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Tag Archive - James Dolan

Mike D’Antoni Leaves, As Others Have Before And Others Will After

March 15, 2012 in by with 1 Comment

Photo from ejhobgin via Flickr

As Knicks owner James Dolan faced reporters for the first time since seemingly forever, it was hard to see anything but a transition period for the NBA’s worst marquee franchise. The beleaguered businessman had delivered an obligatorily stale, short statement, followed by GM Glen Grunwald introducing the team’s new head honcho, Mike Woodson. A different Mike, a different basketball philosophy, a different style of facial hair had just left after almost four years of great promise and little payoff, and now the franchise would embark on a different road. Hopefully better, possible just as bad, but different.

After all, Mike Woodson knows defense; Mike D’Antoni does not. Mike Woodson likes the dull drumming of isolation basketball, the kind that “superstar” Carmelo Anthony thrives on and yearns for; Mike D’Antoni likes the fluent song of the pick and roll, symphonic spacing at it’s side, the type of basketball that our cliché-spouting grandfather tells us is only good for teams without championship aspirations. That’s not good enough for New York. In the city where playoff games haven’t been won in a decade, the expectations declare championship or bust.

More than anything, Mike Woodson has the benefit of a future that has not yet been written, and that therefore, still has room for optimism. Mike D’Antoni has but a murky past. The New York Knicks don’t do murky pasts, not when the next messiah could be right around the corner. He really could. Don’t tell us otherwise.

Odds are, Mike Woodson’s future becomes Mike Woodson’s past very quickly. The Knicks are in no position to do anything more substantial than a respectful first round surrender, at which point a franchise attracted to glamour like a moth to a flame will have no choice but to choose the next shiny name from the never ending coaching pool over a dude with an interim tag and peculiar eyebrows.

Jerry Sloan, Phil Jackson, Stan Van Gundy after Dwight Howard fired him, a re-animated Isaac Newton – the identity of the new man or the absurdity that will surround his inevitable arrival is meaningless in the face of the role he’ll play. The same roles played by Jeremy Lin, Baron Davis, and Tyson Chandler this season, Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire last season, and yes, even Mike D’Antoni, back when he was still an offensive innovator that could turn a franchise around. That hopeful savior, he who succeeded so much elsewhere that bringing him to New York is a foolproof strategy, the name that will get the press a-runnin’ and the fans a-hummin’ and the Knicks a-winnin’.

I don’t know what James Dolan was thinking as he stared into the jam packed conference room where yet another false prophet was buried, his mustache not even cold yet. He may have been wondering where it all went wrong, again. Or maybe he already knows. Maybe he can see that bringing in Mike D’Antoni, The Name, but ignoring Mike D’Antoni, The System, was just like bringing in Larry Brown, The Name, or Zach Randolph, The Name, or Eddy Curry, The Name. Maybe he realizes that the only difference between a core of Melo-Amar’e-Tyson and one of Marbury-Francis-Rose is that the glitzy players who were available for the harvest in 2011 just happened to be slightly less crazy and slightly more talented than those that were reaped in 2006.

Maybe James Dolan realizes that the true problem in New York isn’t bad luck or a vengeful commissioner or any outward influence that may or may not be biased against TEH GREATEST CITY EVAHHHHHH, but a way of thinking that extends beyond a simple Isiah Thomas. Maybe he realizes that it is him, his attraction to the penny-wise headline above the pound-wise hibernation, that adding patch over patch over patch only gives you a very patchy quilt, that the only time his team was somewhat successful was when he allowed a respected professional carry out a respectful long-term plan.

Maybe James Dolan sat in that conference room and finally got it. Maybe, just maybe, James Dolan is the savior. Even if he’s not, I bet the messiah is just around that corner. He really is. Don’t tell me otherwise.

No Hard Hats Required*

April 29, 2011 in by with 0 Comments

Now that the Knicks (and Rangers) have gone into their offseason hibernation a little later than usual, the $750-million renovation of Madison Square Garden has begun in earnest.

(And $750M to remake a building — and not build a completely new one — is plenty earnest.)

By the time fans return to MSG at the start of the 2011-12 NBA season (if we get one), gone will be the narrow concourses, a visitor’s locker room so small that owners of even the most cramped studio apartments would sniff at the square footage and bathrooms so cozy that men stand uncomfortably hip-to-hip at the urinals.

(Also gone: cheap seats, which were never really cheap in the first place, but goodness …)

Some say changing MSG could strip the place of its character, but those not chained to sepia-toned nostalgia and haunted by Red Holzman’s ghost know the place, for the reasons listed above, needed to change.

What will mostly remain at MSG, however, is what you last saw of a team swept out of the postseason.

Hardcore Knicks fans may disagree with this and after 39 seasons since their last NBA title, may want more immediate changes and better results. But even bandwagon fans such as myself (though I have lived within three miles of Madison Square Garden for a third of my life), know that in the context of their recent sordid and sad history, the Knicks standing relatively pat should provide something the franchise hasn’t had in a while: stability.

Instead of overhauling the roster as they tried to do, it seemed, on the fly and every six months to please the coterie of frustrated fans, the Knicks will not tear down and renovate the roster this summer. They will tweak, they will seek out a living and breathing center who can defend and rebound for stretches at a time (no need to score, though) and a decent backup point guard to spell the 34-year-old Chauncey Billups.

One of the reasons the Knicks will only do a touch-up is that they don’t have the cap room for an overhaul. On Wednesday, the Knicks announced they would pick up Billups’, $14.2M option for 2011-12. While that seems to be a lot of dough for an aging point guard, the Knicks’ had no alternative. They had to retain Billups. The heady, steady Billups may not be the ideal for Mike D’Antoni’s breakneck offense, but the Knicks have had far worse options (cough, cough Duhon).

(All of which reminds me of a back-and-forth with Denver coach George Karl and Billups after the Nuggets stole him from the Pistons for a washed up Allen Iverson.)

“There are times I’d like Chauncey to play a little faster in the fourth quarter,” Karl said of his point guard, who was playing at an MVP level in the second half of the 2008-09 season.

When told of Karl’s wish, Chauncey smirked and said, “I bet he would.”

After all, coaches may control playing time, but players control the tempo. Whether D’Antoni will push the issue of pushing the ball with Billups remains to be seen. But Mike D. and Billups can make it work. Billups runs the pick-and-roll well, he makes good decisions with the ball and defenders can’t go under screens when he has the ball. D’Antoni, who rides his stars like horses who are put away wet, will need to manage Billups’ minutes and that’s why the Knicks need to find a backup who can hold his own for 20 minutes per.

Finding that guy is a job for this guy — Donnie Walsh. If Knicks are smart — and they haven’t been in the past — they will sign Walsh to a contract extension. He helped lure Amar’e Stoudemire, which in turn helped him to be able to trade for Carmelo Anthony and Billups.

It all could go wrong, though. These are the Knicks and James Dolan is still running the show. You know of Dolan (but who really knows him?). The one who let Isiah Thomas run roughshod over the franchise only to reportedly and repeatedly seek his counsel. At the press conference for the Anthony trade, Dolan tried to Obi-Wan his way through by telling the press, Isiah Thomas was not involved in this deal and he was not the basketball droid the media was looking for.

Of course, no one fell for it. This is why Walsh, according to reports, wants full autonomy. Can you blame him? The Knicks can only move forward if they remove the person from the process who has been holding them back. And if Dolan wants to bring Isiah back, here’s hoping the NBA does what it did the first time: send it into the fourth row. It’d be great if David Stern could step in and appoint someone who loved basketball and who understood what hoops means to the city to run the team in the “best interests of basketball” as Bud Selig did with the L.A. Dodgers.

(Yes, I just suggested David Stern act like Bud Selig, but considering what Donald Sterling — the Donald Trump of the NBA — has been able to get away with, don’t expect the NBA to do anything in New York.)

But more than anything, the Knicks organization outside of Walsh needs to realize it won’t be easy, especially here and especially against emerging teams such as the Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat. Yet, as winners, they’ll never need to pay for a meal in the town again. Just ask Walt “Clyde” Frazier, who once said, “There’s nothing like winning in New York.”

(True. Few towns back in the ’70s would be able to foment Walt’s transformation into Clyde…)

Still, the Knicks are far from a championship team, and could be for a while. But for the first time in a long time, as the walls of their arena are torn down, the Knicks have at least tried to set the foundation for future success at MSG.

Now, it’s up to them to find all the pieces to make it fit.

* For the team, not for the building