Hell hath no fury like a New York Knicks fan scorned.
First, LeBron James toyed with fans’ emotions with “The Decision” in the summer of 2010, choosing the Miami Heat over New York, colluding with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to join forces in South Beach, earning collective hoopdom derision with their highly publicized “welcome party” press conference.
Then, in the summer of 2019, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving spurned the Knicks to team up in Brooklyn, placing the Garden landscape on tenuous ground.
These turns of events forced the New York front office to settle for lesser consolation prizes, whether it was Amare Stoudemire in 2010 or Julius Randle in 2019.
In between those transactions, Knicks fans were enticed by the Carmelo Anthony tenure, amounting to three playoff appearances, one playoff series win, a Linsanity run, a flirtation with MVP aspirations in 2012-2013 (the last time they won the Atlantic Division), a scoring title, a plethora of isolation and hero ball, some Kristaps Porzingis fever, and a disastrous Phil Jackson regime.
Even before The Decision, Knicks fans, mired in a playoff drought that was nearing a decade, often used the Garden as a means to witness the performances of incoming talent.
Whether it was to see Kobe Bryant drop 61 points on a February night in 2009 or even marvel at the diminutive wonder that was Derrick Rose, who put on a show at MSG amidst Melo’s first few months with the Knicks in April 2011, non-Knicks were those who headlined the Mecca.
Rose, drafted by the Chicago Bulls with the first overall pick in the 2008 NBA draft, was the megastar the team had been lacking since Michael Jordan’s second retirement in 1998. He was an immediate success, winning NBA Rookie of the Year in 2009 and MVP in 2011.
More importantly, Rose, along with current Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau, led the Bulls to the league’s best record (62-20), their first 60-win campaign since MJ’s mesmerizing spell in the Windy City.
That season, with the Knicks swept by the Boston Celtics in their first playoff appearance in seven years, the Rose-led Bulls faced off against LeBron’s “Heatles.” Fans across the league—even Knicks diehards, despite the bad blood that divided Chicago and New York in the nineties—were rooting for Miami’s demise, and Rose, who amassed 27.7 points per game in those playoffs, looked to be the man to conquer the Heat’s Big Three; but alas, he and his squad fell short in five games.
The following season, the Knicks would again lose in the first round to—whom else?—the Miami Heat. The Bulls, who again managed the top record in the East, were on a crash course towards a rematch with Miami … until Rose tore his ACL in a Game 1, first-round matchup against Philadelphia.
In light of the injury, Rose would miss the entire 2012-2013 season, and his comeback in 2013-2014 lasted all of ten games before the Chicago star tore his meniscus, which amounted to another lost season.
By the time he was traded to the Knicks in 2016, with hopes that he, Carmelo Anthony, and Kristaps Porzingis would formulate the core of a “super team,” his time in New York drew to a fractious, unceremonious conclusion, whereby he was fined for failing to notify team officials of a trip he took to Chicago to see his mother before a road game in New Orleans, undergoing his fourth knee surgery (for another meniscus tear) in nine years.
Frustrated with coach Jeff Hornacek’s hackneyed attempt at a triangle offense, Rose left New York after another lost season (the Knicks finished 31-51), signing with the Cleveland Cavaliers for the league minimum. From 2018 to 2021, Rose bounced around the league, landing in Minnesota and Detroit before joining the Knicks again as part of a 2021 trade.
As for the Knicks’ Plan C in the 2019 offseason, Julius Randle may have been fashioning the first of two dazzling All-NBA seasons, but it was the addition of Derrick Rose that put the Knicks over the top. This “over the top” pushed New York to the fourth seed and homecourt advantage against the rising Atlanta Hawks in the first round of the postseason.
From his 25-point outburst in a win against the Memphis Grizzlies on May 4, 2021 (he missed only four shots) to him equaling that point total en route to eight assists in a victory against the Los Angeles Clippers six nights later, Rose, a dynamic force off the bench, would finish third in voting for the league’s Sixth Man of the Year award.
Though the Knicks would bow out to the Hawks in five games, a proper hatred against Trae Young was born, all while Rose averaged 19.4 points, 4.0 rebounds, and 5.0 assists per game in the series. Rose would score 26 points in New York’s lone win of the first-round matchup, leading all scorers with 30 points in an eleven-point, Game 3 loss two nights later.
And despite that defeat, there is no telling what indelible impact Rose’s leadership had on rookie Immanuel Quickley, who quilted an impressive turn with the Knicks as their eventual sixth man and occasional starter when Jalen Brunson went down with an injury, or veterans like Reggie Bullock and Alec Burks, the latter of whom nearly turned the tide of last season’s Indiana Pacers series during his second time with the Knicks when injuries became too much for New York to handle.
A beloved Bull and Knick, especially during his second stretch in New York, Derrick Rose was celebrated on Jan. 4, 2025, a night to commemorate his time in the association. The Chicago-born kid became a Chicago legend, with both teams wearing shirts to acknowledge what Rose meant to both franchises during the pregame shootaround.
At some point during the 2025-2026 season, Derrick Rose will see his No. 1 join Jordan (23), Scottie Pippen (33), Jerry Sloan (4), and Bob Love (10) in the United Center’s rafters, not as a mark of what he could have been in spite of his knee injuries, but instead, for who he was: a former MVP turned mentor whose DNA still resonates with a New York Knicks squad that exhibits the grittiness he personified with Tom Thibodeau and Taj Gibson, both abroad in Chicago and at home in New York.
