Joakim Noah and Derrick Rose are going to have words.
The two New York Knicks newbies appear to have very different takes on their team. Rose put the Knicks in the same class as the Golden State Warriors back in July, but during an interview with XXL Mag’s Roger Krastz, Noah referred to the Knicks as the “ultimate underdog team”:
How excited are you to join the New York Knicks this season?
I’m really excited, man. I’m working hard. Right now, I just find myself going to the practice facility and meeting all the new faces and trying to get a routine going. I think we have a lot of new faces, a lot of veterans. A lot of great young talent so we’re trying to put it all together and do something that’s going to make the city proud. I grew up watching all of the New York teams and to me, the Knicks is the ultimate underdog team so I’m proud to be a part of that.
It’s tough to tell whether he’s talking about this year’s Knicks or the franchise in general. Either way, he’s pretty wrong. The Knicks are perennially overrated, often riding the coattails of their success with two championship teams in the 1970s. Every time they get a high-profile player past his prime, they’re viewed as this quasi contender.
To Noah’s credit, they are toeing a line leading into next season. People are inherently overrating them because of the names on the roster, but there are a large faction of pundits leaving them out of any meaningful conversations. Which is fitting, because this Knicks roster will likely finish somewhere in the middle. And that probably makes them an underdog to the players in the locker room who believe they should be better.
Except, of course, to Derrick Rose, who obviously knows the Knicks are going to better.
