I. Follies and Foibles
Finding fresh metaphors for Knickerbocker managerial incompetence requires a stretch. Celebrity coaches and general managers like Larry Brown, Donnie Walsh, Isaiah Thomas, and Don Nelson have become distant memories, nearly absorbed into the long history of franchise ineptitude that Red Holzman’s great teams made everyone forget, and to which Pat Riley’s thug squads lent a different coloration.
Amazingly, it was only two years ago that Jeremy Lin cavorted through the greatest part-season a Harvard-educated Asian point guard had ever had in the NBA. There was so much else crazy that year that Lin’s drama was quickly shipped Off Broadway to make way for last year’s remarkable 54 win season, achieved with a line-up badly in need of Geritol, but with Carmelo Anthony surprising everyone (almost as much as Lin had) by taking his talents to the bank and playing solid, unselfish, team basketball.
After those two checkered but fascinating seasons, it was clear early this season—as both Knicks and Nets seemed out to outdo one another with singularly dysfunctional tank jobs—that the ship, like Michael Ray Richardson once said, “be sinkin’.” The Nets are now the city squad that’s loaded up with aging talent, and have righted their course, whereas the Knicks’ season brings home why standing still is death in today’s NBA.
Potential super-teams have been assembled to compete with the Miami Heat. But how much has the concentration of powers contributed to the unprecedented flurry of serious injuries to super-stars? Those injuries and the growing gap between would-be super-teams and also-rans may both be by-products of the super-capitalist order that today’s league—the one that David Stern is handing over to Adam Silver—embodies.
But the Knicks, being originally from New York, are always a special case, now a kind of local version of American exceptionalism having hit the rocks at sea. Imagine Coach Mike Woodson as owner James L. Dolan’s personal Ahab, steering his Pequod through dangerous waters. By mid-season, Woody’s fate seemed as clear as Ahab’s was [1]
Woodson, let’s recall, did more than a yeoman’s job after he took over Mike D’Antoni’s Linsane crew two years ago and presided over last year’s Wild Bunch of disparate characters, which he somehow molded into a good team (probably with massive assistance from Jason Kidd whose court presence eased head cases as well as geriatric pains). Though the Indiana Pacers eventually proved it was not the great team New York media hyped and demanded.
II. Snark Bites
Only after moving to San Francisco (in 1985) did I learn everybody had a thing about the New York media, which I had simply taken for granted. The city’s sports mavens were reputed to alternate between hype-artistry and vicious, devouring takedowns, whereas the Times (at least) had always struck me as mild, insipid, overly judicious, calling everyone Mister, and all that.
I now get the national edition, which may or may not have the previous night’s scores (due to time differences), but reliably provides a running account of Knickerbocker fortunes. I have noticed a degree of cynicism and derision that, though more restrained, reminds me of the attitude I’ve always associated with the New York Post. On February 23, for example, Timesman Scott Cacciola, who replaced Howard Beck in covering the Knicks after Bleacher Report lured Beck away, wrote that the Knick defense “ranged from lethargic to apathetic.”
Perhaps the play and the players dictate—even demand—this departure from the genteel tact with which the Knicks, even when hapless, used to be treated. Throughout their painfully disillusioning early season plunge, even Times writers were quick to expand on the antics of J.R. Smith or that figure of pathos Ron Artest (“High Test” to me, from his St. John’s days, Mr. Peace according to Times etiquette?), searching through the target-rich franchise which years of James Dolan And His Accomplices have failed to turn around.
Who turns this guy Dolan down, anyway? Only Phil Jackson and Lebron James, I supposed (naively, it now appears, in hind-sight).
Metta World Peace? I still can’t call him that. I liked his energy right away when he starred for Mike Jarvis’s way-cool St. John’s teams, and he again endeared himself to me by thanking his psychiatrist while being interviewed after the Lakers won the 2009 NBA title. What an addition to this Wild Bunch!
J.R. Smith is yet another matter: no obscure St. John’s background for him; indeed, no college stop at all. Instead, he came into the N.B.A. from high school, uniquely gifted to span the carnival antinomies of All-Star Weekend and compete in both the dunk and three point shooting competitions. Recently fined $50,000 for failing to heed warnings not to indulge his prankish habit of untying opponents’ shoelaces(!), he seems prone to act out shamelessly (and senselessly).
The Knicks, having switched general managers just five days before the season opened (hiring Steve Mills, mysteriously and unaccountably jettisoning Glen Grunwald, the architect of that 54 win team), had assembled such a diverse group of players that it would be hard for anyone to contain them (think Andrea Bargnani’s laughable passes into the Garden crowd), but that’s The Coach’s job, and Woodson was flailing admirably, more like Robert Redford in All Is Lost than anything in the sports world, except maybe the new Broadway production Bronx Bombers, which closed quickly.
Woody obviously had lost control of the team, and seems also to have lost the faith of Carmelo Anthony, with whom he initially bonded around the jettisoning of Jeremy Lin—now thriving happily as sixth man for title-contending Houston (where an injury to the starting point guard may once again thrust him to center stage).[2] & [3]
Another literary/cinematic model for this Knick team might be Putney Swope, Robert Downey Sr.’s 60s film comedy of an advertising firm that suddenly falls under the control of the only black executive. Putney Swope manages to garner enough votes in an election to become CEO only because the other corporate gamesmen assume the black man has no shot and so throw away their votes on him, hoping to further their own ambitions. Seeing Darryl Walker in spectacles carrying a clip-board cements this Swopian image for me. [4]
The All-Star break surely seemed to demand stock-taking when it came to Woody. It wasn’t pretty: seventeen losses to sub-500 teams! Could there be a better measure, or a firmer condemnation of, poor coaching?
But could anyone coach this team, given its meddling and incompetent owner? Dolan’s true forerunner is that other New York mogul George Steinbrenner, with Woodson his latest Billy Martin. The coach’s imminent firing (the wait seemed to be for someone eminent enough to end the imminence) has been discussed endlessly for months. He appears inured to this, and, indeed, has been mired in controversy ever since he was promoted, when Mike D’Antoni beat Dolan to the punch by removing himself from the helm. But Woodson appears to keep his dignity, in his dark suits and impeccable ties, suffering silently, while waiting for the ax to fall.
Why not go D’Antoni’s route? It can’t be satisfying to keep coaching now. Give us one good soliloquy, Mike.
In the last game before the All-Star break, Jimmer Fredette (Jimmer, no less, whose contract was subsequently bought out!) lit the Knicks up for 25 points after spending the entire first quarter watching (Oh, what he saw!) from the bench. Once he got in, no slow white guy ever had more room: he went 6-8 on egregiously wide-open threes, as New York blew a twelve point third quarter lead at home to a mediocre team (at best). Woodson played Anthony 43 1/2 minutes. The star’s productivity and efficiency steadily declined until he missed the last shot to win in regulation, leading to five more minutes of ever-increasing futility (what Clyde Frazier called “ineptitude”) and wasting a 36 point, 11 rebound performance in a 106-101 loss.
Coming off the All-Star break, the Knicks held a better team (Memphis) at bay on the road, but painfully mismanaged the last two minutes, getting all the wrong people to take three-pointers set up by Carmelo’s unselfish and adroit passes. Somehow, J.R. Smith picked this as the time to be unselfish, passing up a great look to make the extra pass to Pablo Prigioni! The expression on Carmelo’s face made it seem that Project Anthony had run its course, and was—now and henceforth—doomed.
So: what was to be done? The answer, after the All-Star game, was “nothing.” “Nothing can be made of nothing,” as King Lear reminds us, so the slide continued, worsening all the while, with various tragi-comedic sub-plots being incorporated along the way. The trading deadline passed with no relief acquired, except the unloading of the contracts of Artest and noncontributing guard Beno Udrih.
It seemed like maybe we should just turn back the clock to the times when the circus was booked for Madison Square Garden in March, and the Knicks had to host their playoff games in the 69th Regiment Armory.
Even the team’s more stable leaders were losing it. Raymond Felton was arrested for illegally possessing a gun. Who sez Felton (The Post called him “Felon”) can’t shoot? (His field goal percentage was languishing at around 40%.) Tyson Chandler lost his cool the next night, getting into a jousting match with Warrior sub Marreese Speights.
The collapsing Knicks seemed beyond any hope of rallying to take the eighth and last spot in the playoffs, a berth achievable with considerably less than a .500 record in the dramatically weakened Eastern Conference. They lost to Dallas on a Dirk Novitzki’s last-second buzzer-beater that bounced high off the rim before dropping—a shot reminiscent of Don Nelson’s famous 1968 Celtic title saver. Then they encountered Lebron James back from a broken nose (and a missed game) just in time to torture the Knicks some more.
All the while, Carmelo Anthony was playing inspired basketball, putting together consecutive games of 44, 35, and 44, in which he shot 53% but couldn’t manage to lead his hapless teammates to a single win. “Anything that can go wrong is going wrong,” he put it pithily. In the earlier loss to Jimmer Fredertte’s Kings, Anthony’s 24 in the first half had kept the Knicks in the game, until he finally tired, overextended from his recent ordeal of carrying the dying franchise around on his shoulders. Carmelo was playing enough minutes to put one in mind of Bernard King when he tore his ACL in 1985 after carrying too heavy of a burden for Hubie Brown’s fading Knicks.
Losing seven straight (and 13 out of 15 games), the Knicks sank to 21-40. (Where last year’s team had been 37-21, this year’s went 21-37.) A similarly symmetrical 54 losses seemed within reach.
The slide included three futile appearances on national TV in just four days, When Chicago’s Joakim Noah burned them for a triple double that included the most assists (14) for a center since 1985-86, Cacciola described it as “another example of the Knicks offering themselves up as the blank canvas for an opponent’s artistry.” Mister Snark was finding a comfortable home with the Times.
III. Deus Ex Machina: It’s the Management, Stupid.
Then, suddenly, there was a winning streak and talk of hiring Phil Jackson in a front office role. Might such a mega-hire reverse the year’s unfortunate trajectory? Well, there is such a thing as synchronicity, Phil will happily tell you.
After winning their fourth straight against the plummeting 76’ers, the Knicks were 4 1/2 behind Atlanta for the eighth and last playoff spot in the downscale East. Win number five came without Tyson Chandler on the road by a wide margin: 116-92 in Boston. The same day Jackson indicated he would accept the front office position he had been mulling over for a week, contemplating as only he, now widely known as The Zen Master, can.
I fondly recall my first glimpse of Jackson, on local television, when he gangled off Red Holzman’s Knick bench with a strangely effective and massively disruptive rhythm-busting defensive presence. I noted he was the first player I had heard of being from Montana. His skill level was never great, but his length went a long way. And he was a true original.
When he was hired, with only CBA coaching experience, to coach Michael Jordan’s pre-championship Bulls, it seemed an unlikely match. But Jackson embarked on a eleven championship run, six with Michael, five more with Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles. L.A. had become home to Jackson. He has long been engaged to Jeannie Buss, the daughter of the late Jerry Buss, former owner of the Lakers, but apparently still harbored a special feeling for the Knicks.
The winning streak reached eight, and included a road win over Indiana. Despite seeming to have buried themselves in the standings, the Knicks found themselves three back in the loss column of the eighth-seeded Atlanta Hawks with 12 games left on the schedule.
Then it ended against Cleveland, and was quickly followed by a loss in Los Angeles that was as embarrassing as the Jimmer Fredette fiasco. With Jackson reported to be in Los Angeles, where he visited practice but did not attend the game at Staples Center, the Knicks gave up 51 points (a Laker franchise record for a quarter) in the third quarter, in a 127-96 embarrassment to a terrible Laker team, sporting its worst record since the franchise moved to Los Angeles.
That seemed to clinch matters for the playoffs, but New York won one in Sacramento, then at Golden State, and Atlanta kept losing (20 of 26; five straight after losing Kyle Korver to an injury), and the Knicks, nearing the midst of their Western swing, at 31-43, were just a game behind, as of March 31 with Atlanta at 31-41. Oddly, it was the win column that loomed more important than the loss column, with these decidedly sub-.500 teams battling for a playoff spot. (In the West, the ninth place team—the one that will not advance—stands at .595.)
But are Knick fans really still hoping for a playoff berth? Remember that the last seven games are against playoff teams. Moreover, even if the team grabs that eighth spot, it’ll only be a snark lover’s delight, since the Knicks would face either Miami or Indiana. And it doesn’t change the dispiriting Big Picture: here they are chasing an improbable dream of a merde playoff berth, following (what once seemed like) a rejuvenating 54-win campaign in 2012-13.
Why do we still care? Then again, who can turn away from this bizarre surprise-pregnant odyssey? Phil Jackson is New York’s Ulysses; he’s home again. What a bizarre deux ex machina for this drawn out rapidly fading farce of a season! Corporate resolution: chase success at the management level, rather than on the court.
One recalls the desperate front office gambits after the break-up of Red Holzman’s champions of 1972-73, which focused blindly on the acquisition of expensive individual super-stars Spencer Haywood and Bob McAdoo, without due regard for chemistry or fit. The salary cap is far more complicated now.
But maybe Jax is up to it. I can imagine his text to Woody, Jr, and High Test: “Putney Swope is ovah.” Though he has his own metaphors, once—and seemingly still—fresh to so many of the super-greats, recognizable to all by just a first name, who played for him: Michael, Scottie, Kobe, Shaq. These first-name only stars were no small part of his great success. Now it is his job to accumulate talent that someone else will lead to the promised land. Phil Jackson as Moses? Wait a minute. That first name has already been taken. Then what about Ulysses? But he already has a handle: The Zen Master. The big mystery is what he sees in the Knicks.
Jackson brings a unique mystique and track record of championships. Dolan has promised not to get in his way. Watching the Knicks slaughter the Nets in a critical game on April 2 that put them in a tie with Atlanta (actually, miniscule percentage points ahead, as the win column rules for sub-.500 teams!), I was intrigued by the potential good fit of the triangle offense for the Knicks. Jackson might hire his one-time disciple Steve Kerr to coach, using the resurgent Iman Shumpert, J.R. Smith, and the emergent star Tim Hardaway, Jr. as ball handlers with Anthony, with Amar’e Stoudemire and Chandler as posts. This scheme could create both a good nucleus and a way to tame and harness Anthony, feature Stoudemire, and do without a real point guard.
With that or any other plan, the question remains whether Dolan, who has been as resistant to reason as Afghanistan has proved to its various invaders, will be calmed by the Zen-inflected manner in which Phil goes about his business. Plenty of tickets will be sold to those with answers and opinions.
Notes
1 TNT’s Bleacher Report’s coverage soon came to speculate as to when, not whether, Woodson will be replaced.
2 Taking over as starting point guard- with Patrick Beverley’s injury, Lin may or may not be ensconced in Houston.
3 Perhaps the most intriguing Knick re-vamping possibility involves Carmelo Anthony moving to Houston to team with James Harden and Dwight Howard, with Lin returning to New York.
4 Mr. Walker was not exactly a cerebral player with the Knicks! Still slender, he prowls the huddle carefully, giving the impression that he could still make a good floor dive, should he drop that board. C’mon, Darryl. Talk to J.R. a little.