Leon Rose’s – Before Leon Rose became the architect of the Knicks’ first title since 1973, he was a gym rat at Cherry Hill East and a volunteer coach at the Katz JCC—building cultures of toughness, brotherhood, and selflessness that still show up in the way he talks about w
Seth Friedman was watching the NBA Finals on Saturday night in Graduate Hospital when the voice behind his childhood basketball memories finally landed—again.
Leon Rose. the New York Knicks president who had just built a roster that ended a 53-year drought. was asked how it felt to know his team had won its first title since 1973. Rose didn’t lean on the trophy. He shook his head. shrugged his shoulders. and turned to his players—praising their brotherhood. grit. empathy. and care for one another.
Friedman, sitting on his couch next to his wife after listening earlier, began to tear up. “It sounded like he was talking to us,” he said, “back when we were 13 or 14 years old.”
The details of those years were different. At Cherry Hill East and at the Katz JCC in Cherry Hill, Rose wasn’t standing in front of an NBA moment—he was running two-a-day-style effort for teenagers and building teams to win something bigger than a box score.
Friedman played for Rose in the mid-2000s at the local Jewish community center, where Rose’s approach stayed consistent. “He literally preached that same mentality,” Friedman said. “That family mentality.”
Rose’s path to Madison Square Garden wasn’t a straight line so much as a habit. He was 65 when the Knicks’ celebration reached its peak, and people around him describe the same steady guy—baggy sweatshirts, drills, sprints—whether he was working in the NBA or on a court minutes from home.
“He was Coach Leon,” Friedman said. “He was one of us. Even now, you see him down the Shore, and you’d never know that he’s the person that he is.”
In 1975, Rose was introduced to the Cherry Hill East program by head coach John Valore. When Valore met Rose in 1975. Rose was coaching junior varsity and Rose was a freshman with a problem every coach in South Jersey understood too well: he was undersized compared to his teammates. But the point guard played above his stature. If there was a loose ball, he dove for it. If there was a charge, he took it.
Valore admired that toughness. When Valore moved to varsity job in 1976-77, he brought Rose with him.
Cherry Hill East at the time was viewed as a “doormat,” in Valore’s words. Rose helped change that. He wasn’t a vocal leader, but he built an unselfish culture from the ground up with direct, honest conversations about roles and behavior on and off the court.
He also demanded effort through the way he played. South Jersey competition was stiff, with teams like Camden and Haddon Heights featuring players who were 6-foot-2, 6-3. Rose, by contrast, was about 5-7, 5-8, 5-9. Valore remembered it simply: “He was a player that had to compete harder and tougher than the person he competed against.”.
Those high school choices translated into results. When Rose arrived, the varsity team finished just above .500. By the time he graduated, it had become one of the best teams in its conference.
But Valore said what stayed with him most wasn’t only the wins—it was Rose’s character. During a practice in 1979, Valore pulled his co-captain over. Valore’s wife, Joyce, had just given birth to their first child, J.C. The coach wanted Rose to be the boy’s godfather.
“[Leon] was 17 years old,” Valore said. “and I saw everything I wanted to see. He was an exceptional person with relating to other people. He was something special.”
Valore said Rose went back to his dad and explained the situation, and his dad gave the thumbs-up. “And the rest is history.”
Rose eventually went through Dickinson College. where he played basketball. before returning to Cherry Hill East in 1983 as an assistant coach. At 22 years old, he was impactful on the bench in the same way he had been on the floor. Over three seasons, Cherry Hill East produced four Division I players. One of those four, Nick Katsikis, later contributed to Seton Hall’s run to the 1989 NCAA championship game.
In time, Rose moved on from collegiate coaching. He joined Valore’s staff in the early 1980s while studying at Temple’s law school. then worked as an assistant coach through the late 1980s at Rutgers-Camden. while holding a day job at the Camden County prosecutor’s office. Rose left collegiate coaching in 1988, but people close to him say he never stopped showing up for basketball.
Decades later, that same habit reappeared through volunteer coaching at the Katz JCC.
By the mid-2000s, Rose had a Rolodex filled with star-studded clients, including Allen Iverson and LeBron James. But he still served as a volunteer coach at the Katz JCC, preparing teams to compete in the Maccabi Games.
Ed Vernick. who moved from Philadelphia to South Jersey in the early 1980s while Rose was coaching. became part of that world. The two became friends at the gym, and Vernick explained how Rose found a way to make effort feel personal. Vernick was about to go on a trip to Ocean City and wanted a good place to work out. Rose overheard him, ripped off a piece of paper, and scribbled down an address.
Vernick didn’t know who the young lawyer was, but he followed the suggestion. A few days later, while he was running on a treadmill in that Ocean City gym, he saw Rose walking by.
“He goes, ‘I just wanted to make sure you got here,’” Vernick said. “What a nice guy. I’m thinking, ‘Who does that?’ It was just one of those things that caught me.”
About two decades later, when Rose was starting to coach basketball at the Katz JCC, he asked Vernick to be his assistant. Together, they spent the summer of 2004 preparing Cherry Hill-area kids for the Maccabi Games, a youth athletic competition for Jewish athletes from all over the world.
Parents and players said Rose took it as seriously as the NBA Finals. He crafted rosters carefully, then ran the work. Once the team was constructed, he spent July running them into the ground with switch drills, sprints, and tap drills.
The week before the Games was the toughest. Players trained twice a day, arriving at the gym at 6:30 a.m. and returning at 2 p.m. Friedman remembered what it felt like in the moment, and what it meant later.
“He got into us,” Friedman said. “But it got us ready. It got us prepared. It got us in shape. I hated it during it, but, looking back, those were memories I’ll never forget.”
The time investment was heavy for someone with a high-powered NBA business, but Rose stayed involved before and after his son, Sam, and daughter, Brooke, were eligible to play.
He also went beyond what was expected of a volunteer. One year, Friedman said Rose took the team up to the Poconos for an exhibition game at Pine Forest Camp, known for its basketball program.
“He’s driving us up to play an exhibition game like it’s an NBA team,” Friedman said. “He didn’t have to do that as a coach. But he did whatever he could to get us prepped and ready to win a gold medal.”
Vernick estimated about 80% of the team came from Cherry Hill East. Rose also often called Valore to ask about certain players.
In 2004, South Jersey’s 16-and-under Maccabi team faced Washington, D.C., for the gold medal. Vernick described the style of defense as something you could hear.
“I remember I could hear sneakers squeaking the whole game,” Vernick said, “and I just smiled. And I thought, ‘This is the way you play defense.’”
South Jersey lost the game 42-40, but it won gold the following year in Minneapolis.
Rose spent six summers coaching at the JCC throughout the 2000s, winning two gold and two silver medals. He looked and acted like any other coach—wearing Cherry Hill East basketball gear and sweatpants.
He rarely discussed who he represented or what he did for work, but players sometimes caught glimpses.
When Friedman was a senior at Cherry Hill East, Rose arranged a surprise for his alma mater in March 2010. The Cleveland Cavaliers were in town, and after practice their coach visited the high school team and answered questions. Valore said the coach who stopped by would be the person who led the Knicks to a championship 16 years later.
“He had Mike Brown come over,” Valore said. “He was fantastic. Off the cuff, not scripted. He gave a wonderful speech to the kids.”
The hometown connection didn’t disappear with the Knicks’ success. Rose and his family live in New York now, but they remain close to Cherry Hill. His 88-year-old father, Zev, still resides in the area and is a regular at the Katz JCC.
Every once in a while, Rose sends a limo to drive Zev and 81-year-old Valore to Madison Square Garden. They were in the building for Game 4, sitting near the team president.
For a while, it didn’t look like destiny. The Knicks fell behind early and trailed by 29 points in the third quarter. Then the comeback arrived in the fourth, and they finished it on an OG Anunoby tip-in.
Valore watched Game 5 at home in South Jersey. When it ended just past midnight, he texted Rose. The message stayed brief, but Valore’s choice of words carried the memory of what Rose had done decades earlier.
He thought about the undersized point guard who changed a culture when he was in high school. He thought about how he did it again, decades later, in New York—the same kind of hard work, and the same happiness it brought to their corner of South Jersey.
“Thank you,” Valore wrote to Rose, “and God bless.”
Leon Rose New York Knicks Cherry Hill East Katz JCC Maccabi Games John Valore Seth Friedman OG Anunoby Mike Brown James Dolan