rivalry is gone. A new one could begin now, though, if Rose does what Anthony always seems to and makes it his mission to meet Westbrook with his best efforts every time, twice a year. Even if he doesn't, Rose will continue to be the leader for a surging Knicks team. And Westbrook probably will keep putting up near-triple-doubles.
Right now, Derrick Rose is perfect for New York.
He’s just not Russell Westbrook.
