From ‘Ask Phil’ to Ask Adam
The New York Knicks have become the Cleveland Browns of professional basketball. They are both iconic names of professional sports in this country that have now become punch lines, as well as punching bags. The Browns won NFL championships in the 50s and 60s. The Knicks won championships in 1969-70 and then 1972-73 and nothing since. You can sort of look that up.
There is a difference, though, between the two franchises. These Browns have no link, other than geography, to the storied history made in Cleveland by Paul Brown and later Jim Brown. That Browns team became the Baltimore Ravens when the late Art Modell moved his team out of Cleveland. Now the Ravens have twice won championships in this century, one against the Giants, one against the 49ers in New Orleans a few years ago.
The Knicks have never left 33rd St. But all that really separates them from the Browns is one season when they looked like a real team again. That was four years ago, when Glen Grunwald was the general manager and Mike Woodson was the coach and Carmelo Anthony – who’s still here now that Phil Jackson is gone – was voted the third most valuable player in his sport. The Knicks won 54 games and the Atlantic Division title and won the only playoff series the team has won in the last 17 years.
Then Grunwald was gone. As soon as Jackson took over, Mike Woodson was gone, even though in the season that got Woodson fired, the Knicks were 37-45 despite a ton of injuries, and won 16 of their last 21 games and nearly made the playoffs. But Jackson, obsessed with the triangle and with his own past – his idea of a recruiting film is Michael Jordan’s Bulls – had to hire somebody out of his past to coach the Knicks whether the guy had any coaching experience or not.
Steve Kerr turned him down, reminding the basketball world once again just how smart Kerr really is. So Jackson turned to Derek Fisher, gave him $25 million and five years, and you know how that worked out for everybody. Then Fisher was gone and now Jackson is gone and the Knicks are starting all over again. But before they do, they are allowing Steve Mills, who was a part of the permanent government of the Garden when both Isiah Thomas and Phil Jackson were running the Knicks, to run point on the Knicks’ pursuit of free agents. This is the one about people – Dolan – not learning from the past (and that means his own past as the big boss at Madison Square Garden) being doomed to repeat it.
Dolan was the last guy in town to know that Jackson had to go, no matter how good his – Dolan’s – intentions had been in hiring him, and no matter how many huzzahs he heard when he did. So instead of telling him to leave as soon as the season was over, and before he drafted an 18-yearold French kid with the eighth pick in the NBA draft, he and his blues band perform at a concert the night of the draft and Jackson drafts Frank Ntilikina, one of the reasons being that he thought the kid would… wait for it… fit the triangle like a glove. So NBA free agency begins with nobody in charge of the Knicks, while Dolan decides whom he wants his next president of basketball operations to be. We heard that the Knicks have long been interested in Masai Ujiri, who was with Denver when the Nuggets sent Carmelo Anthony to New York and has now built the Raptors into one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference, something the Knicks have been just that one time since Dolan has been the big boss at the Garden. Now there is even more talk about David Griffin coming to New York to run the Garden, Griffin having just left the job of running the Cleveland Cavaliers. If it is Griffin, then he becomes the new Donnie Walsh. He would come in to clean up the mess that Jackson leaves behind the way Donnie came in to clean up the mess Isiah left behind. Griffin would inherit Kristaps Porzingis and the problem of what to do about Carmelo and some decent young role players and a coach, Jeff Hornacek, he sure didn’t hire. He would inherit the basketball Browns. Dolan did the right thing this week by firing Jackson, even though Knicks fans had a perfect right to ask him what took so long. But that was the easy part, even if the decision involved him giving Jackson $24 million as a parting gift. He once wrote a similar check to Larry Brown when Isiah convinced him that Brown had to go after just one season. That allowed Isiah to save himself, but only for a time.
You know what really needs to happen with the Knicks if they are to become relevant anytime soon? Dolan ought to get help from the outside as he hires the next man to run his basketball operation. There is no shame in that. And by help, that means asking somebody other than the manager of a legendary rock and roll band.
A long time ago, Pete Rozelle stepped in with the football Giants, almost as a form of intervention, and the Mara family hired George Young to be general manager. Before long Young hired Bill Parcells to be a coach and the Giants won two Super Bowls with Young and Parcells in charge, and the course of Giants history had been changed, after the Giants were an iconic American sports franchise that had hit the skids for nearly two decades.
Adam Silver, who has provided style and leadership and consummate political skills as NBA commissioner, needs to find a way to become involved with the Knicks. The Knicks still matter in New York. Just not in their league, where they are profoundly irrelevant once you get outside New York. And that matters deeply to Silver, whatever he says in public. “Ask Phil” became Dolan’s mantra. Now he needs to ask for help. After years of telling people to ask Phil, maybe Dolan himself should ask Adam.