Knicks rightfully didn’t pay cost for Donovan Mitchell — but Leon Rose has to make a move

In the end, the cost was too rich for Leon Rose’s taste — and given what the Cleveland Cavaliers wound up bartering for Donovan Mitchell’s services, it’s hard to argue that. Jazz boss Danny Ainge was always going to get his haul from somewhere. It’s just Ohio instead of New York.

The final cost: five draft picks (three unprotected) and three players. For the Knicks, that would’ve meant tossing into the sea most of their hard-earned capital. Now Mitchell is a special player, an All-Star, and you can make the argument that would have been worth it, even at this steep cost. I have made the point relentlessly the past two months that the Knicks need to get better, and you get better by adding good players.

Mitchell would’ve made the Knicks better just by showing up.

But then you need to take a step back and ask yourself: How much closer would the Knicks have been to their ultimate destination by adding Mitchell — an elite player, not a top-15 player; great scorer but poor defender; and only 6-foot-1, meaning the Knicks would’ve had one of the smallest backcourts in memory — and subtracting assets that may well have helped the Knicks land the final piece of the puzzle, whenever they identify that piece.

(If they ever identify that piece)

The Jazz traded Donovan Mitchell to the Cavs on Thursday. Getty Images

The truth is this deal makes more sense for the Cavaliers, who were one of the NBA’s best stories last year and one of its most feel-good teams. They are young and talented and already have a 44-win season to their credit despite dealing with injuries all across the second half of last season. Mitchell doesn’t make the Cavs a title contender but he just may vault them into the top four in the East (they finished eighth last year).

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And that rarefied conference air was never a realistic landing spot for the Knicks — even if they’d acquired Mitchell and added him to a core lineup of Julius Randle, RJ Barrett, Jalen Brunson and Mitchell Robinson. That would’ve been a fun team, would’ve been a better team, would’ve maybe been a 44- to 48- win team. But the Knicks still would’ve needed an alpha dog, only with five (or six) fewer draft picks to help make that happen.

Thursday was a disappointment; it doesn’t have to be disastrous.

But that’s really all on Rose now. He chose not to give in to Ainge’s demands. But now he must listen to the din of another demanding audience: Knicks fans. And, look, that constituency was hardly unanimous in believing Mitchell had to be brought home at all costs. A lot of folks did. But a lot also believed Rose couldn’t hand over the store to close the deal either.

Rose didn’t hand over the store.

Knicks president Leon Rose, right, wasn’t willing to part ways with the picks and players it would have taken to land Donovan Mitchell. Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post

But he still has all of these picks gathering dust on a shelf. What Knicks fans are most tired of is waiting year after year for the Captain Ahab of the moment to reel in Moby Dick. At some point Rose is either going to pull the trigger and make a deal — or get a superstar to sign his name on a dotted line — or he’s going to become just one more erstwhile savior who wound up getting vaporized at Penn Plaza.

Rose knew all of this when he took the job. And he also had to know that his last, best offer — reportedly including two unprotected first-rounders, a figure he was reluctant to move off of — probably wasn’t going to move Ainge to move Mitchell home to New York.

So Knicks fans are left to the consolation prizes of faith and hope, and it’s been almost impossible to have either faith or hope as a Knicks fan the last two decades. They are left to believe that there is Something Better out there, and that Rose will not merely identify it but be able to close the deal the next time. So far he has yet to do that. At some point, he must.

The Knicks got better this summer. The Cavaliers have now gotten much better. Donovan Mitchell would’ve been a hell of fun story, but Rose isn’t in the business of authoring fun stories. He’s in the business of inching the Knicks up the Eastern Conference mountain.

One more time, he is back on the clock. One more time, Knicks fans wonder if Captain Ahab of the moment has it in him to ever get the fish into the damned boat.