From Marc Berman, who sure seemed to have a direct line to Steve Mills back during Phil’s tenure with the Knicks (as Berman went from being over-the-top in his praise of Jackson to eventually picking away at Jackson constantly, right in line with Mills’ growing dissatisfaction with Phil):
As Hornacek’s Knicks stint winds down to perhaps its final seven games, players may be displaying a level of rebellion that could be expected when led by a coach they know may not be back next season.
The feeling around the league is Hornacek won’t be brought back by Steve Mills and Scott Perry and that the club may target Doc Rivers and Mark Jackson.
Meanwhile, according to an NBA source, the Noah and O’Quinn shouting incidents weren’t the first time the lame-duck Knicks coach got profanities thrown his way by a Knicks player.
The source told The Post that late last season, Kristaps Porzingis, normally the politest of souls, cursed out Hornacek during a practice, using the F-word.
While players and coaches go at it behind closed doors more than you’d think, the Porzingis-Hornacek tiff partially underscored why Porzingis didn’t show up for his exit meeting. Phil Jackson wasn’t the lone target of his franchise disgruntlement.
That Berman is writing an article like this is a very good sign that the Knicks are, in fact, preparing to move on from Horny.
Get your Bibles out, folks, it’s going to be a bumpy ride next year with Pastor Jackson.
18 replies on “NY Post: The Knicks’ Jeff Hornacek rebellion is growing quickly”
JVG, for the love of all that is holy, intercede on this mess, before we’re saddled with Mark Fucking Jackson!
A team without Porzingis for most of the year, coached by Mark Jackson? Pass.
Dolan’s Razor, man. Why do we do this to ourselves?
Sign Jackson to a 10 day contract so we can get Kanter to opt out.
Honestly, Berman makes a good case the Hornacek’s should go. And he doesn’t even mention that having a coach on the last year of his contract is not a good idea for a rebuilding team But, like the rest of you, I hope that doesn’t mean Mark Jackson
Hornacek sucks.
The Knicks are 29th in the league in 3PA rate, and 1st in the league in shots taken from 10 feet to the 3-point line.
How’s that goink?
1. Fire Hornacek
2. Don’t hire Mark Jackson
3. ???????
4. Profit
Was Jackson actually any good at furthering the development of Draymond Green or Klay Thompson? Because this team needs someone to develop what young talent there is, namely Frank, KP, Burke, the picks and maybe Williams. We don’t need another year of 30 minutes from thirty somethings at most positions until it’s too late.
Mark Jackson is a friggin’ idiot. He’s thin-skinned, doesn’t work well with others, and he’s a sanctimonious phony. In Golden State he was despised by players and management alike, because he’s an asshole. He is 100% guaranteed to fail miserably and leave in a cloud of disgrace if he is hired to take this job, and furthermore if he’s hired in the first place, it would prove that the people currently making basketball decisions for the Knicks are, as usual, incompetent cretins.
Jackson had the Warriors playing very good defense, but they were 12th in the league on offense with the core of what would go on to be one of the best offenses in NBA history. How much of that is Steve Kerr and how much is players maturing is hard to say, but Jackson is probably responsible for some of it, and he’s an asshole to boot. He would be a nightmare in the NY media environment. Maybe the only plus I can see is that he’d probably fight Frank Isola.
Yes to Horny not returning.
No to Mark Jackson in any capacity.
Imagine when Jackson tells the entire team that Porzingis is rooting against them while he is still injured and asks Kanter to prove he believes in god after blessing him.
Can’t we just rehire Derek Fisher or something like that? Isn’t Dolan still paying his contract?
Please, no Pastor Mark. His drama will create a complete shitshow in NY.
Also, small point worth noting, he’s not a good coach.
Against the Bulls tonight, the Rockets shot 57 3PA and made just 31% of them. They won by 28.
The Knicks’ season high in 3PA is 35. The Rockets have played just 7 games this season in which they shot fewer than 35.
Fire Jeff Hornacek.
The Knicks don’t have the personnel to shoot that many threes. That’s not Hornacek’s fault. Lee, Thomas and Beasley are the best three point shooters on the team, by percentage. Thomas takes only very open threes and doesn’t seem to get open that much, and doesn’t take many shots. Lee can do it and does. Beasley takes threes, but is also a good scorer near the basket and it’t reasonable he does a lot of attempts near the basket. The next three are McDermott, KP and Burke, one of whom is gone, one of whom is injured and the third also scores inside. Hardaway’s percentage from three is only 0.315, but he does take 7 threes a game, much more than anyone else on the team. So in order to actually put a three point shooting line up on the floor, you’d probably pick Kornet, Beasley, Hardaway, Burke and Thomas, and that is not an impressive line up and not one I would expect more than league average threes from.
They weren’t shooting threes early in the season, either, though, when they were starting Porzingis, Lee and Hardaway, along with McDermott, Beasley and Thomas playing a lot of minutes off of the bench. Horny clearly decided not to make shooting threes a big deal for whatever reason.
Not shooting threes and shooting lots of long two-pointers is a surefire formula for getting your ass kicked a lot. As Brian mentioned in #14, the Knicks had the personnel to shoot threes earlier in the season and they didn’t do it then either.
I’m not the least bit impressed with Hornacek as a coach. If he was a baseball manager he’d bunt in the first inning.
The maddening thing about him is that his Suns teams did shoot a lot of threes, but they had stronger point guards, so it was easier to get looks at threes. So that’s what happened, in a nutshell. “We would have to make a concerted effort in order to take more threes due to our shitty point guard play…so let’s just not do that.” He just gave up on shooting threes because it was too hard to get them to make the extra passes required to get looks for three. That’s weak.
All those guys took around their recent average 3pt attempts. I think it’s fair to complain that Horny wasnt trying to scheme more 3s out of the offense, but none of them except for Timmy has ever been anything close to a high volume 3 point shooter.
Ball movement is a big part of a modern NBA offense. KP shot a good number of threes that I would prefer he wouldn’t take. Like the pull up kind from 4 feet behind the line. I can’t recall him ever getting an uncontested catch and shoot from the corner. The Knicks offense never moved on from Melo. We just installed KP as the king of the contested long range 2 and once he went down it was Beasley’s turn.
Houston has a tandem of gifted passers. Maybe the best guard tandem in league history. They create so much space for themselves and shooters. Coach D is in heaven and SSOL is alive and well. There’s more too it than just volume threes but yeah I agree with everyone’s assessment of coach H at this point.