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If that works, it will be one of the sweetest tales to ever hatch within the City Game limits. If that works, we’ll consider it one of the great days in Knicks history, with Kemba Walker coming home, returning to New York, returning to the Garden.
We are forever a city of leaders, after all, even those of us whose basketball trips ended with the JV, or the Y. We are the town of Bob Cousy and Dicky McGuire, of Tiny Archibald and Lenny Wilkens and Larry Brown, of Kenny Anderson and Kenny Smith, of Pearl Washington and Mark Jackson and Boo Harvey, Rod Strickland and Steph Marbury, Frankie Alagia and David Cain.
Some of them have done a wonderful job in the Garden. McGuire’s number 15 hangs from its rafters. Jackson won the Rookie of the Year award, making the wonderful New York hoops trip from Bishop Loughlin to St. John’s to the Knicks. Dean (the dream) Meminger moved from Rice to Marquette, where he won the 1970 NIT at the Garden, then landed with the 1973 Knicks champions.
Walker is taking this path now. He was also a star at Rice and, as a junior, memorably met a Chicago Simeon High senior in January 2007, a guy named Derrick Rose, at a high school game at the Garden which the folks who were there -bas are still talking. Over five unforgettable nights four years later, he led UConn to five straight wins and the Big East Tournament title, then won six more in the NCAA, one of the great college basketball stories ever told. He became All-Star in Charlotte and Boston.
And he’s coming home now. He’s 31, with nearly 25,000 NBA minutes under his belt, after an injury-ridden season with the Celtics. But he’s coming to a reasonable salary after securing an Oklahoma City buyout, and he’ll team up with Rose to deliver a 1-2 punch to the point guard – a yawning chasm for the Knicks in recent years – it’ll be just as long on. intrigue and class because it could be long in the tooth.
There are pitfalls and there are plenty of pitfalls that stand in the way, of course. Can the Knicks get, say, 140 total games on Walker / Rose, out of 164 max? Will Tom Thibodeau be tempted, as we know he can be, to play them together in the regular season when the time is right, even if their wheels require something else?
We can worry about that later.
For now, we can enjoy the moment, a great homecoming moment, a great moment where two of the game’s dynamic leaders will team up for a city of future playmakers, all of us capable of leading and giving a kicking our dreams, each of us eager to push the ball to the ground, Bernard to our left and DeBusschere to our right.
Back on Sunday January 14, 2007, the Garden unwittingly got a glimpse of this pairing in the former triple “Super Six” title. Simeon de Rose were the nation’s 14th-ranked high school team and Rose, linked with Memphis, kept their promises as a sure-fire first round in 2008 by scoring 22 points, including eight in an electrifying fourth quarter.
But Walker, a junior, held his own for Rice, the longtime Manhattan powerhouse who closed in 2011. He scored 16 points, babysat Rose all day, and raised eyebrows tremendously.
“I was very excited,” Walker said after Rice’s 53-51 upset was complete that day. “I heard he was the best player in the country and I wanted the chance to prove myself against him. I think I did. “
“We didn’t win,” Rose said, “and I blame myself for that.”
Fourteen years later, the players have an NCAA title and a finalist between them, they have seven All-Star appearances, two All-NBA nods and an MVP trophy between them. And in the fall, they’ll have the ball in their hands enormously as the Knicks try to keep their heads above water in an Eastern Conference that has gotten much tougher and deeper since the end of the season. .
There are a lot of things that can go wrong. there is no doubt.
But what if most can be okay? If Walker and Rose can combine for 55 minutes per game, combine for 150 games, combine to give the Knicks the kind of dynamic two-headed playmaker they haven’t had – dare we say it – since Clyde Frazier and Pearl Monroe? Yes. A city of potential and aspiring leaders is going to be terribly happy.
And the Knicks are going to be awfully fun.
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