Bye Bye, Gerson

Good morning! It’s been a busy few days for early August, so we start today with some news items before we get to our No. 70 entrant on the Knicks 100.

🏀 As first reported by Michael Scotto but hinted at on his Instagram, Senior Vice President of Basketball Operations Gerson Rosas has left the Knicks. According to Stefan Bondy, the departure came on good terms after Rosas’ contract was up. Per Bondy, Rosas “felt like he needed to grow as an executive, which also meant exploring other opportunities.”

It’s hard to know exactly what impact this will have on operations within the front office because there’s little first hand knowledge of who does what under Leon Rose. With that being said, I’ve long been under the impression that Brock Aller pulls the strings on all of the most complex endeavors, whereas Rose and Wes are the relationship experts. Regardless, we thank Gerson for his service and wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors.

🏀 Also out the door is former two-way big man Trey Jemison III, who signed the same type of contract with the Toronto Raptors. There were many times last season when we wondered whether TJIII should have been playing ahead of Ariel Hukporti, but other than a few appearances, he was never really a factor.

New York’s roster remains at 13 players with all three two-way spots open.

🏀 Mohamed Diawara is back on the court just a few weeks after getting his left ring finger surgically repaired. Hopefully a poor shooting stint in Vegas was the result of that finger and nothing more.

🏀 Finally, in the wake of a recent court ruling that gives players from the high school class of 2022 a fifth year of collegiate eligibility, there’s a report that Tyler Nickel is “known to be exploring returning to college basketball.” Given the fact that he could receive far more in NIL money than he’d get on a two-way contract, this probably shouldn’t come as a surprise, although given his performance at Summer League, I wonder if there’s been some thought to giving him the 14th roster spot. Even if he does go back to college for a year, the Knicks would retain his rights.

Head versus heart.

Or I guess in this case, head versus Hartenstein.

That’s what today’s entrant forced me to reckon with.

The toughest part about doing this list is that I haven’t been around long enough to watch 80 years of Knicks basketball. Even if I had been, I surely wouldn’t remember it all. Over the last few weeks I’ve written about the likes of Greg Anthony and Hubert Davis, whose careers I watched as a young fan but who never left me with a defining memory. In their cases, that void served as a demerit, perhaps unfairly so.

Even guys like Pablo Progioni, Iman Shumpert and Ray Felton - players who left me with vague outlines of strong impressions - never gave me a single moment that stood the test of time.

In other words, they weren’t Isaiah Hartenstein.

Maybe in 10 or 20 years, I’ll forget about the game against the Cavs in late January 2023 when, after a disappointing first three months in New York, Hartenstein held up Donovan Mitchell at the basket to secure an important win. Maybe by then, I won’t remember how that game seemed to turn his season around, and with it, his Knicks career.

Maybe I won’t recall how he was the backbone of the January 2024 Knicks, averaging 9 & 14 while playing 36 minutes a night over one 10-game stretch. Maybe I’ll forget that after Julius went down, he became even more important, with on/off numbers that turned the Brunson-Hart-DiVincenzo core from ordinary to extraordinary.

Maybe I’ll forget all of it.

But for as long as I’m breathing, I’ll never forget the feeling of being in the building for Game 5 against the Indiana Pacers, when Madison Square Garden transformed from a basketball arena into a rock concert, with I-Hart playing the role of Eddie Van Halen. It was somewhere around his 10th or 11th offensive rebound that I began levitating off the floor and gained a new appreciation for that group of warriors.

I’ve heard older fans talk about Willis Reed’s toughness for decades. That night, Hartenstein gave me something to pass on to the next generation.

The ironic part, of course, is that each additional core memory only further sealed his ticket out of town. Oklahoma City saw a missing piece to their championship puzzle, and were willing to do anything necessary to get him. A year later, they were proven right.

But when one door closes, another opens. In making Hartenstein an offer he couldn’t refuse, the Thunder forced the Knicks to take a chance on a very talented but very expensive big man who would require some getting used to.

Turns out, that gamble paid off as well.

The end result is that everybody won. Hartenstein secured his place in franchise lore before nabbing a bag and a title, and the Knicks got their first championship in 53 years.

Does it happen without the series of events that eventually resulted in Towns coming to New York? For about 18 months, I was convinced that their odds would have been better had Hartenstein never left. That was my heart talking. If I was using my head, I’d have realized that the Knicks were better off with a 6-time All-Star than a career backup who barely started a third of his games here.

In trying to figure out I-Hart’s place on this list, I’m again confronted with the same conundrum.

Hartenstein has the numbers to back up a high spot, ranking 45th in postseason minutes, 34th in postseason points, and an impressive 73rd in regular season win shares considering he’s just outside of the top 120 in minutes. The on/off metrics for that ‘23-24 team say he was the straw that stirred the drink from late January on.

He was also incredibly human on many nights, and his Knick averages of 6.3 points and 7.4 rebounds across two seasons are what they are.

Putting that all together, I slotted Hartenstein at 70, below a group of role players whose accolades are unquestionably superior. Do I have memories of any of them? Not a one. But that’s not their fault, and their career accomplishments more than justify a a top 70 spot.