Jax can’t fail in his dual mission
PHIL Jackson joined the Knicks to much love and more lucre 28 months ago, a monetary mercenary recruited to make the team’s desperately loyal fans forget the better part of 15 years whose memory belongs in a wood chipper on Jackson’s Montana ranch. That was the Garden’s plan, anyway. Jackson’s Plan? Well, that’s been a decidedly mixed bag. Credit him for listening to his adviser Clarence Gaines Jr. and picking Kristaps Porzingis. Credit him for thinking outside the box with Derrick Rose, a transaction that also makes better sense of his decision to retain Carmelo Anthony.
Blame him for … well, the line forms on the right.
But the next few days, and the next few weeks, ought to give us a better, fuller idea of how we may look back on the Jackson Era. It’s really quite simple. Jackson has one mission to accomplish right now. Don’t screw this up. It will be a delicate balancing act Jackson must negotiate, one that services the coming year (with Rose, Anthony and Porzingis as the team’s foundation) with 2017 and beyond (when a deep and likely more attainable crop of free agents hits the market, and when Porzingis will be the prime building block around which all Knicks decisions are crafted).
Kevin Durant has been nice enough to tease Knicks fans with proximity, if little else, in the same way LeBron James unwittingly taunted them by broadcasting his Decision six years ago from Connecticut. Durant has spent some quality time in and around Manhattan the last week, and he’ll take his free-agency meetings in the Hamptons. But he’s not walking through that door.
So the one no-brainer of free agency is a non-factor and a non-starter for the Knicks, unless it turns out Carmelo has a bit of John Calipari in him as a recruiter. And even then, the Knicks would be a harder sell to Durant than a used Betamax.
So it’s going to be tricky for Jackson, some hard decisions to make, some hard priorities to impose on himself. And you know what? It should be hard. It should require some skill. The idea behind making $12 million a year is that you’re good at this. And if Jackson hasn’t always been good in these f irst 28 months on the job, he needs to be now.
So as much as, say, the notion of Dwight Howard might be tempting, Howard can’t be on Jackson’s radar now. Howard didn’t walk away from $23.2 million because he’s grown tired of money. He’s going to cost, and he’s not worth the commitment.
Better to decide between whether Joakim Noah is worth a flier (he comes with the same kind of recent injury history Rose does) or if you want to turn back the clock and bring back Timofey Mozgov. Neither of them is Willis Reed, of course, but on a team with Porzingis, Anthony and Rose, they both would be able complements, and wouldn’t ransack the salary cap long-term.
It’ s similar thinking that might make Jamal Crawford and Courtney Lee ideal candidates to be the Knicks’ shortterm answer at shooting guard. If, as it seems, Atlanta’s Kent Bazemore — who would be a terrific fit — is in line to secure a windfall that would mean more years and more dollars than the Knicks are comfortable with, then Crawford or Lee make the most sense to keep the Knicks in their present balance: Win some now, but stay disciplined in order to win bigger starting next year.
That plan, by the way, is the right course to take. At some point you have to stop asking your fans to wait a year, to wait two years, to wait until Free Agent X or Free Agent Y is available, to wait, wait, wait, wait …
Half the NBA is in a perpetual state of rebuilding. As romantic a notion as that’s supposed to be, it’s quicksand and it’s competitive death. And if tanking is such a sure-fire remedy, how do you explain the Sixers?
What Jackson has started here is noble, trying to kickstart a winning culture smartly and cautiously. He has to stay to that course. He has to trust himself. Most of all, he has to be right. Forget whether his legacy could sustain a misstep here. The franchise itself would be crushed — again — if he’s wrong.