New York Knicks: Derrick Rose Looks Good, But Is That Good For NY?

New York Knicks point guard Derrick Rose has looked good early in the 2016-17 NBA regular season. That could be bad long-term news for the Knicks.

The New York Knicks roster has four out of five starting spots filled for at least the next two NBA seasons: Courtney Lee at shooting guard, Carmelo Anthony at small forward, Kristaps Porzingis at power forward, and Joakim Noah at center.

The Knicks have a decision to make at point guard, however, specifically in that the Knicks have a decision to make about Derrick Rose.

At the end of this season, the man making this decision, team president Phil Jackson, will have two years remaining on his contract. There have been rumors Jackson was looking to opt out of his contract in the summer of 2017.

If his reasoning for including an opt-out clause for next summer—the potential for another lockout —is to be believed, then it would be a surprise if the Zen Master leaves the Knicks and a cool $24 million dollars on the table.

Lockout optimism, meaning the general consensus around the league that there will not be another work stoppage, makes Jackson’s rumored departure unlikely.

The primary task for Jackson next summer will be to sign a point guard. If Rose has a healthy and productive season for the Knicks this year, it’s possible Jackson will offer him a long-term deal, which could be a huge mistake.

The Knicks president will be looking at the hole at point guard in the context of his remaining two years to turn New York into a championship contender.

The four-year deal he gave to Noah is an indication of his indifference to how bad those last two years could look as Noah continues to decline and age.

Rose will be looking for as many years as possible—at least four, ideally five. Given his injury history, he’ll want the security of guaranteed money, especially in an offseason where league front offices will still have money from the obscenely lucrative TV deal that’s burning craters in their pockets.

Someone will probably throw long-term money at Rose, but there may be less suitors than the Rose camp would expect, mostly because of the league-wide depth at point guard. Assuming teams re-sign their current starting point guards, I can see only the Sacramento Kings, Philadelphia 76ers, and Dallas Mavericks as potential suitors for Rose.

Two of these teams, the Sixers and the Mavericks, seem unlikely.

The Sixers will be looking to see what they have in rookie Ben Simmons, who has the court vision to play point forward. Also, Rose doesn’t fit the timeline for any of the young Sixers core players.

The Mavericks are still recovering from their last experiment with a past-his-prime, non-shooting, ball-dominant point guard in Rajon Rondo, and that didn’t go well.

That leaves the Knicks and the Kings. Rosters are fluid and other teams could emerge as free agency destinations, but it’s safe to say the Knicks won’t have too much competition.

When you find yourself in competition for a player with the Kings, it’s worth taking a step back and re-evaluating given Sacramento’s questionable recent track record in free agency.

This lack of demand for Rose is interesting. It could help, as well as hurt the Knicks. It could help in that it gives Jackson leverage to offer less money or, perhaps more importantly, less years on Rose’s next deal.

If he likes what he sees from Rose this year, he can run the roster back for one, or at most two years. The important thing is to maintain flexibility.

On the flip side, it could hurt the Knicks purely on the basis that it increases the chances of Rose re-signing. Rose looks as fresh as he has in years. He’s attacking the paint with the cat-quick speed we remember from his early Bulls years. He’s breaking people down off the dribble and exploding to the rim.

Squint hard enough and you’ll see the almost Westbrook-ian athleticism that made Rose the youngest MVP in league history in 2010-11.

That year, he shot 60 percent at the rim. He’s not quite there this season at 55 percent, per Basketball-Reference.com, but the signs are encouraging in the first four games of the season that he’s finding his rhythm.

I can see Jackson going through the same thought process, and it should make Knicks fans nervous.

Cut away the nostalgia and Rose is a below-average starting point guard who can’t shoot and is a negative on defense. In a league where the value of spacing is surely now indisputable, and defense at the point of attack at the deepest position in the league is crucial to winning basketball games, the Knicks should think long and hard about re-signing Rose.

It may seem premature four games into the season to talk about free agency, but Rose is arguably the fulcrum on which the next five years of Knicks basketball will depend. With every spectacular finish and time-warp crossover, he becomes a more viable long-term point guard solution.

The big picture for the Knicks is all Kristaps Porzingis. The organization needs to commit to putting together a roster that will help Porzingis as he enters his prime.

Mining for young talent that fits this timeline—the Lance Thomas’s, Justin Holiday’s and Ron Baker’s of the roster—and developing them should be what this season is about.

The Knicks have a bit of an identity crisis; are they trying to win now? Or build for a Porzingis-centric future? It’s possible to do both, but giving Rose long-term money will unbalance the roster dramatically, meaning poor Porzingis will be stuck with four aging starters consuming almost all of the Knicks’ cap space for the rest of his rookie deal.

It’s great to see Derrick Rose healthy and back on the court, and he could help the Knicks win games this season, but let’s not get carried away. Roster construction in the NBA isn’t easy and having superstar talent isn’t enough, as Anthony Davis and the New Orleans Pelicans are brutally finding out.

Sometimes franchises can be defined as much by the deals they don’t do as they are by the ones they do.

Must Read: Carmelo Anthony is remaining patient and optimistic

One way or another, the Knicks are going to find this out.