EXACTLY TWO YEARS ago, the New York Knicks officially hired Leon Rose as president of basketball operations.
Since then, Rose has had one in-person news conference — a gathering with a small group of reporters prior to the 2021-22 NBA season at the team’s practice facility in Westchester, New York. Throughout that 40-minute chat, Rose identified three tenets that underpinned the Knicks’ offseason moves:
Stability, continuity and flexibility.
The first two tenets were callbacks to the team’s surprising success in the 2020-21 season. Julius Randle, coming off the best season of his career, signed a four-year, $117 million extension. Derrick Rose, the catalyst of New York’s midseason turnaround after being acquired via trade, had been re-signed, as had Alec Burks, Nerlens Noel and Taj Gibson.
They, coupled with additions of Kemba Walker and Evan Fournier, were…