Nalod, I will respectfully and wholeheartedly 100% disagree with that take with the caveat that there is a wide interpretation for "the influence thing by fans I think gets stretched a bit".
My words below will have a different flare but know that my first sentence is how and where the rest should come from.
One does not accidentally fall into the position of being the super agent for one of the most iconic sports players in LeBron James, while leading creating and building up the basketball division of one of the baddest entertainment agencies in CAA (Leon was hand picked by CAA to run basketball operations, not a coinci-dink), while being best buds with one of the bad-est behind the scenes badasses in World Wide Wes, and THEN land his biggest, sloppiest wet dream job of leading the Knicks FO without being a true basketball guy who worked his way up through the FO ladder. Zero probability of that unless Leon is exactly the opposite of how you may have characterized how fans have characterized what may be out there with Leon. [I put in so many caveats in that last sentence just to cover my skinny ass]
Literally no way to consider Leon anything but one of the smartest, slickest, and smoothest behind the scenes mover and shaker and influencer type person out there.
Leon is a 4D chess type of individual and we should view him through that lens while thinking about what he did, does, or could do.
Nalod (and everyone), consider this problem. Background: the Knicks KNOW they need to get a big wing defender on their team, that's my assumption. To do that, you identify your targets and obviously the Knicks landed on OG (as one of them, debate how many other attainable targets are out there that fit Knicks needs, etc). OG was a Klutch client, playing for a Toronto team that has a GM that is well known to be someone very hard to deal with in trade scenarios, against the backdrop of half the other playoff teams also wanting and battling to trade for OG too. Toss in a dollop of Dolan lawsuit stupidity for funnsies.
How did Leon solve this problem? He ****ing out maneuvers Klutch to keep their own client (OG's agent was Omar Wilkes, the head of Klutch Basketball Operations lol and he and Rich Paul let OG guy escape to CAA!?!?!), he deals with Masai Ujiri (using his son and OG's departure as leverage, and tells the public OG wants $40M and big offensive role but not for NY lolol he will take a discount for Knicks hahaahaha), he beats all of the other teams working to trade for Masai . How did he do that? He ****ing got his son to be OG's agent (and let his son tell every other team that OG would not stay with them or whatever story he comes up with, Sam is playing defense for Leon). How does this even happen? I have no clue but goddammit that is ungoldy suspicious. Almost as suspicious as hiring Jalen's dad as an assistant lol while having his son rep him too? lolol
Holy crap Leon is one smart 4D playing mother****ers out there who is the smoothest of smooth operators. That is, of course, IMHO. Emphasis obviously on Humble lol I suck so apologies all around
By no means a full or fully accurate summary but gives a good background picture:
‘There’s no bull**** with Leon’: Inside Leon Rose’s rise to running the Knicks
Mike Vorkunov
One morning in late January, about a week before the Knicks fired team president Steve Mills, Leon Rose received a call from James Dolan. At the time, Rose, who has a long history with the Knicks, was still a high-powered NBA agent, co-running the basketball division at Creative Artists Agency. He represented Carmelo Anthony when the star was the alpha and omega in New York, and his list of brand-name clients was long.
Dolan asked Rose if he would be open to talk about a job running the Knicks. The organization was floundering, on its way to a seventh consecutive losing season, and navigating one mess after another. Before Rose committed to a meeting, he went to CAA Sports’ Manhattan office and discussed the call with Michael Levine, a co-head of the agency. They agreed Rose should hear out the Knicks owner. If nothing else, a sitdown with Dolan would tell Rose just how serious the offer was. Rose left immediately for Madison Square Garden.
He returned to Levine’s office that evening and recounted the conversation. Dolan’s offer was real, and the next question was how to seize on it. Within two weeks, Rose had agreed to become the Knicks’ new team president, with the official announcement coming on March 2.
In turning to Rose, Dolan hopes he has finally found the person who can resurrect a franchise framed by dysfunction for the last 20 years. “He’s great in crisis mode,” one of Rose’s former colleagues said. The Knicks are trying to rebuild their reputation by sopping up credibility from Rose — the agent for the very clients who have rebuffed them all these years, exacerbating their tailspin. They are also trying the formula that worked in Golden State and Los Angeles, where former agents Bob Myers and Rob Pelinka helped steward the Warriors and Lakers to NBA titles, respectively.
In some ways, Rose is well-equipped for the job, his first in a front office. He is well-liked around the NBA and boasts a network of relationships with stars and executives. If he can leverage those, the Knicks can make in-roads with a community of players that has deserted them over the last decade. Rose, known for his straightforward approach, will have to be the one to repair the team’s reputation.
A slew of executives have already failed; Rose is the third team president in three years as Dolan has bounced from one architect to another. He tried a Hall of Fame coach (Phil Jackson) and a long-time right-hand man (Mills) to no success. This time, the MSG czar is counting on a man who went from a little-known New Jersey lawyer to one of the league’s highest-profile agents.
Already, Rose has changed the Knicks in his image, tugging at the many relationships he has made over his three decades in the industry. He has pulled in clients he used to represent, such as Tom Thibodeau, who was named the Knicks’ new head coach after a search in which more than half the candidates the team interviewed were also CAA clients. Thibodeau’s coaching staff, built with the front office’s input, includes three more people the agency represents.
Rose also has brought in the friend who has been alongside him for his ascension, William Wesley, as his trusted adviser in the Knicks front office. Worldwide Wes, long a subject of intrigue in the NBA, is now a company man, with a high-ranking title and a wide berth with which to work. Some around the NBA have also pointed to Wesley as the backbone of Rose’s growth, a symbiosis that helped him reach the mountaintop as an agent.
Flanked by all those familiar faces, Rose will try to bring the Knicks back to a level they haven’t reached in a generation. If he can help revive the Knicks, it’ll be because of the connections he has made and a savvy that engrossed longtime friends who felt his station in life never changed.
“He’s got one part UFC mentality, one part lawyer, and one part schoolyard legend,” said Jesse Itzler, an Atlanta Hawks minority owner and a friend who connected Rose to CAA Sports brass in 2007. “He’s got that mix of the tiger mentality meets smarts, meets passion.”
Leon Rose drew his first client in the mid-1990s and was fiercely loyal to him. Rose had helped out with other contracts before but Rick Brunson was a lifeline. Rose was a South Jersey guy who had deep ties to Temple University and frequently made trips to Philadelphia for the school’s games. Brunson, a 6-foot-4 guard, was a star there.
Rose was a full-service agent for Brunson, who stayed in the area after finishing college. Rose would arrive at six in the morning to Cherry Hill East High — his alma mater — to rebound as Brunson shot jumpers and barked profanely at him to make sure the strings were lined up straight. Despite their efforts, Brunson went undrafted in 1995.
When Brunson earned his first professional job later that year, with the Adelaide 36ers in Australia, he called Rose daily to complain about one thing or another. Rose’s phone bill, Brunson said, was more than his commission off the contract.
“I was a side hustle,” Brunson said. “But he really wanted to get into this field. We got into it together.”
At that point, when they started working together, Rose was a lawyer by trade and by familial ties. His father, Zev, remains a respected lawyer in New Jersey, and Leon was a partner at Sherman, Silverstein, Kohl, Rose and Podolsky in Moorestown for more than a decade.
Rose had long loved basketball but couldn’t find his niche in the sport. He wanted to coach after playing at Cherry Hill East and at Dickinson College, but ended up attending Temple Law School and graduating in 1986. That same year, he joined the Camden County prosecutor’s office and also took a job as an assistant coach at Division-III Rutgers Camden. He lasted two years as an assistant prosecutor and as a coach before he left for his father’s firm.
As a lawyer, Rose dug into issues far afield. He often worked in tandem with Alan Milstein, who would go on to have his own career in sports law. Once, the pair tried to recoup insurance money for a restaurant in upstate New York after a fire burned it down. He also spent a considerable time in Guam in a class action suit against two corporations for their production of a toxic substance.
He was a litigator but also a charmer. In the courtroom, Milstein said, he was down to earth and relatable.
“Leon’s strength was always his personality and just the fact that he was so likable and sociable,” Milstein said. “He always went the extra yard to make clients feel comfortable and knowledgeable about what we were doing. He was much more hands-on with the clients. He was a much more sociable and charming person. He was much better at hand-holding than I was, which made us a good team.”
He never got too far from the basketball court, though. He talked about basketball incessantly. He played it often, too, as a regular in a Philadelphia Jewish Basketball League and on work trips.
During one trip to Guam, Rose and Milstein played one-on-one full-court. Milstein won the game — he cites his height advantage — before Rose immediately called to play best two out of three, then won in a comeback. “He wasn’t the tallest guy,” Milstein said, but “he could shoot in a hurricane.”
As a devoted Temple basketball fan, he grew close to legendary Owls coach John Chaney. Rose once housed a 17-year-old prospect who moved from the Netherlands to play at Cherry Hill East, and went with him on his recruiting trip to Temple, where he would play four seasons. Rose also became Marco Van Velsen’s legal guardian and represented him when he played in Italy.
In 1993, Rose served as a lawyer for Kings forward Lionel Simmons and helped negotiate his contract. Then he landed Brunson. So began a string of contacts that helped him climb the ranks of the industry, as one client led to another.
In Australia, Brunson played for Mike Dunlap, who was close with the head coach of another team in the league. That team happened to have a 7-footer in need of an agent.
Chris Anstey was the 21-year-old center of the South East Melbourne Magic in 1996 and needed guidance before he embarked on an NBA career. In search of help, he asked his coach, Brian Goorjian, for advice; Goorjian talked to Dunlap, who referred him to Rose.
When Rose walked into the team’s gym in Melbourne in the middle of the NBL season, Anstey discovered a quiet and unassuming man. His size, Anstey said, stood out when he walked into the basketball facility. In a world of giants, Rose isn’t anywhere near 6-foot.
Anstey asked around and did some background research on Rose. He knew about his law career and knew that he would be Rose’s first NBA client, which gave him a little apprehension. But as they sat in the bleachers, Anstey was comforted by Rose’s easygoing approach and the stream of questions from an agent who refused to sell himself. He told Rose he would work with him before Rose left the country.
“I knew that he wasn’t going to screw me over and (would) do the right thing by me,” Anstey said.
“So many agents sell the dream, they don’t sell reality. Leon was extraordinarily honest about where I was at and where I could be in my career.”
A few months later, Anstey became the 18th pick in the 1997 draft, Rose’s first first-round pick. Dunlap returned to the States that year to take a job at Division-II Metro State and he too became Rose’s client.
Rose’s reach was growing, as was his index of NBA players. Brunson chose him because of a suggestion from Chaney. After Brunson got to the NBA in 1997, he pestered Aaron McKie and Eddie Jones, both former Temple teammates and at the time third-year veterans, about the great representation he was getting from Rose and told them they should sign with him too. (Brunson was a Timberwolves assistant coach from 2016-18 until he resigned over allegations of improper conduct toward women. He denies the allegations and no charges were filed.)
Rose represented DeSagna Diop, the No. 8 pick in the 2001 draft, straight out of Oak Hill Academy. In 2002, he landed Allen Iverson, who was without an agent and nearing the ending of his six-year contract with the 76ers. It was a coup for Rose.
Billy King, the former Sixers and Nets general manager, compares Rose to Jerry Maguire: He shows up, he sits courtside, he lets them know that he’s there, and that it’s personal.
All the while, Rose’s clients and friends said he was unchanged. He dressed humbly, often showing up at games in jeans and a sport coat. He has lived in the same house for some three decades. When he was courting Jones as a client, he picked up the All-Star in a Nissan Altima, Brunson said, which led Jones to lay down an ultimatum. “The next time you pick me up in an Altima,” Brunson said, recounting Jones’ message, “I’m going to fire you.”
If Rose splurges, it’s likely to be on tickets to Bruce Springsteen shows. Rose is a rabid fan. He has gone to, by the estimates of his friends, upwards of 150 concerts, catching them in the U.S. and Australia. He and Levine, his former CAA Sports boss, sometimes traded Springsteen lyrics to each other and reveled at a few shows.
That humility has earned Rose respect. He seems to be well-regarded by his peers, most of whom profess that he’ll do a good job as the Knicks president.
“There’s no bull**** with Leon,” said one former general manager. “Even in difficult times.”
Said David Falk, the legendary agent: “I think he’s honest; I think he works hard for his client. I don’t think he tries to fool people. If you ask people to say one word about Leon, most people say they like him, and that’s a very positive quality. I don’t think he’s an intimidating persona. I don’t think he’s a nefarious person. I think he’s a very straightforward guy and I think people like him, and I think it’s a very important quality in the business for people to like you.”
His loyalty seems to run as deep as his rolodex. He has no shortage of friends and well-wishers, many of whom claim some kind of tight bond.
Diop, now a coach with Utah, calls Rose family. Just as he let Van Velsen stay at his house for his senior year, Rose quartered Diop a decade later during the pre-draft process. During that time, Rose woke up Diop each morning, prepared him to work out, and then took him to a nearby gym.
When the Jazz came to New York in March, Rose and Diop grabbed dinner the night before the two teams played. He sees Rose as a mentor and a second father.
Rose has the ability to endear himself quickly to the people on whose behalf he works. He had been Iverson’s agent for only a day or two when he arrived at the Sixers’ practice facility in 2002 and stood on the side of a podium, in a suit, as Iverson drew out his incredulity about practice. Afterward, as Iverson and his entourage jumped a fence to reach their cars following the news conference, Rose did likewise, earning him approval from his new client.
In time, Iverson began to trust Rose implicitly. The agent helped orchestrate Iverson’s exit from Philadelphia in 2006, just a few weeks after the star promised he had wanted to stay with the Sixers. Rose called King, then the GM, with a list of teams — the Timberwolves, Clippers and Nuggets — that were agreeable and a trade played out soon after. It was a soft power he flexed when needed, as he did over a weekend in 2011 when he juggled the Nets’ and Knicks’ interest in Anthony before helping to secure a trade to New York.
“I think it was one of the greatest career moves that Allen’s ever made, hiring Leon,” said Gary Moore, a longtime adviser to Iverson.
“He was our Arliss,” he added.
The small business Rose had begun in South Jersey had reached unexpected heights and in 2005 he began representing LeBron James. Then came a pivotal meeting in February 2007.
Michael Levine and Howard Nuchow, the co-heads of CAA Sports, needed someone to launch the agency’s basketball division and had sought out Rose after their own research and some recommendations. They were intrigued by his reputation as a no-frills grinder who could help them stay clean enough through the muck of player procurement. They set a meeting with him at their Super Bowl party at Mokai in Miami.
The two arrived first, waiting inside. Rose stood outside in the line, soaking in the rain.
His patience impressed both. On the brink of career landmark, he did not complain. Rose bided his time until he, too, was inside.
“He realizes,” Nuchow said, “sometimes you can’t get in right away.”
On March 2, his first night in his new role with the Knicks, Leon Rose walked the sideline of Madison Square Garden, small-talking media members and re-introducing himself as Knicks team president. He wore a sports coat and sneakers. It was a reboot for the man and the organization.
In his job, Rose will have a visibility he has never held before. Agents are sometimes in the public conscious but rarely heard from. Most are not shadowy lever-pullers; they just prefer not to be quoted.
Then there is William Wesley, the man who the basketball world knows of but doesn’t know. He, too, was at MSG that night, but mostly out of sight.
He and Rose have been friends for some 30 years, two men from neighboring New Jersey towns outside of Philadelphia — Wesley from Pennsauken, Rose from Cherry Hill — who grew up together and grew large together. Each one became an NBA power in his own way.
Rose, despite his public profile and his set of highly visible clients, did not make waves often. He was not meager, just understated. Here was this powerhouse who surprised people when they saw him for the first time, so unaware were they of what he looked like.
“Everyone thought he was Black for years,” Brunson said. “He’s a White Jewish guy.”
Wesley, however, is notorious. He has hovered over the league for more than a decade as its mysterious kingmaker. Uncle Wes, depending on who you ask, is a sage, a connector. In 2007, GQ asked if he was the most powerful man in sports and ran just one photo of him with the story: He was holding back Ron Artest during the Malice at the Palace, his jacket stained with beer.
Most conversations about Rose, though, include a discussion about Wesley. They are, in some ways, inseparable.
He followed Rose to CAA Sports, taking a consultant fee and representing coaches as a banner for his nebulous job description. When the Knicks hired Rose this year, it was a surprise that Wesley did not come along initially, then a surprise that he later did because the prevailing wisdom was that he could be more helpful from outside the boundaries of a franchise, doing whatever it is he does (no one can say with certainty what that is).
Often, it seems, what he does involves helping Rose. It did not escape notice that Rose signed bigger and bigger names as Wesley’s stature league-wide grew.
“Until he sort of teamed up with Wes, he had modest clients,” Falk said. “He had local guys from Philly … He had good players but he didn’t have star players. Wes obviously helped him attract a higher level of clientele.”
Sonny Vaccaro, a legend of the AAU circuit and the sneaker wars, said he believes Rose’s success is tied directly to Wesley. He has been familiar with both for a while and holds each in good regard. To him, one is tethered to the other.
“Leon grabbed the end of the carriage and went along for the ride,” he said. “And the ride turned up to be in the palace.”
Hard as it may be to split credit among the two, there is also no need to now. Rose may be the Knicks president but Wesley is right alongside him, with his own lofty title as an executive vice president in the front office.
The Jewish Basketball League in Philadelphia did not operate much differently from the NBA. Egalitarianism is a high-minded goal, but plutocracy reigns. Power is wielded by the strongest and it only begets more power.
This league, held annually until it ended in 2006, ran on a simple realpolitik that underlines most of basketball across the country: the best players want to play with the best teams. And in the JBL, Pine Forest Camp stood above all others.
The team was dominant — 11 titles in 16 years — and insatiable. It had its stars — an ex-Israeli league pro and a former All-Ivy League guard among them — but Rose was the engine.
On the court, he was its hard-charging, sweet-shooting point guard. But his best work came behind the scenes. Because when new players came into the league, the best ones seemed to gravitate to Pine Forest, and to Rose.
Without a draft, the JBL was fighting against a dynasty. Commissioner Norm Millan tried to keep some level of fairness and dole out players to teams in need but that didn’t last long either.
Even when he stopped Pine Forest Camp from adding a new good player, that player landed there eventually. The team’s leaders claimed they would respect the league’s rules, but the players, it seemed, decided they only wanted to play with the champs, or not play at all.
“His teams were stacked,” Millan said.
“The rest of us are starving. But he knew everybody. He outworks everybody.”
Rose will have a different problem in New York. The franchise’s last five years have been a Harvard Business Review study of organizational entropy.
While the Knicks tried to emerge as a home for the league’s stars, they pushed their own away. Anthony approved a trade after he survived a putsch from Phil Jackson, outlasting Jackson and then accepting a trade to Oklahoma City. Kristaps Porzingis asked for a trade after his relationship with the organization soured before the end of his rookie contract; the Knicks capitulated and sent him to Dallas in a deal that has so far had meager returns and paved the way to Mills’ undoing. At the same time, their plans to land Kevin Durant and other stars failed.
Rose, by the way, had a close view of how the Knicks repelled Anthony, putting them at odds with some of the league’s other top players. Now, it is incumbent on Rose to heal the wounds from those wars and many other losing battles.
Rose is well-versed in Madison Square Garden’s chaotic ways, especially those of Dolan, although he may realize new challenges upon working from within the organization. “He’ll come to find out that sometimes when you want to bring logic to a situation, the situation defies the logic,” one longtime NBA executive said of Rose working under Dolan. Rose forged a strong relationship with Dolan earlier this decade when he brought a wave of CAA clients to the team to surround Anthony, and several more found a way into the front office.
“I think the history he had with Jim was 100 percent a difference maker,” Nuchow said. “And the history of Jim living up to his word every time they had a negotiation, I think, went a really long way. That was Leon’s fastball. If he had been dealing with somebody who hadn’t been living up to it, there’s no chance this happens. How good Jim was on having integrity on all the discussions they previously had, I think that was as important as anything.”
Rose hasn’t expressed his mandate with the Knicks or how long his timetable for success is. This summer he danced around such questions. Every new Knicks president proclaims the need for patience, and each one rarely stays around long enough to earn it. It is the double-edged sword of working for the Knicks.
“(Dolan) hires people because he thinks their expertise will bring value to the organization and then he does everything in his power to undermine them when they’re in the tent,” one person with knowledge of MSG’s inner workings said. “What I’m afraid is Leon is not going to have the kind of personality to stand up to Jim Dolan and he gets run over. I hope I’m wrong.”
Rose’s new job will be unlike any other he has held. In his early days as an agent, he was an island. At CAA, he found a collaborative environment in which he could pull on the many resources of a powerhouse agency. Talent flocked to the agency; they have repelled the Knicks.
If Rose lasts more than three full seasons as president, he’ll become the first top Knicks executive to do so since Isiah Thomas. That he would take on the lift in New York might be an indication of Rose’s belief in Dolan. CAA insiders dispute that they wielded nearly unchecked clout at the Garden earlier this decade as was portrayed, but contend that experience might have helped sell Rose on his new boss and his willingness to follow through on promises.
“That is everything to Leon,” Nuchow said. “You can lose trust with Leon very, very quickly. To me, that’s how the world should run. Leon’s way of, ‘If you lie to me I’ll never forget it,’ it shows what the relationship with the Knicks was like.”
He will need to be cunning to succeed. He is known to be tight-lipped, which will serve him well at the notoriously neurotic Garden. His tenure, though, may ultimately be decided by the same traits that helped pull him there. Rose, more than anything, is a people person.
He earned the responsibility to safeguard the interests of the NBA’s biggest names. He has tentpoles at Nike and Kentucky, two of the NBA’s most vital systems. Although he made his reputation representing the outgoing generation’s most powerful players, he has also worked with several rising stars such as Phoenix’s Devin Booker and Minnesota’s Karl-Anthony Towns. Some around the league believe he will eventually try to pull at those strings to bring a headliner to New York.
If he can, it would be one more coup for Rose. He has chosen to do it with Wesley at his side, who may have a better relationship with Dolan than even Rose.
Over three decades he built his way out of South Jersey, an amiable lawyer who ended up near the top of the basketball world.
“I think he’s always been a nice guy,” Vaccaro said. “I don’t think he had any enemies. You were happy for his progress. I don’t think he alienated everybody. I can say this very few times only because of the umbilical cord of Wes, I could not find a bad thing to say other than he came out of nowhere. He ended his ride by being the president of the New York Knicks.
“That’s like God — the president of the New York Knicks. I mean, damn.”
2/4/2024 11:01 PM LAST EDITED: 2/4/2024 11:05 PM
