Mkdaman1818 wrote:Rose to me is a PR move, just like hornacek was. Its a lose-lose IMO... either he sucks and you burned $23mm of your cap space on him, or he's great for a year and then you presumably lock into a declining anchor for multiple years (if you don't, it's an even worse PR move). Given that the Knicks will prob not win a championship anytime soon with Lebron still in the east, this is easily a poor move. Good on Sean Marks for staying away from this crap.
The Knicks don't lose cap space for him. In fact, by moving Lopez' contract they cleared $16mil off the books for 2017.
While I would say it is a PR move, I don't think that is its main purpose for Phil. I think Phil's primary purpose was/is to retain flexibility for both this offseason and next offseason. He's does that with this move.
The Knicks have also created another distraction/point of interest for the fans to get tied up in. Essentially, Porzingis will have less pressure to develop in Year 2 because the pecking order of critique goes: 1) Melo 2)Phil
and now 3) Rose. If Porzingis doesn't perform well, people will blame one of the three and not Porzingis even if they truly had no negative impact on him.
I'd slide in the PR move as being third reason (in order of importance) as to why they did this. According to someone I read on Twitter, Rose still brings in $100mil in merchandise (70% of which is tied to Asia).
I think this move also gets Melo to shut up a bit because I'm sure Melo sees the name "Rose" more than he sees the player. He doesn't understand how poor Rose was last season and his confidence as a star player (which is not a bad thing) will lead him to believe that he can get Rose back to an allstar level while the Knicks return back to being a playoff contender.
I honestly think this has really little to do with expecting Rose to perform and be good. I think it has everything to do with having flexibility in 2016 & 2017, giving KP more time away from the spotlight if he needs/wants it, getting fans in the seats, and making Melo happy. This isn't an "improve your basketball team" right now move.