The end is what will gnaw at these Knicks for a few days before they take on the Wizards in Washington on Friday. The end was a beautiful ride from RJ Barrett that went all wrong, with the smart 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 last buzzer groaned in the American Airlines Arena. There would be no overtime. There would be no payback for Sunday’s hotly contested game between these two teams. There would be no satisfactory flight home from Miami. The final score was 98-96, Heat, the final verdict that the Knicks, while better, are still learning to win, and a part if that curve involves learning how not to lose.
“We need everyone to play well,” said Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau. “And we just ended up short.”
But if you invested yourself in this Knicks team, you saw something that made you feel really good. By now you have certainly learned to trust Thibodeau, to trust his instincts, to recognize that he knows the small nuances that allow willing teams to improve.
So it should have been clear that Thibodeau wasn’t interested in some feel-good reunion when it became clear that Derrick Rose wasn’t just available, but was interested in a second tour with the Knicks and a third tour under Thibodeau’s tutelage. Thibodeau has made it clear that he is only about one thing.
And there is a way to make that ambition come true.
“I’ve always been partial,” he had said earlier in the day, “to good players.”
And Rose, even at the age of 32, even after the twists and turns of a sometimes star-crossed career, is still a good player. As if to reinforce that – and also to quell the fears Knicks fans harbored that he would steal Immanuel Quickley’s playing time – they checked in together at the same time on Tuesday night No. 4 and No. 5 taking the floor. with 3:27 left in the first quarter and the Knicks down seven.
And for the next six minutes, spread over two quarters, the Knicks went on a run of 25-6. Quickley was fine. But it was Rose who raised eyebrows: go to the basket with the old flair, shoot well, make a bargain, cheer his teammates. It was impossible to take your eyes off him.
He would finish with 14 points and three assists and play only 20 minutes. When the Knicks tried to steal one from the Heat late in the fourth, he was sitting on the bench, and Thibodeau didn’t want to ask too much about his first day at work. But you could feel the impact immediately.
Quickley had spoken in the morning of Rose looking for him and Obi Toppin at dinner Monday night and giving them his cell number, almost demanding that they pick his brain. Quickley laughed at their shared legacy as survivors of John Calipari’s tough college days, and laughed that Thibodeau coached them both during their rookie years in the NBA.
“I can learn so much from him,” said Quickley.
“He’s always trying to win,” Barrett said. “It’s great to have someone like that on our team.”
And what about Rose herself? He seemed downright moved to get a new crack in New York, and to rebuild his partnership with Thibodeau, a combination that could have been truly special in Chicago ten years ago had the accident not intervened.
“We have a synergy, I can’t explain it,” said Rose. “We are a strange couple, but for some reason we understand the game the same way, we are students of the game, we look at the game and try to understand it better.”
Not only does he understand that part of his role with the Knicks will help the kids get used to NBA life, he’s also enthusiastically endorsed it.
“My job,” he said, “is to come in and understand that I want to mentor the young children, help them develop. And also shows that I can still hoop a little bit, “
He showed a little of all that Tuesday, a game the Knicks lost, because they are still learning how not to lose these kinds of games. Those lessons may be easier to understand in the future. There is a new mentor in the house. And he can still hoop a little.