SHOOTING FROM THE LIP
With 11 coaches in last 14 years, what makes us think Knicks are going to get it right this time with Fizdale?
The Yankees are big news because they hardly ever lose these days. Matt Harvey is big news because he can’t win, and finally got released by the Mets when he refused an assignment to the minor leagues. And the Knicks hired a new coach in David Fizdale. That is mostly how the Knicks make news, for a long time. They lead the league in that. They hire a new coach, at which point their fans are told that things are going to be different this time. Except that while the coaches come and go, the top of the permanent government at Madison Square Garden — James L. Dolan and Steve Mills — remains the same.
You know all of the dreary math on the Knicks by now, even as amazing math at the Garden — somehow they continue to fill the place to watch the home team play basketball — remains as constant as the city’s traffic. It is now 11 coaches in 14 years, during which they have had the worst winning percentage in the league. They have won one playoff series in the last 18 years, during which time they’ve lost more games than anybody in their league.
The last time they were in the NBA Finals was 19 years ago, against the Spurs. The last time they were close to the Finals was the next year, when a wounded, veteran team made it to the sixth game of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Pacers.
Now they hire Fizdale, a fine coach and one who must think he’s eminently prepared to coach the Knicks after the way the roof caved in on him after such a promising beginning when he was coaching the Memphis Grizzlies. And maybe he can be the one who finally begins to turn things around at the Garden. Maybe this can be a new beginning for the Knicks.
It is the way to root. Just not the way to bet, at a place where almost everybody who coaches there leaves as damaged goods. The only exception — now — is Mike D’Antoni, who has landed himself a winner with James Harden and Chris Paul and the 2017-18 Houston Rockets. But Mike is the exception rather than the rule.
Mike Woodson’s record as head coach of the Knicks was 109-70. After he took over for D’Antoni, the Knicks finished 18-6 and made the playoffs. The next year they were 54-28 and won the Atlantic Division and Carmelo finished third in the MVP voting and J.R. Smith was Sixth Man of the Year. Before he got to New York Woodson had a 53-29 record with the Hawks one year. He is a good, tough, smart NBA lifer, currently working for Doc Rivers in Los Angeles. He has not gotten a head coaching offer since Phil Jackson fired him in favor of Derek Fisher (and send up a flare when Fisher gets his next head job). Woodson proves that even when you win at the Garden, you usually end up losing.
You want it to be different for Fizdale. You want nearly two decades of Biblical losing at the Garden to end, because loyal and passionate Knick fans deserve that, and more. But one thing everybody must do is stop talking about how the Garden is still some kind of mecca that will attract the best basketball talent. Young guys don’t care about romantic notions like that out of the distant past. Young, talented basketball guys just want to be winners. And all they have seen from the
Knicks, these young guys, for almost all of their lives, is losing.
We are currently told that Mills and general manager Scott Perry have a long-range plan in place, one that is different from the plans of the past. We are told that there is a brand spanking new path forward now. But please stop me if you’ve heard that one before. You know when you can allow yourself to believe there’s a sensible and solid path forward for the Knicks? When you’re no longer hearing or reading a single story or thinking or dreaming or even believing that LeBron James is part of that plan. Knick fans will still be talking about getting LeBron if his son is in the league someday.
Do I believe that James Dolan wants to win? Absolutely I do. He has shown that he is willing to spend big to win. But at this point, there is no evidence, none, that after nearly two decades of being the big boss at the Garden, after essentially deposing Dave Checketts after an era — the 90s — during which the Knicks produced two trips to the NBA Finals and made a Knicks ticket the hottest in town again, Dolan has any idea how to win.
He remains the big boss of the place. Steve Mills remains his top basketball lieutenant. Scott Perry is now the chief personnel guy after Phil Jackson and Donnie Walsh and Glen Grunwald and Isiah Thomas were chief personnel guys on 33rd St. The merry-go-round just keeps going ‘round. Now the management structure is Dolan-Mills-Perry-Fizdale. They’re the ones going up against Danny Ainge and Brad Stevens, the best coach anywhere, in Boston. They’re going up against the young talent currently on display in Philly. And against LeBron. And the Warriors. And the Rockets.
“It’s going to take time,” Steve Mills was quoted as saying in April. “And that’s been one of our issues over the years, that we tried to do it with quick fixes.” Even though he was right there in the war room for so many of those quick fixes.
So the Knicks have a new coach. This is supposed to be another new beginning. There is another path forward, into the future. The problem is that the Knicks always make you think about the last line of “The Great Gatsby,” the one about beating on against the current, borne ceaselessly back into the past. Maybe that’s the problem with the Knicks. How often everything new always seems old again.