Knicks: Why retaining Scott Perry makes sense, for now

We are living in strange times

How do you conduct an expansive interview process amid a global pandemic?

New York City is a war zone, literally. As the novel coronavirus and its devastating disease, COVID-19, ravages the city, it’s impractical to believe any kind of business as usual can be conducted, including interviewing for a key basketball role.

I mean, James Dolan, himself, recently recovered from the virus. Nobody from any walk of life can be expected to operate independent of the pandemic. To expect the Knicks to complete an extensive interview process for a general manager during these difficult times is asking too much.

While you would expect Leon Rose to have a good idea of the NBA landscape of general managers, assistant GMs, and front office up-and-comers, and he could have counted on relationships he has built as an agent and augmented his knowledge of candidates with conversations over the phone, or Zoom, it’s not the same as a full-fledged interview process hosted in person.

With a deadline looming on Perry’s option in the beginning of May, Rose needed to decide if he was comfortable enough with the candidates he might have been considering, knowing he couldn’t complete a full interview process, or if it just made sense to stick with the status quo until he has more time to decide who should be in charge of day-to-day player decisions over the long run.

Of course, all of this assumes that Rose wasn’t just set on keeping Perry for another season (or longer) from the moment he took over, which brings us to the next point.