The New York Knicks, since firing head coach Derek Fisher, have been in a state of ‘who’s the next coach’ limbo from the media, talking heads and fans alike. Taking the helm at one of the most popular and expensive NBA franchises, despite their lack of championships, is one of the most coveted positions in the NBA. Regardless of who gets the job, the new Knicks coach is in for a tough challenge ahead.
The last time the Knicks raised a championship banner, in the world’s most famous arena – Madison Square Garden – Walt ‘Clyde’ Frazier, Willis Reed, Bill Bradley, Earl ‘the Pearl’ Monroe, and Dave Debusschere graced the sidelines. Not even the Patrick Ewing led-Knicks, with Charles Oakley, Larry Johnson, and John Starks, could return the team to prominence during the 1990’s, coming up just short of winning one, if not two crowns.
Over the last fifteen years, the team has had nine head coaches, including stints with Lenny Wilkens, Herb Williams, Larry Brown, and who can forget those horrible days of Isiah Thomas. Mike Woodson was the only coach during that time that had a winning record. After Jeff Van Gundy, the Knicks have been one big mess, and despite the amount of money that owner James Dolan has spent on free agents, it hasn’t brought any glory to the franchise.
So, what makes anyone think that bringing in a new coach, at this juncture, will automatically make them that much better? You can’t make lemonade from rotten lemons, nor can you turn this current roster into a playoff caliber team. Sure, they are much better than the seventeen win debacle from last season, and ‘fun to watch,’ but as far as competing against the best of the East and West every night, it’s not even a competition.
Tom Thibodeau, Luke Walton, Phil Jackson, and even Gregg Popovich, can’t make the Knicks into a championship caliber team – at least not this season. Unfortunately, the fans have been so burnt and disgruntled by the team’s performance over the last four decades that they would take anything right now, even a chance of making the playoffs as an eighth seed, and getting their doors blown off in the first round.
Carmelo Anthony, clearly the marquee player on the team, is certainly showing his age, despite playing his best all around game since coming from Denver to New York. Kristaps Porzingis is a rare find in this year’s freshman class of rookies, despite fans and the media ripping the pick at the NBA draft. After that, there are a lot of good role players – NBA talented – but lacking the kind of cohesiveness that will bring them into the top echelon of the NBA.
For starters, they don’t have a bona fide point guard who can run the floor like Steph Curry, Russell Westbrook, or Chris Paul. Heck, they can’t even boast a top twenty guard in the league. Jose Calderon is old, doesn’t defend the lane at all, and is a shell of his former self. Without someone truly running the floor each and every night, the team will continue to suffer those poor performances that have plagued them all season.
They don’t have anyone really waiting in the wings at the guard position either, as Aaron Afflalo, Langston Galloway, and Jerian Grant are all nice players, but who knows how much they can rely on them going forward. Grant is young, but the jury is still out on his overall game. Afflalo looks like he may not be around next season, if he seeks a big payday, and he shoots too much. Galloway gets a lot of looks, but he’s too one dimensional.
Robin Lopez, Derrick Williams, and Lou Amundson certainly can’t be counted on to take on the likes of LeBron James and Paul George over the course of the season, much less the playoffs. Again, it’s a decent roster of good NBA players, but it’s nothing to write home about, and certainly won’t make the Knicks a great team moving forward.
Perhaps everyone needs to take a deep breath, and let the Zen Master, Phil Jackson, work his magic and see what happens over the course of the next year or so. The problem is that Jackson has an opt-out clause this summer, and he can leave New York for the sunnier climates of Los Angeles and his fiancee Jeannie Buss of the Lakers. The plan he started to put in place last year seems to be working – albeit slow – for Knicks fans. Patience is not a virtue in New York.
Jackson shed some really horrible salaries and got rid of dead wood players like J.R. Smith and underachieving Iman Shumpert. His offseason moves, like drafting Porzingis, and getting really smart free agent contracts, have left them in a good position to use a lot of cap space to try and sign top free agents after the season ends. But what happens if Jackson decides to leave, hires a coach that the next President and GM doesn’t want, and they have to start all over again?
The Knicks don’t have a first round draft choice this year, having given it away to Toronto in that infamous and forgettable Andrea Bargnani trade in 2013. New York fans are still hurting over that one, but it’s a pattern that the team’s brass has continued to make year after year. They have yet to dig out of the black hole of giving away quality, young talent coming out of college. Jackson may be looking to buck that trend by actually starting to use future draft choices on future stars for the Knicks, but is he going to stay and see it through?
Regardless of whether interim head coach Kurt Rambis, and his knowledge of the ‘triangle,’ can win the Knicks enough games to get into this year’s playoffs, it won’t solve the long-term problem that the team faces. The next coach, whomever that is, will have to be able to run the Knicks in his own style – not one that Jackson believes should be employed. That was Fisher’s downfall. He not only couldn’t make the triangle work, but his statements about how the team was playing didn’t put him in good graces with management. Everyone knows that Jim Dolan is thin skinned.
Knicks fans have been more than patient with this team over the years, continue to pay top dollar to attend those games at the Garden, and are still one of the top draws in New York. At some point, Dolan has to stop wasting dollars on bad free agents and actually put together some semblance of a winning team. That will start with a quality head coach, but an individual that will be able to run the team without someone looking over his shoulder. Until that day, the Knicks will just be fodder for more and more negative chatter from everyone throughout the NBA, living up to the reputation of a losing franchise that no one wants to play for.
