GIVE ME A BREAK!
Twithead Phil back on vacation instead of working to fix Knicks
Phil Jackson is either completely tone deaf or a diabolical genius daring James Dolan to give him upwards of $30 million to leave New York and return to Playa Del Rey, and into Jeanie Buss’ awaiting arms.
There has to be a method to Phil’s madness, right? Jackson has become the ultimate Twitter troll of NBA executives. Of course, it is something of an unfair fight since most executives have neither the time nor patience to compare Stephen Curry to a marginal NBA player, lunch with Bill Bradley or review Michael Keaton’s performance in “Birdman” a year after the fact. Jackson has done all that and more with his Twitter account.
Those other guys, mere mortals like Pat Riley and Gregg Popovich, are too consumed with their current jobs managing millennials to act like one. But not Phil. He keeps everyone off balance with his random and sometimes confusing social media posts that would make LeBron James envious.
On Wednesday, the hippie in Jackson tweeted a photo of the Woodstock Inn, calling it his “Urban escape/spring break.” Mind you, the Knicks season officially ends in t wo weeks, so why the team president would need a break i n late March is anyone’s guess. Especia lly si nce Jackson recently spent 10 days in Los Angeles.
Now with the Kurt Rambis-Arron Afflalo communication breakdown becoming a bigger issue each day, Jackson is reminding Dolan and the Knicks’ desperate fan base that he’s wrapping up a mini-vacation in his ’60s hideaway. The optics are not good.
The Knicks are not a well-oiled machine that can run itself like Jackson’s veteran-dominated Chicago teams of the late ’90s. They are a losing outfit that needs direction. Jackson says he fired Derek Fisher because he wouldn’t seek his input, and now with an opportunity to put his fingerprints on this team, he’s hanging out in Los Angeles and upstate in Woodstock on Dolan’s dime. Why not spend that free time around the team that will be breaking up for summer vacation in two weeks?
The leader of a team that has won 47 games over two seasons should want to project an image of a man working tirelessly to fix this mess. Instead, Phil is giving us a slide show of his vacation right before vacation officially begins. Isn’t there a D-League game to scout? There must be something going on Europe. And the last time we checked, the NCAA Tournament and the NIT, played right here at MSG, are still alive.
And to think that Dolan fired Larry Brown “for cause” when they determined Brown was using company time to call his friends around the NBA to talk basketball, players and potential trades. At least Brown wanted to work. And it must burn Dolan that the coach he promoted and liked, Mike Woodson, was the first person removed by Phil one year after a 54win season. Woodson then won 37 despite the players’ knowing he was a goner. Now look at them.
This is an interesting time for Dolan because, unlike in the 37win season, when he was being criticized for dismantling the only Knicks team in 16 years to win a playoff series, he has mostly avoided media and fan scrutiny. For $60 million, Dolan bought the most expensive shield in sports history.
But that doesn’t mean he’s happy about the current state of the club. Dolan was livid after the 54win Knicks were knocked out in