Knicks should take hard look at bringing back Jeff Van Gundy
NEW YORK — Here is the partnership for which Knick fans should be rooting, at this time when they don’t have a real basketball team to root for: James Dolan throws so much money at Masai Ujiri that Ujiri somehow agrees to leave the Raptors and come run the basketball operation at Madison Square Garden. If he does, then he brings Jeff Van Gundy back to coach the team.
David Fizdale is the latest coach to take the fall for the failures of a Knicks’ front office, which these days means Steve Mills and Scott Perry, both of whom are out of their depth in their current jobs. Of course, they’re working for an owner — Dolan — as much out of his depth as any owner in professional sports at this time. Him or Daniel Snyder. Too close to call.
Masai Ujiri has now won one more NBA title than the Knicks have won since 1973. He would bring instant and immense credibility with him. This wouldn’t be like Dolan hiring Phil Jackson to run the Knicks, the equivalent of hiring a singer and expecting him to be a dancer. Ujiri is the guy who made the deal for Kawhi Leonard knowing he might only have him for a year. Ujiri took his shot anyway, knowing you couldn’t quantify what it would mean to Toronto and to Canada for the Raptors to win it all.
They did win it all, in the greatest sports moment in the history of that country. And even with Leonard playing for the Clippers now, it’s not as if the Raptors have closed up shop. They still have come out of the blocks looking like one of the better teams in the Eastern Conference, if not the best. The city knows Van Gundy. He was the last Knicks coach to hear his name chanted at the Garden in a good way. Everybody saw the job he did after Dave Checketts decided to fire Don Nelson. Knicks fans know that Van Gundy’s team might have been on its way to a championship in 1997 until Charlie Ward and P.J Brown got into a fight at the end of Game 5 in Miami.
Van Gundy finally quit the Knicks in December of 2001. Checketts was gone by then. Van Gundy followed him out the door. The Knicks have won one playoff series since. Van Gundy went to Houston and then to television. He is still a coach. And if he does have one more job left in him, it should be this job, provided he can work with the right general manager.
Van Gundy would never come back under the current structure, meaning to work for Mills and Perry. And if Dolan can’t convince Ujiri to leave Toronto, he still ought to think about bringing Van Gundy back after the season, and giving Van Gundy a say about the GM with whom he could like to partner, setting up a structure not unlike the one with Gregg Popovich and R.C. Buford in San Antonio.
Obviously these aren’t the only possible solutions to fix the Knicks, who have become an embarrassment to their league, a team to actually make the Giants and Jets look good.