"A Chance to Win Every Game": Derrick Rose Is Fluent in Knick

In an interview with The Vertical that ran yesterday, the New York Knicks' new point guard Derrick Rose was asked about his hopes for the team entering the 2015-16 season. He said, "I think we have a chance to win every game, and in the league, that's rare." There is an obvious and only slightly charitable reading of that statement, one that does not present Rose as the kind of outright lunatic who thinks that a team built around non-Olympic Carmelo Anthony, non-2013 Joakim Noah, non-2011 Rose, and non-2019 Kristaps Porzingis could achieve anything close to perfection. Rose meant only that the Knicks could compete every night, that they would never be hopelessly outmatched at the opening tip. Wonky wording aside, it was a measured thing to say.

Thing is, Rose's comment came from the same interview where he said wearing a different number on his back than the one he used to wear will make him "a more mature player…That No. 1 will always be engraved in me, it's not going anywhere. Twenty-five is just a new step, and a new step in the right direction." And it came only weeks after he seemed to think, in some of the least self-aware NBA braggadocio this side of Dion Waiters, that commissioner Adam Silver's complaints about the trend of "superteams" included the Knicks.

So you can understand Rose's "win every game" quote in context, provided that context isn't other Rose quotes. Which is to say: Derrick Rose is now very much a Knick. For as long as anyone born after 1990 can remember, New York has been a franchise addicted to the combination of glory and the quick fix, to the notion of a masterstroke that reanimates the dormant magic of Madison Square Garden. They are a man with food poisoning making his recovery via steak tartar. They are a bird with a limp mistaking itself for a phoenix and trying to catch fire. They paired Stephon Marbury and Steve Francis in the backcourt.

When training camp starts up, stories presenting Noah as New York's vocal leader will surely proliferate. Noah will light someone up in practice; he will speak into a nest of microphones about the commitment and selflessness required to win. But if Rose won't be credited with pumping up the Knicks' psyche, he surely reveals it more than anyone. "Superteam," new-number-as-new-identity, even the misspoken whiff of aiming for perfection—this is the franchise's ethos caught in a tape recorder and typed on a screen.

Ask New York fans for their favorite recent memories of the team, and, lacking many options, they'll almost unanimously cite the start of the 2012-13 season, when a semi-slapdash squad featuring Jason Kidd and Rasheed Wallace, among others, rushed out to an 18-5 start playing the type of airy, character-driven basketball the Garden hadn't seen since the Houston-Sprewell days. This is the team that won J.R. Smith his Sixth Man of the Year award. The secret seems to have been in the softness of the expectation. The LeBron-Wade Heat were, at this point, unquestioned rulers of the East; the Knicks could just have fun.

This year's Knicks have a similar chance, but they're determined not to take it. Entertaining is too low a goal; they need to revitalize, restore luster, bring a championship back to the best fans on Earth. A team that won 32 games last season, and 17 the year before that, may nudge up above .500 this year. This is no small feat, especially in an NBA with a championship class not accepting new members anytime soon, but the Knicks will make it seem like one.