Why Derrick Rose will always be Tom Thibodeau’s favorite point guard option
Derrick Rose has found new life, back with his forever coach in Tom Thibodeau. What has led to the Rose’s resurgence, and just how impressive has his second stint in New York been?
Derrick Rose was the best player on the best team that Tom Thibodeau has ever coached. The muscle memory of this fact, the decade-spanning weight of this coaching high, informs a comfort level between coach and point guard rarely found in todays fast moving NBA.
Rose, thriving this season in his second stint as a New York Knick, after racking up almost 250 career games in three different NBA jerseys playing under the detail-deranged and ever-watchful eye of Thibodeau, has internalized an on-court formula for winning identical to his coach’s. They are historically simpatico, strategically aligned, emotionally trusting: associating each other with winning, and seeing in each other a reflection of the best they’ve each ever been.
This season, on a Knick team littered with feel good stories, the strength of their unique relationship shows. Still — for now — coming off the Knicks’ bench, per Cleaning The Glass, Rose has the best plus/minus differential on the team at +9.4 points per 100 possessions. Strangely, though, all of this value — according to the numbers — is coming on the defensive end, where the Knicks are exactly 9.4 points per 100 possessions better with Rose on the floor than off. This is by far the best mark on the roster, and more than double the defensive impact of fellow former Chicago Bull Taj Gibson, who boasts the second-best defensive differential on the team and has been a menace off the bench on that end this season.
With a reputation firmly entrenched as an offensively-minded player, this implied defensive impact is more than a little jarring. It can partly be attributed to lesser opposition early in games when he comes off the bench — although lately, when Rose has been healthy, Thibs has predictably turned to Derrick over incumbent starter Elfrid Payton as his steady hand in tight games down the stretch.
What’s behind this apex-Ntilikinian impact then? Is it just three months of statistical noise? Or are there under-the-hood strategic breadcrumbs for a version of Rose roused by the familiarity of Thibodeau’s scheme? The answer is likely a non-answer: yes. Of course, there is noise: Knick opponents are shooting worse from every single area of the floor with Rose on the court. But dig a little deeper, and there are some stylistic defensive virtues that track with the veteran’s lofty — but maybe not this lofty — defensive numbers.
All coaches abhor turnovers, because they lead to easy fast break buckets for the opposition. Thibodeau could power the lights in MSG for a week with the volcanic rage a single Knick turnover ignites in his coaching soul. Rose — forged in the fire of this intolerance for squandered possessions — is one of the most possessional-ly stingy players in the NBA. His 8.4% turnover rate is in the 95th percentile for his position, which is even more impressive considering his relatively high 26.5% usage rate in New York.
Only six players in the league — per CTG — have a usage rate of more than 26% and a turnover rate of less than 9%: DeMar DeRozan, Caris Levert, Kawhi Leonard, CJ McCollum, Derrick Rose, and Nikola Vucevic.
One of the few offensive possessional outcomes more valuable than a fast break opportunity is a free throw: the undisputed most efficient shot in the NBA. Derrick Rose might be the most foul-averse player in NBA history. He’s played portions of a season for various teams 14 times in his career, and his percentile finishes in foul percentage (defensive fouls committed per team play) are extreme: 100th percentile six times, 98th percentile three times, 97th percentile once, 93rd percentile twice, 91st percentile once, and 77th percentile — this season — once.
Not fouling at the point of attack and not providing any defensive resistance at the point of attack can be two sides of the same coin — Rose has a historically low career steal rate to go with this low foul rate — but the assumed de facto damage of this lack of resistance as an individual skill limitation is mitigated when you are funneling drives to Mitchell Robinson, Nerlens Noel, and Taj Gibson, a trio who anchor the second-best at-the-rim defensive field goal percentage in the association at 60.6%.
Maybe this three-headed shot-swallowing Knick monster paints over some teflon perimeter defense that other teams couldn’t survive, but whatever Rose is doing within this context of elite backline rim protection seems to be working so far, with opponents shooting a whopping 7.4% (97th percentile) worse at the rim when he’s in the game. That number is inflated, but not an anomaly — opponents have shot worse at the rim with Rose on the floor in eight of his career 14 stops: not great, to be sure, but better than his turnstile reputation suggests.
Part of Rose’s appeal at point guard as the Knicks surge toward an improbable playoff berth is the certainty of his offensive game. The 32-year-old has always been a downhill player, thriving as a driver, with the pick-and-roll as his bread and butter. With the Knicks, per Synergy Stats, Rose is finishing out of the pick-and-roll 6.5 times per game, and scoring in the 75th percentile at 0.97 points per possession.
Considering the volume — only 11 of the 60 players in the league who run more than five pick-and-rolls a game finish out of the league’s most popular play more frequently than Rose — it’s an efficient offensive option for a Knicks half court offense that too often leans heavily on Julius Randle’s All-NBA creation abilities. Randle has logged 319 total isolation possessions this season, the second most in the league, behind only Russell Westbrook’s 344. In the playoffs, he’ll need help.
Aside from Randle, only Rose (75th percentile) and the currently sidelined Alec Burks (95th percentile) have been efficient in isolation this season. Rose’s ability to create something from nothing off the dribble will be crucial to the Knicks making noise in the playoffs against higher grade defenses locked in and game planning to make someone not named Julius beat them.
Whether it’s in the pick-and-roll or isolation, Rose is a player whose primary offensive instinct is to get into the paint as a driver. Even at this stage of his career, the former MVP is an elite penetrator. He’s second only to RJ Barrett in drives per game on the Knicks with 11.8 to RJ’s 12.3, despite playing nearly nine fewer minutes per game than the sophomore sniper.
He was seventh in drives per game in the entire league last season with 17.6, nestled in between De’Aaron Fox and James Harden. Not bad company for a journeyman point guard at this stage of his career. But proof of who he still is, and evidence of why he and Thibodeau keep finding their way back to each other, given coach’s repeated exhortation that his number one priority on offense is getting two feet in the paint. After all the injuries, he still has that gunshot first step, that sports-car horsepower, and that rubber-band body control in tight slithers of crowded space that are the essence of his game: his raw speed is still his NBA signature. Really, that his liquid, ankle-whipping acceleration sometimes has the same bite of prime MVP Rose is a hat-tip to just how potent a kinetic specimen he was all those years ago.
It shouldn’t be surprising that these two appear made for each other — in a lot of ways, their compatibility now is founded on a basketball union a decade ago. They were made both by, and for, each other. What they are — strategically and historically — is inseparable. It was back in 2011 when a slightly fresher-faced Tom Thibodeau won Coach of the Year, and a slightly more explosive Derrick Rose won Most Valuable Player on the planet. Some things have changed since then, some haven’t. A decade later, with Thibs shouting another Coach of the Year award into submission, Derrick Rose is still helping him do it. With a few more games played, he’d be a worthy frontrunner for Sixth Man of the Year. If he carries on playing like this, and the Knicks bag an unthinkable home-court first-round playoff series, the games played may not matter.
For this player and this coach, NBA flux is no match for NBA fate. The serpentine careers of both men have somewhat mirrored each other. Flux has seen them flounder, but fate has them back in the hunt for individual accolades, back to banking wins, back doing it the same way they’ve always been inclined to do it: one workhorse possession at a time, looking after the ball like it’s a newborn, relentlessly landing 10 toes in the paint.
The New York Knicks are the surprise team of this wonky NBA season, a surprise not a single soul saw coming. But Derrick Rose emerging as Tom Thibodeau’s favorite point guard option? That should surprise nobody.
