Derrick Rose went AWOL from the New York Knicks on Monday night as their free-fall continued with a loss to the New Orleans Pelicans, leaving team president Phil Jackson little choice but to suspend his starting point guard for at least one game.
Jackson didn't do what was right and let Rose get off with just a fine. Here's another example of Phil not being up to the task of running an NBA team.
Rose’s wanton act of insubordination opens up a few major issues for Jackson and the Knicks, as this could be the beginning of the end for Rose in New York.
Rose finally resurfaced Tuesday morning at the Knicks practice facility and participated in the team's workout, wearing his No. 25, as the team showed in a picture it placed on Twitter.
Practice pic.twitter.com/IAtoGBc2jR
— NY_KnicksPR (@NY_KnicksPR) January 10, 2017
At practice, Rose said he apologized to teammates for not telling them they he had to leave to tend to a family matter, said to involve his mother. If you want to believe his story, fine. Also know that he was benched in the entire fourth quarters of the two previous games and, by some accounts, isn't on the greatest terms with first-year coach Jeff Hornacek. We bet Rose's vanishing act was more a product of his benchings and his reaction to all of the losing over the past month. Whatever really drove him to leave the team, he was only fined, so he got off easy.
Rose has been seeking a major, multi-year extension when his 5-year, $94 million contract runs out after this season. He's making $21.3 million in 2016-17. But his decision to leave the team without any explanation after attending a team workout earlier in the day is going to make the Knicks think twice about giving him a new pact. Or one would think it will.
If the Knicks decide to part ways with their playmaker at season’s end, they would have to go into free agency to secure another point guard. There has been the usual speculation that they’ll want to try to go after the Clippers’ Chris Paul, the biggest name among free-agent point guards, with Golden State’s Stephen Curry already saying he’s going to re-sign with the Warriors. But Paul stands to get a deal worth north of $200 million with the Clippers, far exceeding a Knicks’ offer. However, he might decide to move on from the Clippers and join close friend Carmelo Anthony in New York if the Clips fall short in the playoffs and decide to move on from Paul, or if he wants a change by coming to an easier Eastern Conference.
Then again, the Knicks' refusal to suspend Rose might be because they don't want to tick him off and give him a reason to look for a new team. Rose is no rookie. He's been in the NBA for eight seasons and knows the drill: Like all teams, the Knicks would have gladly given him the night off if he had come to them in advance and told them he needed to go home. When it's a family issue, teams bend over backwards to accommodate their players and Rose knows that.
So if it was really about his mom, what Rose did was both strange and inexcusable, meaning we're officially a long way from last July when he arrived in a blockbuster trade from Chicago and proclaimed the Knicks a “super team.’’
They're not so super on the court. Off it, they're just as bad. Jackson still hasn't addressed the Rose issue with the media, instead having Hornacek handle what should fall to the team president. Jackson is in charge and brought Rose to New York, Hornacek didn't.
According to reports, the team was completely blind-sided by Rose’s absence, with ESPN.com saying that the Knicks even sent officials to his apartment to check on Monday if he was there and OK. But Rose apparently went home to Chicago, per the New York Daily News. After the game, former Bulls and current Knicks teammate Joakim Noah said that he spoke to Rose and that he was “OK,’’ but had no details as to why he went AWOL. Teammates appeared rattled that Rose would fail to show up for the game without alerting anyone.
“We haven't heard anything. I haven't heard anything,” said Brandon Jennings, who started in place of Rose. “I found out 40 minutes before the game that I was going to start. I just don't know anything. I’m definitely concerned. It’s definitely a situation I've never been in. I just hope everything is alright.”
Jackson attended Monday’s game but chose not to address the media when that would be standing operating procedure for most teams. Then again, this is all beneath the Zen Master, who still moves around the Garden as if he won his 11 rings for assembling the Bulls and Lakers. He has been taking a beating in some quarters in New York for failing to establish a winning culture since he arrived nearly three years ago, in March, 2014. So the Rose incident will only fuel more talk that Jackson is ill-equipped to build or run a winning franchise.
At 17-21 and losers of 11 of their last 14 games, the Knicks are not close to being a winning program and light years from being the team Rose had put on the same elite level as the Warriors or the old Miami Heat teams with LeBron James. Their latest loss, to a struggling 15-24 New Orleans club that was 4-13 on the road prior to showing up in Madison Square Garden, dropped the Knicks to a season-worst 11th place in the East. Yes, the alarms have been sounding and only got louder when Rose disappeared.
After three straight lottery seasons, this was supposed to be a playoff season after Jackson’s biggest off-season of moves, capped by the trade with Chicago for Rose. At the time it was universally hailed in New York, since the Knicks lacked a competent playmaker and the price was relatively cheap. Rose was traded for a middle-of-the-pack center, Robin Lopez, and two backup guards, Jose Calderon and Jerian Grant, in a classic low-risk, high-reward deal.
That still held true until Monday, despite the fact that Rose rarely has an impact unless he's scoring. But things have been really going south for the Knicks since they were a season-best, four games over .500, at 14-10, after defeating the Lakers in Los Angeles. They had risen to third place in the Eastern Conference. Since that win last Dec. 11, their many defensive shortcomings have been routinely exposed and they have struggled to get any kind of continuity or cohesion on offense, which should be their strong suit.
Rose has been critical of the team’s inability to stop anyone, as their 25th-place ranking (allowing opponents 108.9 ppg) clearly indicates. Only last week he gave a pretty accurate assessment of the team’s myriad problems, never letting on that there was a problem.
“I played on teams where we couldn’t score the ball like we score the ball here,” he told reporters. “When you have the privilege like we have to score the ball at ease, defensively we’ve got to make sure — coach has to make sure — he beats us in the head with defense all the time. We’ve got to be irritated by it. Offensively, I think we’re going to find our way to get better in areas on the floor, but defensively we have to come in like, we’ve got to be irritated by him talking about defense so much. That’s how I feel.”
Early on, Rose lobbied to run mostly pick-and-roll plays he’s best suited for, but Hornacek has had a difficult balancing act on his hands. As the ball-dominant Rose continues to play for a new contract, Hornacek has had to cater to the team’s top player, Carmelo Anthony, while also trying to get second-year rising star Kristaps Porzingis into the mix. Rose’s addition and contractual situation has sometimes been to the detriment of the highly-gifted and 7-3 Porzingis, who burst on the New York scene last season with a strong rookie season. Sometimes, he gets lost on the court when he should be featured.
Drafting Porzingis with the No. 4 overall pick in 2015 has been Jackson’s best move since coming to New York to try his hand at building a winning team. But the Hall of Famer’s signature trade was to acquire Rose from the Bulls, where he enjoyed a meteoric rise for his hometown team. In 2011 he became the NBA’s youngest MVP, at 22, in only his third NBA season as the Bulls went to the top of the Eastern Conference. But his career took a sharp nose-dive in the following seasons when he had the misfortune of suffering several major knee injuries.
This season, Rose, 28, has averaged 17.3 ppg on 44% shooting and has a poor PER rating of 15.76. His efficiency rating places him 25th among all point guards. In his MVP season he was ninth overall in the NBA at 23.5, trailing No. 1 LeBron James, at 27.3. This season, Russell Westbrook is ranked No. 1 at 30.4.
One scout told Forbes.com, “He’s definitely not the same player he used to be. Before, he could get to the basket just about any time he wanted and he always had that explosion. Now, he can do that once in a while in a game. You're like, there he is, the old Derrick Rose. But it's not like it used to be. He’s lost a lot.''
He lost some integrity when he went AWOL and deserved to lose a big paycheck for one game. But Jackson can't even do what's right when one of his stars does the franchise wrong.
