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The ending is what will eat away at these Knicks for a few days, before facing the Wizards in Washington on Friday. The end was a nice walk from RJ Barrett that went all wrong, with clever old Jimmy Butler staying with Barrett just long enough to force Barrett to go higher on the glass than he wanted.
The ball turned away. The final buzzer whimpered at the AmericanAirlines Arena. There would be no overtime. There would be no refunds for Sunday’s hotly contested game between these two teams. There would be no satisfactory return flight from Miami. The final score was 98-96, Heat, the final verdict that the Knicks, while better, are still learning to win, and part ways if that curve involves learning not to lose.
“We need everyone to play well,” said Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau. “And we just failed in the end.”
But if you got involved in this Knicks team, you saw something that was supposed to make you feel really good. By now, you’ve surely learned to trust Thibodeau, to rely on his instincts, to recognize that he knows the little nuances that allow volunteer teams to improve.
So it should have been obvious that Thibodeau was not interested in a feel-good reunion when it became clear that Derrick Rose was not just available but interested in a second tour with the Knicks and a third tour under the tutelage. by Thibodeau. Thibodeau made it clear that it was one thing and one thing.
And there is a certain way to make this ambition a reality.
“I’ve always been biased,” he said earlier today, “towards good players.”
And Rose, even at 32, even after the twists and turns of a sometimes star-studded career, is still a good player. As if to reinforce that – and also to allay fears Knicks fans might have harbored that he was going to steal playing time from Emmanuel Quickley – the two checked in together at the same time on Tuesday night, No.4 and No. 5. speak with 3:27 to play in the first quarter and the Knicks to be seven.
And over the next six minutes, split over two quarters, the Knicks had a 25-6 run. Quickley was fine. But it was Rose who raised her eyebrows: arriving at the basket with the old flair, pulling it well, making a flight, cheering her teammates. It was impossible not to look at him.
He would finish with 14 points and three assists, playing just 20 minutes. As the Knicks tried to steal one from the Heat at the end of the fourth, he was on the bench, Thibodeau not wanting to ask too much on his first day on the job. But you could feel the impact immediately.
Quickley in the morning had talked about Rose looking for him and Obi Toppin for dinner on Monday night, giving them his cell number, almost demanding that they choose his brain. Quickley laughed at their common heritage as survivors of John Calipari’s college apprenticeship, and laughed at the fact that Thibodeau was the coach for both of them during their rookie years in the NBA.
“There is so much I can learn from him,” Quickley said.
“He’s always trying to win,” Barrett said. “It’s great to have a guy like that on our team.”
As for Rose himself? He seemed downright upset to have another chance in New York and to renew his partnership with Thibodeau, a couple who really could have offered Chicago something special ten years ago had it not been for bad luck.
“We have a synergy, I can’t explain it,” Rose said. “We’re a strange couple, but for some reason we understand the game the same way, we are students of the game, we watch the game and try to understand it better.
He not only understands that part of his role with the Knicks will be to help kids acclimate to NBA life, he enthusiastically endorsed it.
“My job,” he said, “is to come and understand that I want to be a mentor for young children, to help them develop. And also to show that I can still do a little hooping, “
He showed a bit of everything this Tuesday, a game the Knicks lost as they are still learning not to lose games like this. These lessons could be better understood in the future. There is a new mentor in the house. And he can still a little hoop.
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