New York City loves the Yankees and the Mets . The Jets and the Giants are also beloved despite playing their home games in the New Jersey swamp. But at its heart, New York is a basketball town . The city just feels different when the Knicks are contending. That hasn’t been the case recently. Over the last quarter century, Knicks fans have endured the Scott Layden era, the Isiah Thomas era , and the Phil Jackson era . They have seen disastrous free agent signings (Jerome James, Joakim Noah , Amar’e Stoudemire), lopsided trades (Eddy Curry, Stephon Marbury, Steve Francis), misguided extensions (Allan Houston, Curry, again), and draft busts (Kevin Knox, Frank Ntilikina, Jordan Hill, and many more). But times have changed. On March 2, 2020, about two weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world, controversial Knicks owner James Dolan made his best decision since taking over the team in the late 1990s: He hired Leon Rose, then-CAA Sports co-head, to run basketball operations.…