Veteran CAA agent Leon Rose, who reached an agreement with the Knicks during the first week of February to become the team’s new president of basketball operations, will officially begin his new role on Sunday, reports Marc Stein of The New York Times (via Twitter).
Rose has been one of the NBA’s top agents for years and had a star-studded list of clients that includes Joel Embiid, Chris Paul, Devin Booker, and Karl-Anthony Towns. It has taken him a few weeks to tie up loose ends with those clients and to prepare to transition from his role as a player rep to a team executive.
A report last week suggested that one reason for the delay was Rose’s involvement in Dwyane Wade‘s three-day retirement celebration with the Heat last weekend. Rose helped plan the event for Wade, a longtime CAA client.
Once Rose officially takes the reins in New York, he’ll have several areas to address in both the short- and long-term. He’ll have to make a decision on the future of interim head of basketball operations Scott Perry and potentially make additional changes to the basketball operations department. He may also have some thoughts on how Knicks head coach Mike Miller should balance playing veterans and young players in the season’s final month-and-a-half.
This spring, Rose will be tasked with hiring a permanent head coach and preparing for an important draft and free agency period. The Knicks will have a top-10 pick in the draft and could also have a major chunk of cap room available, depending on how they handle their players with team options and non-guaranteed salaries for 2020/21.
Hopefully Rose knows why players want to or don’t want to go to certain teams and create an atmosphere/culture in NY that make players want to go there. How?
1. Rebuild NY’s image as a place to be since the younger players don’t equate NY with prestige.
2. Show competence and consistency in his hires which should include cleaning out the flotsam and jetsam of previous presidents. Make it your own.
3. Minimize/eliminate the Dolan effect. Admittedly, an underling managing the incompetence of his boss is a steep hill, it has to be done. Be the man with a plan or else.
How many more days is the draft lottery? The Knicks will be unlucky again.
Early prediction Steph comes back early and GS still wins the lottery.
Rose is a bright guy, but moving from transactional role to a managerial one is a big change, and he’s not a kid. I hope he can avoid the temptation to make major early player personnel moves to prove he’s up to the job. He’d separate himself from his predecessor rookie TPs if he can. His primary immediate focus needs to be on building his FO team, into a group that can implement a unified vision for the team across all decisions large and small. The bloated FO he inherits, with its competing fiefdoms and agendas, has been a persistent problem for the Knicks for decades, and seems to get worse with each regime change. A new streamlined FO structure needs to begin to materialize by the time of the draft. This will be much harder to do than making a splash with a trade or FA signing, but it’s also more important.
Raptors have 3 good young 2s besides VanVleet. Rose can deal with Ujiri since the cat’s out of the bag on Dolan’s preferences (no worry about giving credit to another GM’s development abilities).
Davis, Powell, Thomas