Pain

Yesterday, April 2, I happened to be back in Jersey for a night, and was able to catch a Knicks game on TV for the first time in over 3 months. I turned to MSG and saw there were about 5 seconds left in the first half. The Knicks were losing 73-60, and the Grizzlies had the ball. Mike Miller dribbled up the court, took a three... and got fouled. With less than a second left on the clock.

I immediately wished that it was April 1. I wished that play was just an April Fools joke. Instead, it's a microcosm of the Knicks' reality of a season. Absolutely inept on the defensive end, running around like headless chickens on offense, and happy to mail in the first half of every game just to show "guts" and "determination" by making a furious second half comeback that always falls juuust short in the end, these Knicks cause me such pain that I didn’t even bother watching the second half.

Read more...

It hurts a bit to think that we've had this blog for a few months, and yet it's just now that I'm first writing about the team that has been most important to me for most of my life – and the NBA has been in season the whole time. In fact, we've each written multiple NBA posts, but I haven't had the will to write about the train wreck that is the New York Knicks. Is there a more hopeless team in professional sports? There are other teams that lately have perennially been bad, sure, but is any team in such a condition that there is absolutely NO way, even with a ton of luck, of their competing for a championship in the next three years?

The salary cap is a mess, and has for years been the main source of my depression as a Knicks fan. It seems that the Knick front office plan has been to make the Knicks the team that will be the sole buyer for marginally useful players with terrible contracts, as if this were some sort of competitive advantage. Trade for Penny Hardaway, Shandon Anderson, Stephon Marbury, sign Jerome James and Allan Houston to contracts 25% over their respective market values... This "strategy" (quite obviously and stupidly) ignores the fact that it's a philosophy centered on acquiring players who are not that good, are undesired by ANY other team, and are incapable of forming a core of a team that can actually win basketball games. It's not a bad strategy if your owner has deep pockets AND you already have a core that's capable of advancing at least into the second round of the playoffs, and you just need a little extra help to get over the hump. It IS a bad strategy if your team has nothing, no core, no direction, no leadership.

If the front office has had some kind of (misguided) philosophy when it comes to payroll matters, it has had absolutely none in terms of actually building a cohesive team. The years since the Ewing-Sprewell-Houston days have lacked any sort of commitment to a plan for more than a year. Some would blame the high pressure of the NY market, but no other NY franchise yields so submissively to changes in the wind. A number of decisions illustrate this. The most recent is the demise of Eddy Curry, who ended up becoming a bit player after Isiah's claims that he would be the centerpiece of the Knicks' offense for years to come. The one-and-done Larry Brown year is another. This is a guy who once coached the Spurs to a 21-win season. The next season they won the division. Sure, in his one year with the Knicks he juggled the starting lineup enough to set records. So what?? It's not as if he had anything to work with! What would you do besides try every possible combination?

These poor decisions have been sequentially blamed on Ernie Grunfeld (in the late Ewing years, though his period is now respected), then Scott Layden, and now Isiah Thomas, but the common link has been owner James Dolan. What sort of inept fool is this man? Clearly the only reason that he is an executive of a major company is that he inherited the position from daddy. What sort of businessman is he? Last year, the Knicks pulled into 8th place in the Eastern Conference late in the season. Dolan immediately gave Isiah a 5 year contract extension. This still blows my mind. FIVE YEARS? The Knicks went on to lose 19 of their last 22 games to miss the playoffs by a mile, and are heading to another finish in which they will come nowhere close to 30 wins. What to do now, James? Clearly your faith has been misplaced and the situation has spun embarrassingly out of control, but you've left yourself without an option thanks to your inexplicable loyalty to a man whose peak has been to achieve mediocrity (as opposed to utter failure) for one day.

Of course, in the calculus of Dolan, there is still a way to rectify matters, which he seems to think was to hire Donnie Walsh from the Pacers to be the Knicks new president of basketball operations. In one sense, this is a sound move. Walsh is a salary cap guru, and perhaps he can work some magic to get the team under the cap in two years, even if it's still completely uncompetitive. That will be progress. The curious thing is the idea that Walsh can take over these duties while Isiah continues to coach the team. Their relationship isn't without precedent – Walsh gave Isiah his first head coaching job with the Pacers. But how tenable is the current situation? Isiah cedes personnel control to the new guy, but continues coaching the team? How will the players respect Isiah? Can Isiah make impartial decisions with regards to playing time when his options are split between his acquisitions and Walsh's?

Aside from the question of whether it's wise to give a new guy one of Isiah's two current roles, there is the question of whether or not he is actually a good coach. Common opinion seems to be that he is not a bad coach. Really? What successful adjustments has he made in his time as Knicks coach? Has he taught them how to play defense in all this time? Clearly not, as evidenced by 130 points they gave up to the Grizzlies last night (ugh!). Has he resolved the problem of having talented players playing below their potential? No. In Eddy Curry, Zach Randolph, Jamal Crawford, and Stephon Marbury, he has arguably four capable scorers. Stephon has been such a disaster that he's no longer playing (and what's more, they no longer miss him), and Curry became a non-factor before his season-ending injury (in my opinion, he never had the skills to be one anyway). Randolph continues to futilely put up at least 18 and 9 every night (he is a true talent), while Crawford is given free reign to jack up terrible jumpers and shoot 40% from the field every night. Isiah doesn't have a clue in the way of getting the team to play cohesive offense or defense. There is talent on this team – aside from those four, you have a very capable outside shooter and defender in Quentin Richardson, an incredible rebounder in David Lee, and instant backcourt offense off the bench in the form of Nate Robinson. Are you telling me that this team doesn't have the talent to make the playoffs in this putrid Eastern Conference? For the final nail in the coffin, just take a look at Isiah's body language and comments at every halftime where the Knicks are losing by double digits and every postgame press conference after the Knicks lose by 20. He says the same things, shows no hint of innovation with X's and O's, no ability to inspire. He just always sounds defeated, and then smiles and says they just need to make shots, that the shots are there. No, Isiah, they're not. The team is not taking high percentage shots, but they sure are giving up a lot of them. And this has been the case for ages now. I submit, once and for all: ISIAH THOMAS IS NOT A GOOD COACH. He was once a great point guard. He is not good at anything else related to basketball.

(I'm not even going to go into depth describing the shame surrounding the Isiah Thomas sexual harassment lawsuit, in which everyone at the Garden came off looking like goons - not to mention Stephon Marbury, who had the gall to casually talk about his tryst with a Knick intern in the back of an SUV parked outside a strip club. This from a married father.)

The Knicks are not going to be any good for a long time. They won't get under the cap for another three seasons, and even then they'll have to sign more players to fill out the roster, bringing the payroll back up. The next two years at least are completely hopeless. I can't tell you how depressing and painful this is. This storied franchise, one that was a factor year after year after year... it's now a joke to everyone else, but not to us. Not to me. I'm angry. But it's hopeless. All I can do is turn my attention to the Mets, Tottenham, the Red Bulls, the Devils, until the day the Knicks have put all this behind them and are relevant once again.