Phil Jackson’s vision for the New York Knicks will take time before it comes to fruition. Derrick Rose is embracing the process.
The New York Knicks hired Phil Jackson as team president in an attempt to build a championship contender. There was no guaranteeing that Jackson would excel in an executive position, but his 11 NBA championships as a coach and two as a player painted a promising picture.
In his third season at the helm, Jackson’s vision is becoming clearer and the results are trending in his favor.
New York is currently 16-13 overall, 11-4 at home, and 5-9 on the road in 2016-17. Its most recent victory, 106-95 over the Orlando Magic, displayed the Knicks’ depth, while its 118-111 win against the Indiana Pacers exhibited its star power.
Per Al Iannazzone of Newsday, starting point guard Derrick Rose can see that the Knicks are building towards something special and is embracing the process.
“We’re building something, even though we don’t know what we have yet. We know that everybody has the same goal, and that’s what we’re pushing for.”
That’s what needs to be accepted: this is a process.
If you’re asked to resolve a math equation and you hazard a guess and get it right, you got it right. You get full credit for that. The question is: when another math equation comes along that requires the same type of work, will you be able to get that one right?
More importantly: will you know how to get that one right?
That’s where the Knicks currently are as a team. It would be ideal in the short-term to let the stars run the show and lead New York to victory, but what happens in the playoffs when a team with no true structure is tested and hero ball doesn’t work?
What Jackson, Jeff Hornacek, and the Knicks are focused on is learning how to win with this specific team so that every possible route to the sum of New York’s parts is known and uncovered.
On Hornacek’s side of things, he’s in the process of determining which rotations work best in both the short-term and the long-term. That includes creating scenario-specific lineups that help cultivate a team identity.
On the players’ side of things, they’re in the process of learning one another’s tendencies so that the ball will only go where it’s meant to be.
That should also help New York anticipate defensive rotations.
The process will yield inconsistent results. Learning how to win against a team that’s already figured that out generally breeds unfavorable results. See: the games against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The process should lead to progress, however, and the early returns have been better than anything the Knicks have done since the unsustainable success experienced in 2012-13.
It won’t always be pretty along the way, but if the brief flashes of brilliance are a sign of things to come, then Phil Jackson is building something special.
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