Knicks’ Jeff Hornacek expects to see Derrick Rose Friday
New York Knicks head coach Jeff Hornacek reacts during the first half of an NBA preseason basketball game against the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center on Thursday, Oct. 20, 2016. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Derrick Rose’s crash course with Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek will begin again Friday at the team’s Westchester training center. Rose was not on hand Thursday night as the Knicks finished the preseason with a 116-111 win over the Nets at the Barclays Center.
Hornacek said he expects the point guard to report for work Friday for a personal tutoring session to help reacquaint him with the Knicks system before the season opener Tuesday night in Cleveland.
Rose missed the final five preseason games. He and two friends were cleared by a federal court jury in Los Angeles on Wednesday in a lawsuit that accused them of gang raping Rose’s former girlfriend.
Hornacek said he hadn’t spoken with Rose since the verdict was announced. “I haven’t gotten a hold of him,” Hornacek said. “We’ve texted. I’m going to try to meet with him (Friday), try to show him some things on film and then we’ll practice (Saturday). I’ll probably just sit with him and go over some things.”
In a way, Rose’s massive injury history may be a blessing, because he’s dealt with missing time before. Still, there will be a rush to get him back up to speed before the Knicks visit the defending NBA champions.
“I’ll probably overload him with a lot of information and then when he comes in the next day he’ll try to learn by fire,” Hornacek said. “We’ll get him in early probably and run through some stuff with some of the guys. I want to talk to him a bit with that stuff and maybe take him out on the court and really show him some different things. He got some of it in training camp, so some of it will be a review, but we’ll start to show him new things.
“We hope it comes together well. He’s a veteran player. He’s played with (Joakim Noah) before. Him and Jo and Justin (Holiday) were teammates in Chicago, so they have that familiarity . . . And then we had training camp. It’s not like we just traded for him yesterday and he’s got to come in there and pick it up. He’s has a little background with these guys, so hopefully it doesn’t take too long.”
And what about picking up the Knicks’ triangle offense?
“We did most of that in training camp,” Hornacek said. “We were trying to establish that part of it first because that’s the part that’s a little bit harder to grasp. So he’s got a pretty good feel for that. We put some other wrinkles and stuff in there since then, so the basic concepts he should know.”
Notes & quotes: Carmelo Anthony scored 21 points to lead six Knicks in double figures as the team finished the preseason at 4-2. Courtney Lee (15 points), Holiday (14), Kyle O’Quinn (13), Noah (12) and Mindaugas Kuzminskas (10) were the others . . . Brandon Jennings started in place of Rose and had nine points, six assists and four steals.
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
