How Phil Jackson is hurting the Knicks

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/news/how-phil-jackson-is-hurting-the-knicks-140232072.html



How Phil Jackson is hurting the Knicks



Chris Mannix of The Vertical,Yahoo Sports

2 hours 31 minutes ago



NEW YORK – A playoff coach hit the market last weekend, a solid boss with a proven track record and a keen basketball mind. Dave Joerger isn’t a marquee name, but his 147-99 record in three seasons in Memphis was pretty good, and the job Joerger did navigating a battered Grizzlies team to the postseason this year was even better. Sacramento thought so, inking Joerger to a three-year, $12 million deal within days of his ouster.

The Knicks? Not so much.



Phil Jackson seems determined to keep Kurt Rambis as the Knicks' coach. (AP)


Team president Phil Jackson wants you to trust him, and man, doesn’t that get harder by the day? Joerger may not be the right fit in New York, but for one of the NBA’s flagship franchises to let another coach come off the board without even a token effort to interview him is a terrible look. The list of coaches at which the Knicks have shrugged continues to grow, while Jackson shows none of the urgency expected as the overseer of a franchise in disrepair.

It’s time to accept a certain reality: Jackson just isn’t cut out for this gig. The world has gotten bigger, and the talent pool has grown with it. An NBA executive must be a tireless workaholic, not an ex-coach who acts like his 11 championship rings make scouring the globe for talent beneath him. Jackson nailed Kristaps Porzingis, a transformative 7-foot-3 big man who will revolutionize the center position. Yet the frontrunner for the Knicks’ coaching job (incumbent Kurt Rambis) has suggested Porzingis play some small forward while staying loyal to a system (the triangle) that doesn’t seem to suit the young star.

The Knicks don’t have a pick next month, which is all the more reason for Jackson to put in the extra work. No asset is more attainable than a second-round pick, particularly from the handful of teams (Boston, New Orleans, Denver) with a few of them. Finding NBA talent there is difficult, but every year yields a Norman Powell, a Jordan Clarkson, an Allen Crabbe, and it’s often the most relentless executives who grab them.

Now is the time for Jackson to marshal his resources, not cruise through the Plains States on an ill-timed break. There’s video to be dissected, college coaches to be called, international scouts with information to be bled dry. Free agency – Jackson’s rebuilding method of choice – has changed, evolved. The magnetic pull to big markets has weakened, replaced by a marketplace of players fueled by a desire to win. New York, with its instability, its annual failures, just isn’t where the elite talent is looking to play.

For years, Knicks owner James Dolan has been derided for being too meddlesome, but this is fast becoming a situation that calls for him to step in. No one knows Jackson’s commitment to the organization, if he will opt out of his contract next summer or stay on for the full five years for which he signed. Jeanie Buss could be a year away from assuming control of basketball operations with the Los Angeles Lakers, and wouldn’t Jackson, her fiancé, a Lakers legend, be just whom Buss would want to help her?

Dolan empowered Isiah Thomas and ran off Donnie Walsh, yet here an intervention is warranted. If Jackson is determined to hire Rambis, Dolan needs to know: Will Jackson be around to see it through? The Knicks have the cash to outbid everyone for Frank Vogel and have had ongoing discussions with David Blatt. If Jackson is ready to pull the rip cord, if his heart just isn’t in it, the Knicks need to commit to a coach, not a system, to a philosophy that’s sustainable, not one Jackson is determined to make work.

Any ambiguity on Jackson’s part and Dolan needs to let him go. The Knicks have a tent-pole player in Porzingis, and they need a top executive eager to spend the next few years supplying the talent around him. Running a team isn’t a young man’s game, but it requires a young man’s hustle. Jackson is a brilliant basketball mind, but it takes more, much more to build a winner.



bob


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Jackson is hurting the Knicks probably more than they even know by trying to be the head coach without actually being the head coach.

None of his choices to be the head coach ever will be able to coach that team because 1) Jackson being so close to the court and watching every single move, and 2) Jackson forcing his offense down the throat of his head coach.  

No head coach will build a team with Jackson being so close. I would imagine that if Ainge did the same thing in Boston that we would see far less of Stevens great contributions to our team.

Forcing Jackson's offense down the throat of his head coach and his players may never work for at least three very solid reasons.  First is that the Knicks do not have similar players to what the Lakers or Bulls had that made Jackson and his triangle offense so successful and famous.  As an example, Anthony is not even close to being Jordan in Chicago or Bryant in Los Angeles. Second, probably no matter how much time his head coaching choices may have spent playing or studying the triangle none of them are going to know it like Jackson.  And, third and maybe most importantly, none of them are going to have the old assistant coach that actually taught and ran the triangle for Jackson in both Chicago and Los Angeles.  I want to say this old timer was named Tex Winters. I could be wrong on his name, but I am sure that I  am not wrong on his influence.

I keep telling one of my son-in-laws (a Knicks fan) that his team will be horrible until they get rid of this pretender. He sadly agrees.

You know the old saying, "Build it and he will come." (LOL) Well, the Knicks weren't built and he came anyway.

gyso

Phil is hurting the Knicks because he didn't want to interview Dave Joerger?
Maybe a VERY respected Frank Vogel will be the Knicks next coach.
Maybe Kurt Rambis will be rehired.

As for the Knicks offense last season, the triangle offense seemed to be the perfect offense for the players they had. Calderon, Afflalo, Carmelo, Porzingis and Robin Lopez are not athletic, pace and space players. They were a plodding team who could be bailed out when needed by one of the best scorers of all-time.

Phil was rarely visible near the Knicks bench as some executives/owners are during games.
It never seemed like Phil micro managed Derek Fisher.
Derek Fisher was on the outs from the event with Matt Barnes when Fisher lied to the Knicks and left the team to visit his girlfriend.


How does this writer know how much time Phil and others under him are putting into the draft and scouting players?