Fixing the New York Knicks: A Hard Task, Made Harder
The Knicks are a disaster — who only make it worse on themselves.
This job wasn’t supposed to be easy. Phil Jackson undertook a tough responsibility to turn the New York Knicks around, a once proud basketball institution that was amidst a long run of incompetence and general dysfunction. Phil was supposed to be the grownup, the guy who would turn the media narrative around, the guy that would institute his cultural values and basketball vision that resulted in his 11 championship rings.
While this job wasn’t supposed to be easy, it wasn’t supposed to be as hard as Phil Jackson has made it.
To make the discussion of the Carmelo Anthony and Phil Jackson dynamic simple, let us assume that Phil Jackson had no choice but to give Carmelo the full five-year max with an NTO (No Trade Clause). Although this can be disputed, especially considering that the Knicks were essentially bidding against themselves (especially in regards to the clause), we can move past this point.
What makes people great in one field doesn’t necessarily make them great in another. Being a great businessman doesn’t automatically mean you’ll be a great sports team owner or be able to be a successful politician. A great player doesn’t always make a great coach, and a great coach doesn’t always make a great GM/team executive.
To achieve the heights that Phil Jackson reached as a coach, a top 3 coach of all time, he was able to parlay his basketball knowledge, life philosophies, and his daily wit and wisdom in a unique fashion. He poked and prodded players, challenged them, pushed them to their limits and was able to do so successfully.
Jackson maximized the abilities of volatile players such as Ron Artest, Dennis Rodman, and got Michael Jordan to adapt into a team-oriented player. Phil Jackson navigated the difficulty of managing egos in locker rooms, worked through the Shaq and Kobe wars, all while creating “creative tension” to keep his teams engaged.
Was it risky at times to let tension be created? Sure, but he was there every day, the players knew they were in this competitive battle on a nightly basis together, and he had proven championship success. All of these things worked — as a coach.
Cut to present, and the way that Phil Jackson has handled Carmelo Anthony, this season especially, screams of a person who is unable to completely change who he is to adapt to a very different job in the front office. It’s not entirely his fault of course, for Jackson isn’t some young impressionable kid. This is who he has always been and the foresight to see these qualities don’t work in a front office should’ve would’ve been had by a better owner.
Jackson is a coach and always will be a coach. He has believed that he can “show” Carmelo Anthony how to adapt to his game. He believed that by hiring Derek Fisher, he could implement the values of the triangle from afar by osmosis and then felt Kurt Rambis could do the same. What Jackson has failed to understand is there is no prior success for him to rest his laurels on any more.
The league respects Phil Jackson the coach, not the executive. Instead of building his coalition through the media — which is something a coach should do — he needed to build his coalition from within. He has had years to connect with Anthony, but has chosen to “coach” him, failing to understand that he has hired coaches to do that exact job. What’s bothering about this situation is that there are more self-inflicted wounds in this story than there need to be.
Imagine an alternative universe where Phil Jackson, seasoned executive lives. Phil Jackson culls a personal relationship that is largely positive, criticizes sparingly, but uses his coaching staff to get the “negative” message across. Any time Carmelo Anthony feels his coaches go too far, or doesn’t feel the support from ownership — guess who’s there to help? Phil the philosopher, the guy with the rings and years of experience! Phil Jackson utilizes his media cohort, to write whatever Phil wants him to, to extol the virtues of Carmelo Anthony and Phil’s appreciation for Carmelo’s loyalty to the organization and city.
Then, as things start falling apart starting this past summer, instead of going after Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah to build a team to stay afloat for Melo while Porzingis develops, you parlay your relationship with Carmelo Anthony and have the “difficult conversation”. You know, the conversation that Phil Jackson is having on Twitter in regards to a Kevin Ding article? Have that conversation behind closed doors. Explain to Anthony that you’ve done everything you can, but you failed to make a team worthy of him and his loyalty.
From an asset perspective, Carmelo’s contract is now very affordable given the cap spike last summer, and because of all the good press — teams are more willing to make offers! Hell, is Blake Griffin all of a sudden a possibility given how last year’s Clippers finished?
Doesn’t Carmelo Anthony have to be more open to leaving in this scenario? Doesn’t he feel more support in general? What did this kind of hypothetical strategy cost Phil Jackson?
If there’s one thing the Knicks do well, it’s to make their lives harder than they need to be. In creating martyrs out of beloved MSG citizens like Carmelo Anthony and Charles Oakley, the Knicks front office and ownership continues to reap what they sow.
Phil — this job was so hard, why did you make it even harder?
