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Recently-acquired point guard Derrick Rose made a faux pas in an interview with NBA.com's Lang Whitaker which was posted on Friday. His statement was kind of dumb, and the reaction to it on the Basketnet Interball was fairly rabid.
But first, let us cover the areas of Rose's interview which actually matter to the Knicks, starting with his discussions with head coach Jeff Hornacek on his role in the Triangle:
I talked to Coach Horn, and he was saying with the Triangle he would have to vary the Triangle to have a lot of pick and rolls in there at the top of the key or on the side. So it's really whatever they decide to do, and I have to find my way around it. This is the first time I think the Triangle will really ever have an athletic point guard in that position. So who knows? All I have to do is make sure my catch-and-shoot is pretty good with this team, and like I said, be prepared.
HERESY! The Knicks' coach plans to alter the Triangle to run more pick and roll to suit Rose, who ran the play a great deal in Chicago last season (14th in number of pick-and-roll possessions, per NBA Stats) and scored fairly efficiently out of the offense (68.3 percentile, on par with the likes of Dwyane Wade, Isaiah Thomas and Kyle Lowry).
Hornacek, you crazy son of a bitch, I think this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.
Rose also talked about what he's been working on this summer:
Just my mid-range game. How many people shoot from midrange in the NBA these days? That's an effective shot for me. A lot of people give it to me... And conditioning, of course -- you look at Cleveland and Golden State, the way they push the ball and play an uptempo-type game, you've got to be conditioned. And it's simple stuff, the fundamentals of the game -- footwork, dribbling, going back to the basics and really just sharpening everything so that when I'm on the floor I'm not thinking about it. I'm getting to my moves and getting to my spots without having to do a lot of dribbling.
Granted, I haven't watched Rose play as much as some, but it seems like a major key for him is simply learning to trust his body once again. It'll be nice if he can hit some jumpers, but he's still a pretty damn explosive athlete ... he just happen to miss a stupendous amount of time due to injuries. It can be difficult to get back into rhythm after all that, which is why his improved play late in 2015-16 is encouraging.
And, now for the money quote #clickbait:
They're high. I mean, with these teams right now, they're saying us and Golden State are the super teams, and they're trying not to build that many super teams, and Adam Silver came out with the statement and this and that.
You can see why Rose will have a tough time in New York. Dude just lets it fly. You'd think there wouldn't be a tremendous difference playing for the Bulls and the Knicks -- after all, both clubs have a massive, borderline-insane following. But the Bulls, even as they've trended downward in recent years, have never met the approached the level of "lol Knicks", where the world takes such glee in the franchise's unyielding delusions of grandeur. It's been a running joke at least since Patrick Ewing's annual pre-season championship guarantee.
Whatever. As Knicks fans, we can always hope that Hornacek rounds this intriguing collection of flawed talent into a super team. That would be nice.