Old Phil out of New York
The New York Knicks are finally rid of Phil Jackson.
The demolition derby that was Phil Jackson’s three year tenure with the New York Knicks is finally over, much to the joy of Knicks fans everywhere.
It was one bad move after another.
Trading away JR Smith, Iman Shumpert, Tyson Chandler and up and coming youngster Tim Hardaway Jr. Trading for Derrik Rose, signing Joakim Noah to a multi-year deal. Attempting to ostracize Carmelo Anthony enough to get him out of New York.
Do I really need to continue?
The only truly great thing he did for the Knick’s franchise was drafting Kristaps Porzingas, and even then he pissed off the Unicorn enough to make him skip this season’s exit meeting. The Zen Master went as far as to entertain trade offers for the 7'3" Latvian stretch-five.
Say those words to yourself. Phil Jackson almost tried to trade a 7'3 dude who shoots 36% from 3 because he couldn’t play the freaking triangle. What the actual Hell.
To summarize; he traded away a plethora of young key pieces, receiving pennies on the dollar in return. He attempted to get rid of their franchise player in Anthony, and he even considered trading away their future star. To add insult to injury he saddled the team with Rose and Noah, both who are well past the best before dates.
Let the healing begin.
It’s not that surprising to me, to be honest. Everyone looks at Phil Jackson as some human manifestation of a basketball god, but is he really that great of a basketball mind? Yes; he has more championship rings than he does fingers, and he helped create two basketball dynasties. But when you get down to the brass tacks, he did this while coaching Hall-of-Famers Scottie Pippen, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, and His Royal Airness Michael Jordan. When you boast rosters that have Jordan and Pippen (insert supporting cast, but really who cares) or Kobe and Shaq (again, who really cares who else is on the team) you better be winning championships, or you’d find yourself in the unemployment line. A trained chimpanzee could have taken those four players from those two teams and turned them into perennial champions.
This begs the question; did Jackson make his players great, or did he just end up looking great because of the players he had? I tend to side with the latter.
The Knicks have been terrible all three years that Jackson was pulling the strings. They’ve had multiple coaches come and go, and the roster changed so frequently that even the most die-hard Knicks fans found themselves asking “whose wearing number…?” They had some great players over those three years so why did they play like a pile of what I find in my daughter’s diapers? For the first two years the answer always seemed to be “they can’t figure out” how to run Jackson’s signature Triangle offense.
These are professional ball players who have spent their entire lives playing the sport. They have all had multiple coaches with multiple offensive philosophies, so why was it so hard to learn one “tried and true” system?
The answer? The triangle doesn’t work anymore. It was the players on the floor who made something out of nothing. The league is way too three-ball dominant for a system predicated on making twos to be successful.
The good news is that it’s all over. Jackson has been chased out of town and the Knicks get a chance at a fresh start.
The bad news? It’s going to be a few years until the Knicks will be able to compete in the East against the likes of the Cavaliers, Celtics and Raptors.
Alex Scantlebury is a multi-sport contributor for theocho.ca. He is a professor for the Algonquin College public relations program. Aaron and Riley would like to thank him for giving them an extra hour each week to spend on Bleacher Report while he was teaching. Follow Alex on Twitter at@pen_ink_page.
