Knicks owe their coach time to grow
WE TEND to look at coaching as a zero-sum game: You’ve either got the goods to be a champion, and quickly, or you don’t. You’re either BeliSaban or you’re Kotite. You either get a parade. Or you get a pink slip. Too few coaches ever are given the chance to do what we routinely expect athletes to do: get better. Improve at their craft. Learn from early mistakes while also building on early success. The Jets, of all teams, opted for the outlier path by deciding to stick with Todd Bowles, despite howls of protest from a significant segment of their fan base. Is Bowles a great — or even a good — coach? Based on his first 48 games, the answer would have to be no. But has he shown enough during that first 10-6 season and this second successive 5-11 season — that was earmarked by so many to be 2-14 — to suggest a good coach lurks inside of him? The Jets thought so. They’ll find out for sure soon enough. The same methodology ought to apply to Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek now. The Knicks are 20-25 heading into a Friday night game in Salt Lake City, Game 3 of the seven-game road trip that has caused so much angst and consternation already. On the one hand, that probably is a better mark than most of us had the Knicks pegged for after 45 games of what was billed as a strict rebuild. That’s on Hornacek. On the other, there have absolutely been games — and more than a couple — the Knicks have lost along the way that they absolutely shouldn’t have lost, in which the Knicks either failed to show or simply were outmaneuvered down the stretch. Wednesday’s no-show in Memphis joins a blurry list of losses to the likes of the Bulls (three of them!) and Hawks and Magic and Pelicans. And that’s on him, too. Bottom line: It is absolutely feasible for the Knicks to have exceeded expectations — and also to have underachieved. Which means it’s absolutely viable to say Hornacek has done a terrific job — and also a terrible one. There really is a gray area in sports, even if we’re usually far too impatient to acknowledge it.
In truth, in a fair world, Jeff Hornacek — still a relatively young, relatively new coach — should be allowed the same learning curve as, say, Kristaps Porzingis. Porzingis still is celebrated as much for what he’s expected to become as for what he already is — we assume that properly motivated athletes with talent and ambition will improve by a distinct percentage each year. So why can’t Hornacek? Why can’t he get better? I would argue he’s already better in tangible ways this year than he was last, probably due to the fact he feels freer to be himself without a zen shadow strangling him. Even his unpopular personnel choices — and there are plenty — have yet to manifest themselves in a mutinous locker room. That’s a definite plus.
It’s also the hardest part of getting better as a coach. The Xs and Os? You get better at those through reps. A coaching friend of mine once told me, “You need a couple hundred games before you really know what you’re doing. And then a couple hundred more to prove it.” But coaches are rarely afforded those kinds of extended apprenticeships.
Todd Bowles was, and this is fact: 5-11 isn’t the Super Bowl (or even the playoffs), but it is absolutely a damn sight better than 1-15 or 2-14. He did a terrific job — and also a terrible one. The Jets believe he’ll get better. And he’d better get better.
Same deal with Hornacek, who has absolutely helped make the Knicks watchable again — and has absolutely helped sabotage them, too. Can he get better? He’d better get better. But he needs time to find that out in full. So do
the Knicks.