SAN ANTONIO – New York fans were a lovely bunch of coconuts during their stay in Texas, congratulating the hosts repeatedly for the Spurs’ shimmering future, checking the views of security guard’s faces to determine if a postgame pogo pit was appropriate behavior in the upper bowl for this sort of San Antonio scenario.
It was. Knicks fans won over their hosts in the same way Knick players won over their hosts. The Knicks managed to jam a dozen of our nation’s most-visible celebrities into a short, five-game series and still emerge without threats of overexposure. Mariska Hargitay is a legend, but it ain’t as if it’s a struggle to find an episode of her television show. And of course Taylor: Ms. Swift would re-issue her appearance in Game 4 if a more productive songwriter’s take were available. As is her right.
Texas was for the punters, the traveling Knicks fans familiar with the upper bowl. Stands at-least half-filled with Knick backers watching the Lawrence O’Brien trophy handed to their Knicks for the first time in the Lawrence O’Brien trophy’s history.
The catcalls in San Antonio after Game 5 were all ball, nothing rude. And the largest chant I was around, organic and fresh and a little unsteady like a sidewalk grocer, was for Leon Rose. The GM! Nobody ever cheers a GM because every sports fan knows they could do a better job than most GMs. And while this may not be correct, sportswriters enjoy promoting the idea so as to retain readership.
Knick fans are familiar with Knick GMs shooting for the top and sending projectile pieces southward and into their own foot. Owners remain but general managers come and go, GMs representing the human element of the sport while in charge of the human element in the locker room and the field.
We won’t argue that Leon Rose’s hiring was typical, he was the NBA’s most-influential NBA agent for the bulk of his pre-Knicks run. Rose helped put together the Miami Heat’s championship Big Three, yet drew applause for daintily stepping aside without conflict or rancor after LeBron James left Rose’s stable of clients to front Rich Paul’s Klutch collective. Rose played college basketball and also used institutions of higher learning to become a dang lawyer. Hardly the picture of the coffee-stained, hapless basketball scout, standing through another Star-Spangled Banner at a VCU game in November.
Knick fans cheered throughout the Star-Spangled Banner in Game 5, nothing runs the blood like a talented youngster belting out a song that’s impossible to sing, and chanted Leon Rose’s name after winning the NBA title. All instinct, continuing with the keen and warming atmosphere that’s carried over the top of these Knicks since falling in Indianapolis in 2025.
Rose and the Knicks didn’t make large player personnel changes after that defeat, he couldn’t, wouldn’t return fair value for his stars and prevented from making large-scale changes due to the team’s top-heavy roster. Few outfits took in as much dismissal and derision as those 2024-25 Knicks, waiting out another successful regular season only to watch as team mainstays Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns turned sieves in the postseason.
They didn’t, though, and not because Rose secured the rights to temerity and strong footwork in a draft night trade. Towns’ bridge iced before his road developed, Brunson was always big on the inside, each only needed time. Rose didn’t hire the pair because of output, he brought them together to build something larger, to learn together and develop.
There were alterations: Malcolm Brogdon was signed by Rose ahead of 2025-26 in the hopes of providing competent reserve minutes at point, but Brogdon retired before the season began in spite of an available roster spot. In February Rose traded Guerschon Yabusele and Guerschon’s guaranteed contract next season for, in effect, Jose Alvarado and the chance to sign (the Queens-raised) Alvarado (who owns a $4.5 million player option for 2026-27) to a longtime deal. Guerschon, meanwhile, will shoot 40 percent from the field as starting center for the Chicago Bulls in 2026-27, a team yet to win an NBA title this century.
All the while, Rose is owed a trillion favors around the league, this transactional transaction bidness. That won’t go away with a championship, the other 29 NBA GMs think each year’s champions are nice and cute but would rather focus on their own five-year plans, championship hopes.
The Knicks ensured any detractor would only scan as sour grapes, the name of an interesting but mostly unwatchable Larry David film. Worldwide villain to billions David Zaslav mostly watched Game 3 from a courtside seat next to LD, yet nothing deterred the impartial fan for falling for the Knicks. Leon Rose’s Knicks, built by a guy who looks as if he needs to “talk to you about a thing.”
As opposed to the last Knicks personnel chief, Scott Perry, who sounds like the sort of guy to keep us in a meeting all morning without revealing a thing. Perry is the picture of executive grace, hard to imagine Scott Perry drafting a force of nature like Obi Toppin with his first ever lottery selection, but that’s where Rose went.
Rose also watched, for two seasons as Knick chief, as Jalen Brunson put up 51/39/82 in JB’s final pair of campaigns with Dallas. Orthodoxy claimed this Mavericks gig as the perfect role for Brunson, a shoot-first undersized point guard who cannot defend and will run out of energy the longer a contest moves along. Leon Rose disagreed with the consensus behind Brunson’s outlook.
Jalen owned no such difficulties putting up points, but Rose saw something in his efficiency that previous spotters may have noticed with Stephen Curry and/or Steve Nash. Simply because a player hasn’t worked 35 minutes a night yet, it doesn’t make them incapable of the feat.
Rose owed New York one following the Carmelo Anthony fade, securing the bag for his client in 2014 after meetings with then-Knicks prez Phil Jackson, neither side knowing any of it work but neither willing to get in the way of NBA business.
Leon’s first coaching hire in 2020 was Tom Thibodeau, who took the Knicks from a (prorated) 27 wins to (prorated) 47 wins in his first year, making the playoffs behind the Julius Randle, RJ Barrett, Kevin Knox-core Rose and Thibs inherited. The Knicks missed the postseason in 2022 when half the league jumped Kemba Walker’s turnstile, but brought in Brunson to settle all point guard claims in 2022.
See, point guard’s been a problem in New York since these sons of guns traded Walt Frazier to Cleveland, since the days of Ticky Burden, Butch Beard, Jim Cleamons. The team never found a sage guide to work consistently alongside Patrick Ewing, rather past-prime vets and zero-prime clangers like Charlie Ward. Or trading a first-round pick for 36-year old Mark Jackson and Mark’s 19 percent turnover rate.
That a point guard led the Knicks to the title, won Finals MVP, must be the most astonishing part of New York’s championship – at least to the folks who posted on the RealGM message board two decades ago. This city destroys its quarterbacks, and Brunson’s package deal with his father raised all manner of eyebrows. Problem is: Rick Brunson can coach his tail off, and we all saw what Jalen Brunson is capable of in the of a 7’4 Defensive Player of the Year.
If Rose’s brooding presence gave New York its CAA-cultivated edge, Brunson delivered the public grin. He signed contract extensions early, ensuring all the ex-Villanova teammates Rose acquired could continue to work alongside the point guard who took them to an NCAA title. Sure, they combined for a series of enervating cellular carrier advertisements, deadening our senses throughout repeated NCAA Tournaments. But Brunson took less money in sports, the ultimate brand of divinity. Fans never forget these things no matter how much (oft-unavailable, sez this travelin’ sportswriter) rural coverage Brunson and his cohorts promised.
Rose even broke up the Wildcats, somewhat, sending Donte DiVincenzo (and Randle) to Minnesota for Karl-Anthony Towns, one of the league’s most popular and most-polarizing players. Still came out smelling like a red flower, simply because KAT is so irrepressible, so easy to root for. Rose snatched the effusive OG Anunoby from Toronto, overpaid for long reliever Mikal Bridges but so what, the Knicks required Mikal Bridges.
Thibs was let go after 2024-25, MSG broadcasts eliminating its least-liked feature: Tom Thibodeau screaming angry instructions in a silent arena toward the end of a game decided over a half-hour before.
Leon Rose knew he needed Thibodeau, some stern voice ringing in ears when the next coach came aboard. The Doug Collins-cop and Phil Jackson-cop way of leading toward a confession still owns its charms, made much easier when Mike Brown is the second detective to enter the room.
Everyone loves Mike Brown, he’s enough to goose anyone into admitting to a crime they had nothing to do with. That’s all coaching is, chiding a player after a minor indiscretion so as to stave off the likely resultant major screwup. The Knicks chewed on six coaching candidates before – yeah, let’s go here – fate ensured the best one available took the job.
Any NBA coach could have done what was obvious, trim Thibodeau-styled minutes and loosen up the Thibs-styled offense. Brown won the energy of his charges by refusing early wholesale changes outside dropping average minutes per game, making work a little easier, less distracting. Cutting minutes absolutely led to this 2026 title, the Knicks routinely dragged heels throughout the postseason under Thibs, playing five performers over 35 minutes a night is no way to run a modern NBA team.
In the championship run, Brunson was the only one at (exactly) 35 minutes per game. Bridges was never made scapegoat, Anunoby was not dismayed by his status as a third-option. At his lowest point, Karl-Anthony Towns was afforded release in the form of Brown’s old high post plays from Sacramento, nobody was removed from any familiar roles, nobody lost a spot.
Rose made sure of this, as cutting any player after the Indiana loss only creates blame (if deserved), resentment from remaining players. This particular GM was hired to provide swagger, a back-room sensibility with all beaks drained for dipping, but instead Rose found his cubs in the form of his favorite players on other teams. It was as if Rose was under direction, after watching a two decades of Knick ball since the team’s last Finals appearance, to create a team that no NBA fan could refuse.
These charmers owed New York, 53-years without a title is unacceptable for a franchise with as diligent and studied a fanbase as New York’s. Also unacceptable for the less-informed, the ones shouting “Harden sucks.” It is a large city with diverse opinions, each valued.
These Knicks lost but THREE times in the 2026 playoffs, to four teams, in 19 games. Many of these conquests were outrageous blowouts, a ruined evening for those of us NBA fans tuning in for a competitive back and forth. These were somehow fun blowouts, though. The Knicks, Leon Rose’s tell ya what I’ll do-Knicks, never became anything less than beloved.
That’s on the leader, not the boss. Building a championship NBA team is legendary stuff, but building a winner the rest of the world falls in love with? That’s the work of someone in love with his team.
Kelly Dwyer writes about the NBA at kdonhoops.com.
