Carmelo Anthony wants Derrick Rose to get this trial done, report back to Knicks

Good news for Carmelo Anthony, the judge in the Derrick Rose trial wants to wrap the thing up and send it to the jury on next Tuesday.

That’s good news because the Knicks’ leader wants Rose back in New York.

Rose has been away from the Knicks longer than the team expected, and Anthony said he wants Rose to get that trial done and get home. Via Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News.

“I’m pretty sure if I was (Knicks’ coach Jeff Hornacek) I’d be calling Derrick and telling him, ‘Hurry up. Figure it out and hurry up back,’” Carmelo Anthony said. “Just because the way the team is starting to jell together and come together, the camaraderie we’re starting to create with one another, we don’t want him missing out on that.”

The Knicks have a lot of things holding that camaraderie — Joakim Noah has battled injuries through camp, for example. It just means it will take more of the regular season for the Knicks to figure out their chemistry (providing they can stay healthy, which is another issue).

Since the day the Knicks signed Rose, Phil Jackson has been dismissive of the impact of this trial on the team. It’s not going to send Rose to jail (it’s a civil trial), but it has become a distraction — one of the biggest preseason stories in the NBA — that Rose is going to have to discuss when he gets back to NYC. This is a team that is likely in that 5-10 grouping in the East that is going to be very close, and every game is going to matter. An early distraction and slow start doesn’t help the cause.