Carmelo: Jackson ‘coming on board’ with Knicks

Carmelo Anthony said Wednesday that he has heard Phil Jackson will be ''coming on board'' with the New York Knicks, the strongest indication yet that the 11- time NBA champion coach will soon be taking over the team's basketball operations.

Anthony went as far as to suggest that it's no longer a question of if Jackson will rejoin the Knicks, but when.

'' Everything's in his hands now,'' Anthony told reporters in Boston at the Knicks' gameday shootaround practice.

Neither the Knicks nor Jackson had any immediate comment. Jackson played on the Knicks' last championship team in 1973, and later went on to win six NBA titles as a coach with the Chicago Bulls and five more with the Los Angeles Lakers.

''I'm agnostic as to what team, but I would love to see Phil Jackson'' back in the league, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Wednesday after speaking to the Boston College Chief Executives' Club of Boston.

'' To have one of the greatest ever sitting on the sidelines is a loss for the league,'' Silver added. ''The league needs him. I hope he lands with some organization.''

Jackson, 68, has said in the past that teams have tried to lure him back to the NBA, and there has been speculation for several days that this offer from the Knicks would be good enough to get him to interrupt retirement. Jackson has been out of the league and largely out of the public eye since 2011, when he ended his coaching stint with the Lakers.