The end is what will gnaw on these Knicks for a few days, before taking the Wizards to Washington on Friday. The end was a beautiful journey of RJ Barrett, who went completely wrong, the intelligent old Jimmy Butler staying with Barrett long enough to force Barrett to go higher on the bottle than he wanted.
The ball turned. The last buzzer moaned at the American Airlines Arena. There would be no overtime. There would be no refund for the strong game played on Sunday between these two teams. There would be no satisfactory flight to Miami. The final score was 98-96, Heat, the final verdict that the Knicks, although better, still learn how to win and separate if that curve involves learning how not to lose.
“We need everyone to play well,” said Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau. “And we just finally arrived in a short time.”
But if you invested in this Knicks team, you saw something that was supposed to make you feel really good. So far, you have certainly learned to trust Thibodeau, to rely on his instincts, to admit that he knows the small nuances that allow teams willing to improve.
So it should have been obvious that Thibodeau wasn’t interested in a good reunion when it became clear that Derrick Rose wasn’t just available, but he was interested in a second Knicks tournament and a third tournament under his tutelage. Thibodeau. Thibodeau made it clear that it was one thing and one thing.
And there is a sure way to make this ambition a reality.
“I’ve always been partial,” he had said earlier, to “good players.”
And Rose, even at 32, even after the upheavals of a career sometimes crossed by the stars, is still a good player. As if to reinforce this – and also to quell any fears that Knicks fans might have claimed to have stolen Immanuel Quickley’s playing time – the two recorded together at the same time on Tuesday night, no. taking the floor with 3:27 remaining in the first quarter and the Knicks with seven.
And in the next six minutes, which spanned two quarters, the Knicks went into a 25-6 run. Quickley was fine. But it was Rose who raised her eyebrows: reaching the basket with the old flair, shooting him well, stealing, encouraging his colleagues. It was impossible to keep an eye on him.
He would finish with 14 points and three assists, playing only 20 minutes. While the Knicks were trying to steal one of the Heat at the end of the fourth, he was on the bench, Thibodeau not wanting to ask him too much from day one at work. But you could immediately feel the impact.
Quickley had spoken in the morning about Rose looking for him and Obi Toppin at dinner on Monday night, giving them his cell number, but asking them to choose his brain. Quickley laughed at their common legacy as survivors of John Calipari’s painful apprenticeship and laughed that Thibodeau was the coach for both of their NBA debut years.
“I can learn so much from him,” Quickley said.
“He’s always trying to win,” Barrett said. “It’s great to have such a guy on our team.”
What about Rose herself? He seemed to be moving to get a new crack in New York and to resume his partnership with Thibodeau, a couple who could have offered something special in Chicago a decade ago if luck hadn’t intervened.
“We have a synergy, I can’t explain it,” Rose said. “We are a strange couple, but for some reason we understand the game the same way, we are students of the game, we watch the game and we try to understand it better.”
Not only does she understand that part of her role with the Knicks will help the children adjust to NBA life, but she has enthusiastically supported it.
“My job,” he said, “is to come in and understand that I want to be a mentor to young children, to help them grow. And it also shows that I can still try a little. “
He showed a little on Tuesday, a game that the Knicks lost, because he is still learning how not to lose games like this. These lessons may be easier to understand in the future. There is a new mentor in the house. And he can still do a little.