Knicks show signs of emerging from chaos
The once misguided Knicks seem to have a plan under president Steve Mills and general manager Scott Perry.
Magic Johnson noticed. Carmelo Anthony, too.
The once misguided New York Knicks seem to have a plan. The franchise that’s been good at producing chaos but not much else has the look of a professional NBA organization under president Steve Mills and general manager Scott Perry — and that’s not just on the court.
Like everyone else in the league, the two men want to win. But even before that, they want the Knicks to develop the traits of a model franchise, not the model of dysfunction that they had come to be their identity.
“I knew there were a lot of things that needed to change here and we’re in the process of doing that,” Mills said.
So far, so good. The Knicks are 16-14 heading into their game against Boston on Thursday night — not bad for a team that parted ways with its team president on the eve of free agency and then traded its leading scorer on the
eve of training camp.
“Hats off to my good friend Steve Mills. He is doing an excellent job,” Johnson wrote in a tweet after the Knicks defeated the Hall of Famer’s Lakers on Dec. 12. “The future is promising for his young Knicks.”
And, it appears, much different from the past.
Mills and Perry want the Knicks to be known as a team that competes hard, works hard, defends hard. They insist on players that will be accountable to the
team and a team that will be accountable to its fans.
The only identity the Knicks had in recent years was of a laughingstock.
“People say, ‘Can you win first and then have a culture?’ Well, what is the foundation you’re building to fall back on when you talk about being sustainable?” Perry said. “So what we want to be is a sustainable team that’s good year in and year out.”
Mills returned to the team president role he briefly held after Phil Jackson was ousted in late June and then hired Perry as his general manager shortly after. They went to work on
fixing the Knicks’ roster and reputation, trading Anthony but earning praise by showing him respect Jackson didn’t during a tumultuous final season together.
They surprised Anthony with a video tribute before his first game back at Madison Square Garden last Saturday, then the Knicks showed their former star how much things have changed by routing Oklahoma City.
“I like the potential that they have,” Anthony said. “For me, just to see those guys having fun again, knowing that it wasn’t fun. The fun was lost over the past couple of seasons.”
Mills had a firsthand view of it while serving as Jackson’s general manager. Another 50-loss season ended with the Knicks getting a clear signal of how fed up people were when Kristaps Porzingis, the young star who was being groomed to replace Anthony as the face of the franchise, skipped his exit meeting after the season.
“Everyone was frustrated. One of our players was obviously frustrated. Our fans were frustrated, we were frustrated, and so it led us to think we have to do something different and I felt strongly about it,” Mills said.