Noah by himself is fine. Rose by himself is fine. Gordon by himself is fine. But when you take this all-eggs-in-one-basket approach with THREE players who're in a moribund state to partner your franchise player who has his fair share of health concerns, you're not exactly putting yourself in the best position you possibly can to win (especially with the physical demands of an up-tempo offense). Not only do you handcuff your hopes to a minute % that all these players will remain relatively healthy and develop chemistry (prep and ready for the playoffs) in a vacuum, but you also have to make sure there's an adequate second unit in place to balance out their minutes so that they can stay healthy and remain effective, and take over if any of them go down.
But lets put this probability scale in its proper frame and context.
Measure these probabilities versus entering the season with a backcourt of grant, calderon, and lopez as your starting center. Whats the probability that a 24 year old mediocre talent in grant, who shot 22% from 3 and below 40% overall, wakes up and becomes an All-star? Whats the probability that Calderon reverses the clock and becomes a great player again? Whats the probability that lopez plays like anything more than the average journeyman center he's been his whole career?
Thats the reality of what we were facing. Now if we were mortgaging our future and trading first round picks and players like KP for Rose/Noah/etc then I could see your point. But the known quantity we were heading into the season with w/o major moves was another season of meaningless basketball.
And with that what are the probabilities that a guaranteed losing season would be a net positive? What kind of draft selection would we secure with Melo and KP playing this year? Would a slot somewhere in the 7-13 lottery position be an effective payoff for yet another wasted knick season? Whats the probability of selecting a franchise cornerstone? Do we really want to become the sacramento kings and win 25-35 games and get an okayish prospect every year? For what? Draft is important, but im not a draft fetish guy.
Rose and Noah come with risk, but everything does. Its a reasonable expectation that a 27 and 31 year old can shake off injury plagued years, versus hoping that players like Grant and Lopez can become players they never were and have little hope to no hope of ever being.
Im not a cat that considers inactivity to be a better than failure. I'd rather the knicks make calculated bold moves like this, versus resign ourselves to playing loser ball with the hope that ping pong balls will bounce our way in April.