Fisher wins gutter-ball matchup with old team
NEW YORK — Just over a week ago, the people in charge of programming at ESPN decided that Sunday afternoon’s contest between the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers was no longer worthy of a national television audience.
So while the teams played at Madison Square Garden, the network instead aired the CP3 PBA Invitational, a charity bowling tournament organized by Chris Paul of the Los Angeles Clippers, which took place over three weeks ago at the Bowl-O-Drome in Torrance, Calif.
It comes down to personal taste, ultimately, whether a taped event featuring entertainers like Lil Wayne and Nick Cannon bowling alongside current and former professional athletes was more compelling than the basketball game, which the Knicks won, 92-80.
On paper, there was nothing particularly enticing about the matchup at the Garden. Both teams have been abysmal this year; the Knicks improved to 10-38 on Sunday while the Lakers fell to 13-35.
More interesting than the game on some level were the interpersonal relationships. The game was the first between the clubs since Phil Jackson, who won five of his 11 championships as a coach while with the Lakers, had signed on to become the president of the Knicks. Among his first orders of business in New York was installing a staff heavy with former Lakers.
Derek Fisher, who played under Jackson on each of his five title teams with Los Angeles, said it was less about having former Lakers than it was about having “winners.”
The challenge, Fisher said, was solving the question “how do we kind of put our experience and our wisdom and our skills and our talents together to help our players be successful on the court?”
The Lakers in the past have used high-profile acquisitions to try to stay in the trophy hunt — an approach that has had mixed results.
Fisher pointed out that many teams, like the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Portland Trail Blazers, had been effective building their rosters through the draft and smart free-agent signings. Such teams, Fisher said, tend to have more stability and longevity than those that make splashy acquisitions.
Fisher said the Knicks probably needed to be somewhere in the middle of those two approaches, particularly because of Carmelo Anthony, who signed a five-year contract over the summer.
“He’s 30 years old,” Fisher said of Anthony. “We don’t have 10 years to figure this out.”
Still, he said, the Knicks cannot afford to “put ourselves in the same positions we’ve been in the last few years, where you try and get a bunch of guys that don’t have favorable contracts or don’t allow you to plan for the future.”
Many of the biggest names on the teams’ rosters were on the disabled list — the most notable absence being Kobe Bryant, who had surgery last week to repair a torn rotator cuff in his right shoulder, an injury that will sideline him for the rest of the season.
Anthony was the only star player on the court, and it showed. He scored a gamehigh 31 points.
Carlos Boozer, in his 13th NBA season, came off the Lakers’ bench to score 19 points.
The reserve guard Jeremy Lin, who became an overnight sensation three years ago as a member of the Knicks, finished the game with four points and seven assists.