(Tuesday, April 17, 2018 2:45:31 AM)
There’s nothing more painful than watching your team go through a slow rebuild. OK, take that back. There’s nothing more painful than watching two of your teams go through a slow rebuild, which is exactly what NBA fans around here are going to be doing for the next few years.
(Monday, April 16, 2018 9:13:28 PM)
Let the interviewing begin.
[NYDN] Fizdale, Jackson and Stackhouse top candidates for Knicks job (Monday, April 16, 2018 3:00:54 PM)
Jeff Van Gundy was never a serious candidate for the Knicks head coaching job, that much is clear.
[NYDN] Jerry Stackhouse in New York to interview for Knicks’ head coach (Monday, April 16, 2018 12:46:23 PM)
Jerry Stackhouse arrived today for an interview with the Knicks, the Daily News has learned.
[NYTimes] N.B.A. Roundup: Vintage Dwyane Wade Propels Heat Past Streaking 76ers (Tuesday, April 17, 2018 5:41:48 AM)
Philadelphia’s 17-game winning streak came to a halt thanks to Wade rediscovering the magic that eluded him during stints with Chicago and Cleveland.
[NYTimes] Hal Greer, Hall of Fame Jump Shooter for 76ers, Is Dead at 81 (Monday, April 16, 2018 10:32:15 PM)
In the era of Oscar Robertson and Jerry West, Greer was a brilliant and prolific star guard in his own right, leading Philadelphia to the 1967 title.
[NYTimes] 2018 N.B.A. Playoff Preview: As the Playoffs Begin, the N.B.A.’s Biggest Stars Are Going Ring Hunting (Monday, April 16, 2018 2:22:43 PM)
The Rockets, Warriors and Cavaliers all think they have an edge in the league’s annual contest for the jewelry that tends to dominate the conversation.
(Monday, April 16, 2018 2:41:22 PM)
While Mark Jackson reportedly will interview with the Knicks on Wednesday, his broadcast partner Jeff Van Gundy won’t get one. The Knicks talked to Van Gundy’s reps over the weekend, but the team’s brass has decided not to schedule a sit-down. While it was reported the Knicks “reached out’’ to Van Gundy, it was more…
(Monday, April 16, 2018 2:01:55 PM)
Avery Johnson, the former Nets head coach now at Alabama, said Jerry Stackhouse’s grooming as a future NBA head man started in Brooklyn. Now Johnson feels Stackhouse is ready to take over the Knicks. Johnson, who coached Stackhouse from 2004-08 in Dallas, summoned him to Brooklyn to finish out his 18-year playing career in 2012-13…
(Monday, April 16, 2018 4:02:48 PM)
Despite being the last coach to lead the Knicks to a conference title, New York isn’t interested in hiring Jeff Van Gundy, sources tell ESPN.
(Monday, April 16, 2018 11:21:11 PM)
Former Golden State Warriors coach and current NBA analyst Mark Jackson will reportedly interview for the Knicks’ head coaching vacancy on Wednesday.
(Monday, April 16, 2018 7:10:44 PM)
The DNL panel debates over which direction the Knicks’ head coach search should go and discuss the familiar candidates being interviewed.
(Monday, April 16, 2018 4:22:30 PM)
Though the Knicks have contacted his representatives, New York doesn’t seem interested in a reunion with former head coach Jeff Van Gundy.
(Monday, April 16, 2018 10:59:27 AM)
The Knicks not only have former players in their head coach candidates pool. A former coach could see a New York reunion as well.
89 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2018.04.17)”
Kinda surprised there was no discussion yesterday about Mike Vorkunov’s podcast with Marcus Thompson (who covers the Warriors) re: Mark Jackson.
I know there was that Reddit thread about all the things Jackson did, but just to play devil’s advocate–
I could be wrong but I sort of remember the Warriors’ players actually supporting Jackson, including Curry and Klay even amidst all the apparent dysfunction between Jackson and management.
Jarrett jack was on the 12-13 Warriors and has gone on record as being a big fan of Jackson’s.
Then there’s this extremely long blog post from Marcus Thompson about race and how Jackson’s not being part of Lacob’s “society” led to him getting a short leash.
btw the story of the coach taping meetings so that he could record all the crazy stuff Jackson said — that story itself is possibly probably made up. If you read all the reporting from around that time, it seems most people thought that Erman was recording stuff as a mole for the front office, and that recording in CA without consent of the recorded parties is against the law.
All that stuff about him not letting assistant coaches talk to the press — is that a weird thing? When was the last time we heard Jerry Sichting talk to the press?
All the stuff about the us vs. them? That sounds sort of like a motivational tactic to me. But that’s just me.
I’m not at all saying that I want Mark Jackson as coach, and certainly I’m not a fan of his homophobia or his hypocrisy relating to strippers/hookers etc. But it IS very interesting to read all the stuff about Jackson after listening to Marcus Thompson (a black sportswriter) talk about Jackson.
continued… it’s also very interesting that the people that support Jackson are, for the most part, the black people associated with the Warriors (including the players), and the people who did not support Jackson (Scalabrine, the coach that was taping players- Darren Erman –, Lacob and co.) were white. And Lacob quite publicly said that Jackson couldn’t manage sideways and upwards, basically meaning that he wasn’t enough of a yes man for management.
Now the Warriors are obviously awesome now so Lacob and co obviously made a good choice — but I get the feeling that situation was not quite as clear cut as random reddit threads make it out to be.
That said – Jackson seems to be a fairly divisive personality with people basically coming strongly on his side or against him. Not a good fit for the Knicks.
I remember listening to Jackson as a commenter once and he said something to the effect that it doesn’t matter if it was a good shot or not, what matters is if the shot goes in. I remember thinking that’s not coach thinking at all and that you never hear, say, van Gundy, say something like that. That comment, and Jackson’s general pomposity, and his actual usual lack of insightful commentary convinced me I didn’t want him as a coach. I didn’t need any of the news about all the problems he had with other people in Oakland to come to that conclusion.
A couple comments from yesterday I wanted to address:
and
If Porzingis wasn’t propped up by expensive veteran talent, we’d have drafted in the top 5 every year he’s been in the league. And that would have been great!
I can’t believe we still have these arguments about our approach vs Philadelphia’s. Look at them. Look at us. They gave up a few seasons. We’ve been hopeless since Y2K was a thing.
It’s funny that Philly finally got the type of player the process was meant to produce the year they gave up on the process. If Embiid just had the one injury Philly is nowhere near as good as they are now and Hinkie probably still has a job.
@1 Frank I don’t know why people think Mark Jackson is our worst case scenario. I don’t like him bc I think his offense in Golden State was antiquated and also because I want to tank next year and I don’t think he’s ideal for that. But the player development work he did in Golden State was better than anything I’ve seen around here since Pat Riley left. And his defensive system was better than anything I’ve seen around here since JVG left.
You want to give all the credit to the players? Ok. But there are a lot of coaches who would look at Draymond Green and say “second round pick, keep him at the end of the bench”. We just went through this with Willy. I have to think Mark would have done better work with him. And neither Curry nor Klay came into the league with positive reviews of their defensive capabilities.
This guy (Jackson) has a cloud of assumptions around him that all seem to come from an unsourced Reddit thread and what possibly was a smear campaign by his former employer. Since when do reasonable people accept things like that as veritable truth? Maybe he did make Festus Ezeli cry. Maybe he did pick fights with his assistants and managers. Maybe all that shit is part of what made the Warriors a great team.
We’re sitting here acting like a guy whose fingerprints are all over one of the greatest teams we’ve ever seen is the worst possible thing that could happen to the Knicks. It’s a little weird. I’ve heard a lot of bad things about him, but none of them come from the players who were the core of the Warriors.
With respect to Mark Jackson, I definitely think the media and NBA ownership are biased in favor of Brad Stevens type coaches over Mark Jackson type coaches. If Brad Stevens were black and a former player people might pay more attention to his first round exits and talent stuffed roster. On the other hand, Jackson couldn’t figure how to have a top 10 offense with Andre Iguodala, Klay Thompson, Steph Curry and David Lee and the team seemed to be a magnet for the type of drama that would be a real shit show in New York.
Even if it’s true that all the black stakeholders love him and the white stakeholders hate him, that’s not a good sign. We don’t want a coach who creates divisions in the locker room, whether they be about race or anything else. Not to mention, our star player happens to be white.
One thing in the Marcus Thompson piece which really strikes a chord is how Mark Jackson always gets love as a “motivator” while Mike Malone got credit for being his x’s and o’s guy. Turns out that Malone was pretty awful in Sac despite being such an apparent x’s and o’s genius. That narrative really does feel like the narrative we always hear about white vs black QBs, white vs. black WRs, etc.
I saw this massive list of the weird and petty stuff Mark Jackson has done and said over the years. This is is just a sample:
– Didn’t let assistant coaches do interviews because he thought they were gunning for his job
– Pushed Mike Malone out as assistant coach because he thought he was gunning for his job
– Would tell players the front office didn’t want them to win so that he would look bad
– Told the team that Ezeli was rooting for them to lose so that Ezeli would look better (he was injured)
– Told the team that Harrison Barnes was possessed by a demon, which is why he regressed
The list is actually about 5 times longer than this. Even if only 1/4 of it is true, I want no part of the guy. He’s obviously paranoid and insecure, 2 qualities that aren’t exactly in the top 10 of coaching attributes.
I have no specific reason to prefer him, but I’d rather have the Knicks hire Blatt. His reputation somehow reminds me of Dantoni’s. I long for a fast-paced offense, a dynamic team with lots of player movement.
This probably a good time for the Knicks’ front office to commit long-term to a specific system. I’m afraid, though, it will be Mark Jackson, who I absolutely dislike.
I’m not sure you can just compare us to Philly. First, you would have to go back to 2013 and reverse the Bargnani trade. I know that’s easy to say; but in 2012-13 we won 54 games, so we weren’t tanking anything. Plus, Philly didn’t just lose and move up a few slots every year. They also traded valuable players for picks and stockpiled. We really haven’t had that sort of player. Maybe we could have traded Shump earlier for a 1st? Maybe we could have traded Willy for a first last offseason?
Hinke traded Jrue Holiday. He traded Efrid Payton for Saric and a 1st. He traded Thad Young for a pick. He traded Michael Carter Williams (who at the time was good). He stockpiled 2nd round picks. He traded assets. we havent’ had assets.
The Hinke’ish thing we could have done would have been to not sign vet FAs and to trade our cap space for picks. But, by 2016, teams weren’t giving up 1sts anymore.
Plus, he made some bad picks. Maybe that’s just how the draft goes.
I truly don’t understand. You guys don’t have volume on your televisions? What would someone have to say to prove to you they aren’t a good basketball mind? Do you think Reggie Miller would be a good coach? Jon Barry? I mean come on. Mark Jackson is a truly terrible choice irrespective of exorcisms and homophobia.
Also Dred is irrationally contrarian about Brad Stevens, who has not been stuffed with talent relative to his results. Notice that when a lot of that putative talent like Crowder or Bradley goes elsewhere, they don’t exactly look like world beaters. I hate the Celtics so it really sucks but Brad Stevens deserves the hype.
But he did put together a top 5 defense with them. Other than Andre, none of those guys were known for defense. Lee is known to be a sieve.
And since when did it become impossible for a coach to learn from failure in his first tenure? Jackson has had a front row seat to seeing his former team thrive on offense in ways they never did under him. Why are so certain that, if installed as Knicks head coach, he would be ignorant of that?
He’s my top choice, either. But there’s some weird stuff going on in the conversation about him. If you’re looking at Mark Jackson and David Blatt, and Mark is the choice that would make you give up on being a Knicks fan, it makes me wonder what is going on.
EDIT: To be clear: I don’t mean race (I feel like I have to make this clear since it was explicitly mentioned in Frank’s post). I mean more like some sort of collective uncritical thinking that is too quick to accept questionable facts.
People were falling all over themselves praising boy wonder and his scrappy tryhards the other night while his team had 3 top 3 picks on the court and was losing at home to a 7 seed coached by some guy nobody has ever heard of.
^ He’s not my top choice.
most ppl… especially those that have seen success… don’t really learn or adapt…. they just keep doing what they’re doing because they’re.. at least in their minds… successful…
that is generally why coaches are so slow to adapt to change… not only in basketball but in most major sports… and it’s not only sports either… once you reach a certain age most folks will only trust the instincts that got them where they are at…. they just refuse to learn because it’s harder or they think they’re right even though all the evidence would suggest that they aren’t….
i don’t know for sure whether or not jackson is like that…. but he seems to be cut from that cloth… did we think hornacek really learned all that much from his prior coaching stints? woodson? even d’antoni?
you cannot count on any prospective coach to learn from their mistakes…. you need a very good reason or some evidence to suggest that they won’t repeat them…. and it’s not even those things i’m most concerned about with jackson…. the guy just does not know the game….
All people are saying is that the “process” as a strategy is getting more credit for where the 76ers are right now than it should.
If the Knicks didn’t add any good players to go along with Porzingis, we would have been worse and got a better pick than Frank. But that worse team would have immediately started climbing out of the hole faster because of that better pick (assuming we made a good one) and we’d get a worse pick this year, next year, and so on.
The system is relatively efficient.
The only way you can stay bad long enough to accumulate a ton of great players is if there are injuries or you have top picks stashed overseas and they don’t play for you for awhile.
Other than than you have to get very lucky in some way and draft a star with a lower pick. That’s what most teams that have used the draft well do. They start off with some top pick like Porzingis, then as he and other young players make them better, they luckily nail another real star in the 7-10 range, then add another shocker late in the 1st or 2nd round etc…
The 76ers short circuited the efficiency of that system in part due to some sharp trades (which they deserve credit for), but in large part because all the potential stars they were picking either got hurt or were duds. So they stayed bad longer. That enabled them to continue at the bottom longer than usual and nail that second real star. If Embiid came out 100% healthy and played 75-80 games, no way they get Simmons. If Simmons was healthy, no way they get Fultz etc..
3
The Golden State locker room was extremely united under Mark Jackson. And there is zero indication that being white had a negative impact on David Lee or Andrew Bogut. If anything, Mark was overly infatuated with the old style offense of those two players.
The narrative is that he created a division between the locker room and ownership. The same ownership that was secretly tape recording his conversations and has leaked all the information that is fueling the narrative.
The Sixers with a healthy Embiid might look something like the Bucks do right now, but they’d still be the Bucks with capspace and good contracts, instead of looking like the Bucks.
I would describe myself as less pro-Jackson than anti-anti-Jackson – i.e. I don’t think he’d be a particularly good choice, but I do think it’s odd that some other candidates with similar resumes to his get a lot of love while he is viewed as a disastrous pick. For my part I’ll say that I heavily discount the anno0uncing thing. Public speaking is tough. Public speaking off the cuff about action that is occurring as you’re talking about it is another degree of difficulty harder. Resorting to being a cliche robot in that setting is not unusual, nor does it necessarily show that you lack deep insight into the game when you have a chance to sit and watch the film calmly with time to reflect.
When you hear the coaches huddles on the listen in the vast majority of what they’re doing is not breaking down the game with incredible insight, it’s telling guys “Hey we need two stops in a row” or “Focus on rebounding”. And that’s not solely because the clips are selected to remove the strategy stuff, it’s because most of the actual complicated parts of coaching just can’t really occur during the frenzied pace of a game. Same with announcing. That environment isn’t conducive to deep discussions of pick and roll coverages and that isn’t his job, his job to provide “color” to the broadcast for the average viewer at home. “Mama there goes that man” does that more than talking about a guys TS%. Obviously the fact that his broadcasts don’t show much evidence that he understands the game at a deep level isn’t in his favor, but I also don’t hold it too much against him is what I’m long-windedly saying.
@Frank
Thanks for posting that link to the Vorkunov pod.
@Hubert
I don’t think he’s our worst case scenario. I personally really don’t want him because I think there’s a ton of off court baggage that comes with him that seems destined to provide the Daily News and Post endless content for the entire time he’s here, but I do agree that he probably did do some things right as far as developing the Warriors’ young talent.
I think one of the things about Jackson that bothers a lot of us is the religion thing. I don’t care if he is infatuated with God, but leave that preaching stuff at home.
I also feel like we need someone that will install a modern offense as well, and I don’t think Jackson will do that.
@ 14 – Hubert – I appreciate your devil’s advocacy with Jackson. I believe there is a lot of truth to his hypocrisy but then again, there are a lot of religious athletes in all of sports who then turn around and cheat on their wives. And people say “oh he had curry and thompson and green” but those guys were not guaranteed to be good NBA players when drafted. And its not even like Phil Jackson with Jordan. Phil took over and Jordan was all ready the best player in the league. Jackson coached those players when they were rookies. And yes he got D Lee to play defense!
I don’t know if its exactly a race thing. Maybe there is an element of that. But I think its also a player/non player thing. The Warriors owners are all white silicon valley tech nerds. D Lee certainly loved Jackson and he’s white. So he probably did create a culture of us vs. them and that ultimately did him in but it seems like his players all for the most part loved him. And he should get credit for the defense. I mean, you could always hire him and hire and good assistant coach for the offense, right?
He’s not my ideal choice but I do think people are probably swinging this too far in the other direction against him. I mean someone the other day said he would ruin the careers of our young players and they’d end up with career ending injuries or something. I mean, the warriors he coached are all doing pretty well still, so not sure where that idea came from.
If there’s weird stuff going on about Mark Jackson, it predates the discussion of exorcisms and whatever: he was a Pacer who backed down our smaller guards in the playoffs and killed us with teardrops and then did his shimmy. I freaking hated him, and that’s not something you let go of easily, especially when his on-air persona is that of an ignorant jock.
The article about his firing, though, is very good (and very long). This quote sums it up:
It’s America, not just NBA front offices. Which is why the election of Obama was so encouraging – access! – and the backlash to it so disheartening (“how dare the blacks get a position of power and influence!”). Good as the article is, though, it doesn’t change the fact that, though he clearly put together a great defense, his offense sucked, and his motivational strategy is Us v. Them, which backfired, and he was a homophobic hypocrite whose act would not play well with a savage NYC media. This is a really, really tough position for any coach to come into, and we need stability more than almost anything else. Fisher and Barnes’s ex-wife, Horns throwing down with KP and Noah – no more, please. Even if the choice is ultimately pedestrian, can we just get basic competence? Clean living and platitudes would be fine for a while.
Jackson may be a difficult person to get along with, but I’d be willing to bet that some of what was written about him was spin and agenda driven. He was coaching in an environment, in a city, and for a management team with politics and beliefs that are diametrically opposed to everything he believes in. There’s almost no way he got a fair shake from the press or the people in the organization that didn’t like him and wanted him removed (and they may not even be aware of how their own views impacted their view of him).
None of that says anything about his ability to coach.
IMO, he wasn’t as bad as his critics suggest but he was no genius on offense either. He did a good job in some ways and mediocre job in others. I think we could find a better coach, but I think it’s unfortunate that he may be semi-black balled by some teams because of what happened in Golden State. The team was generally successful and the star players backed him up.
Personally, I don’t care what’s going on in his marriage. That’s between him and his wife. I don’t have a major problem with hypocrisy. It’s not an ideal quality, but I’ve done some things in my life that I would tell my children not to do (if I had any). One can know something is wrong, tell others it is wrong, but be too weak and imperfect to follow their own advice. It’s part of being human.
Come ok, to act like it’s just “random reddit threads” talking up the accusations against Jackson is really damn naive.
Zach Lowe for example has echoed many of the impressions about trouble in the locker room, mismanagement with assistants etc. He was the one who reported the Ezeli thing, the locker room being divided and Jackson’s issues with Jerry West.
There’s a reason the guy won 51 games or something and hasn’t been hired yet for any other job. I appreciate the devil’s advocacy for the sake of it but come on, it’s not just some random reddit smear campaign.
Strat, this thing that you’re saying (and that several other people keep positing) is false.
Like someone mentioned yesterday, the Thunder had a good pick in Durant, still sucked enough to get another top 5 pick in Westbrook, and still sucked enough to get another top 5 pick in Harden.
That’s the beauty of drafting in the top 5. Unless a fluke injury caused you to fall that low or you win the lottery from outside the top 10 or you get a generational talent like LeBron James or Shaquille O’Neal, you’re likely going to be back there next year unless you do something incredibly dumb… like prop up your top 5 pick with expensive veteran talent in a misguided attempt to compete for the 8 seed.
So does Harrison Barnes…
to be clear, I didn’t say it was all from reddit:
Yeah if you stick a mic in front of anyone for two hours a night they’ll inevitably say a bunch of empty or at times outright dumb shit. Even Brent Barry and Doris Burke do sometimes. But I just can’t fathom listening to Mark Jackson or Jon Barry or Reggie for these hundreds of hours as we’ve had to and not seeing that their default thought process is to combine hubris with some amalgam of instinct, conventional wisdom and superstition. It has nothing to do with the Mama There Goes That Man shit. If anything, Jackson is a better than average public speaker compared to more thoughtful guys like Chauncey or Brent Barry. You can’t prove you’d be a good coach or GM by being an occasionally thoughtful commentator but you sure as hell can prove the inverse.
Ultimately, we should avoid him for no other reason than that Mills and Perry are probably not the two best guys to get to the bottom of these issues, to see if Mark learned anything from failure, etc. If a credible person hired Jackson again, I’d be confident that maybe there was more to his situation than what we’ve read.
Not only that, but we added veteran talent in the dumbest way possible, by giving them long term deals. The Sixers are paying JJ Reddick 23 million dollars this season. JJ is a solid vet, but that’s a lot of money for a one dimensional player for a team that probably went into this season hoping to compete for a 7 or 8 seed. . .but it’s only one year. If we’d signed Lee and fucking Noah to one or two year deals we’d still be in pretty good shape even though things didn’t work out the way we hoped. Probably even could have traded at least Lee this year, even if he was making more money.
This is an interesting forum, mostly because it’s an exchange of ideas, thoughts and philosophies. I think the subject being the knicks is pointedly relavent, and at the same time, almost inconsequential. It’s the exchange of ideas and mental jousting that’s the real appeal.
And yet, ironic that people express opinions with no real knowledge of what they’re espousing, other than the comments of other posters.
Herd mentality in formation.
These arguments about Mark Jackson are reminding me of the arguments in favor of Derrick Rose.
“He’s in great shape now!”
“He looks like he’s regained all of his speed!”
“We really need someone who can break down an offense!”
The sensible folks here knew that Derrick Rose stunk, and that he was going to continue to stink, and that’s exactly how it played out.
It’s wishful thinking. It’s pretty obvious that Mark Jackson is a thin-skinned and paranoid hypocrite who will flame out in spectacular, humiliating fashion if he is hired as Knicks head coach. I don’t even need to see it play out, I have the same certainty that this is a bad idea that I did about the Bargnani trade, the Noah signing and the Rose trade. It’s not that there’s a good chance hiring Mark Jackson won’t work out, it’s that it’s a 100% certainty it won’t work out.
Rationalizing terrible ideas is a big part of what we do around here. I’m not going to kick rationalizing terrible ideas to the curb.
It’s pretty simple – there are SO many better candidates than Mark friggin’ Jackson. The only reason the Knicks might hire him is for some dumb “he’s coming home” promo. And unfortunately I wouldn’t put that past them, especially if the idiot Dolan gets involved.
And yet, ironic that people express opinions with no real knowledge of what they’re espousing
ironically not irony very meta
speaking of not irony, it should be said that one of the original totally unfair criticisms of Mark Jackson that came public was that he was somehow preventing Harrison Barnes from reaching elite status. Brian scalabrine made this accusation outright. this is hysterical, like the idea that hornacek was preventing Beasley from making the HOF. but a corrollary to this is that you have to be really careful about giving Mark Jackson credit for “developing” Klay or 21.9mpg draymond or Steph. the default prior is probably that good players will usually become good players amid most potential contexts.
@35 – you are probably right, but if you haven’t already, you should read that Marcus Thompson blog post I linked to above. It definitely puts a different spin on Jackson’s time in GS from a guy who spends a ton of time around the team. Otherwise it seems you’re pretty much basing your opinion on a reddit thread and a couple other articles.
Again – I don’t want Jackson to be the coach. But I am sensitive to the fact that there may be more than one side to the story. And regardless of which spin is right, I don’t want someone who plays as much us vs them as he does.
@35 I’m not trying to rationalize a terrible idea. I’m questioning what informs our assumption that it is a terrible idea.
Derrick Rose and Andrea Bargnani had statistical track records that made it clear what would what happen. Mark Jackson’s statistical track record is actually very good. He might resemble Hassan Whiteside more than Derrick Rose, i.e. his production is staring at us in the face, but we people can’t get over the narrative that surrounds him, even if that narrative is questionable.
Haven’t we had enough back page drama and internecine warfare and backroom scandals and salacious bullshit to last us all a lifetime? Does anybody really believe that Mark Jackson is going to come coach this team, and all of that is NOT going to happen? I’m sorry. I’ve seen this movie before.
Just take a look at this “sourcing” over at Posting & Toasting for what is perceived to be a irrefutable fact: that Mark Jackson is homophobic.
The link goes here:
https://sfbay.ca/2014/05/30/mark-jackson-on-gays-not-in-my-locker-room/
Again… “Jackson, according to a source close to the team” .
Now Jackson in his own words:
Good, well let’s hire him then, because that will give me yet another opportunity to say “I told you so” when it all goes hilariously badly.
I do kind of live for that.
Maybe Mark Jackson can put some of that anointing oil on Porzingis’ ACL, then make him jump up and down on it to prove that it’s healed. We need some more of that around here. LITERAL snake oil.
It’s long since become amusing for me to read sheer volume of the myriad of dystopian/apocalyptic ways in which the FO could possibly mess up. The batshit crazy y’all come up beats reading Isola any day of the week. It would be a compliment except that some of you actually believe that shit.
Whatever.
Jackson’s nonexistant candidacy will receed into the rear view mirror, as the team continues interviewing other, better coaching candidates. I figure that within 7-10 days, they’ll have their guy, and that person will indeed check most, if not all, of the qualities they mentioned at their press conference.
As as side, doesn’t Fizdale bearing resemblance to Gordon Freeman, the main character in the game Half-life?
So did I. It was called the Jeff Van Gundy era. I loved the guy, but he was a walking soap opera and a constant feeder of backpage headlines. Only Larry Brown was worse in that regard.
I’m not particularly excited by any of our coaching candidates, but out of everyone we are reportedly interviewing I’d rank them like this:
1. Fizdale
2. JVG
3. Jackson.
4. Stackhouse
5. Blatt
6. Woodson
Man, the Jackson stuff is fascinating though. Did you guys see the part about Brian Scalabrine wanting to fist fight him? This is delicious. I hope Orlando hires him so we can read more stories next year.
Was there a lot of drama around JVG?
I don’t remember that at all.
And that last one… he’s the guy that would make me give up on the Knicks for the foreseeable future.
Really? He was constantly fighting with Checketts and Grunfeld and using the press to rally support. He got Grunfeld fired. The 99 playoff run was fueled in part by the same “us against the world” attitude/fight with management that Jackson used in Golden State. Hell he even called out Michael Jordan. And then he quit in the middle of a season.
JVG had a lot of drama in the Grunfeld era, but once he won that fight, things were much less dramatic (and the drama rarely carried over to the court – the one exception was Camby in his first season). Until he abruptly quit, of course, but the very nature of him abruptly quitting is that it was, you know, abrupt, so it wasn’t like there was a lot of drama leading up to it.
Things still happened, of course, that were “dramatic,” like Camby accidentally punching him in the face, but they weren’t due to him.
If Mark Jackson is going to bring intolerance to anyone in any shape or form, he should stay the fuck out of here. I don’t care if he’s the best coach in the world.
Live and let live.
Odds are they are going to hire someone worse than Hornicek. The knicks.
The Grunfeld era was 60% of his tenure, though.
But there was a ton of drama afterwards because the entire organization was caught off guard. I think it’s fair to attribute that to him.
I don’t recall a lot of drama after he quit. Don Chaney was about as non-dramatic as a person could get. That dude was super bland. The losing sucked, of course, and then the terrible trades began, but it didn’t seem all that dramatic. Especially not compared to the Isiah/Dolan meddling/Phil years.
This Jackson stuff reminds me of the last Silicon Valley episode.
This is the thing I was struggling to put my finger on earlier. I think Mark is, rightly or wrongly, perceived to be a bigot and that (either consciously in this case, or unconsciously in others) may influence the way we think about him as a coach.
I confess I have not examined his personal beliefs very deeply (although I remember him making the cross in the 2000 playoffs and it annoyed the shit out of me). I have looked at his coaching and player development record, and while it’s not great, I couldn’t figure out why he would be a line in the sand. His tenure at Golden State was better than every coaches tenure we’ve seen since JVG left.
Jackson’s tenure in GS-in terms of on the court performace-shows how hard it is to evaluate a coach. The young guys on the warriors tended to get better, but that’s nothing unusual. The team won a bunch of games, and that’s not weird because they had a very talented roster. They didn’t over or underperform their pythag by much during his tenure. The team got better after he left, but it also got more talented and the young players got closer to their primes. Jackson very possibly would have won at least one NBA title if he had kept coaching the Warriors. So was he a good coach? I have no idea. He doesn’t seem to have been a notably terrible coach, at least in terms of his teams on court performance. He gave way too many minutes to Harrison Barnes one season, but he was a high draft pick and the front office may have wanted him to play, and that’s the kind of thing lots of NBA teams do.
Right. I don’t think you could really look at his record in Golden State and conclude that he’d be a disaster as compared to Fizdale or Blatt (two candidates that are generally positively received here). They all have very similar NBA track records in my eyes actually (setting aside Blatt’s Euro track record which may not be fair to him). They all had some real obvious successes during their tenures that you can easily point to. They all ran into serious issues when they alienated key stakeholders in the organization (the star players in Blatt and Fiz’s cases, ownership/management for Jackson). They all seem to have been too stubborn for their own good in how they dealt with the situations and eventually hastened their own departures which makes it much harder in all three cases to evaluate the positives I mentioned because we never got to see them try to help their teams take an obvious next step.
There are other issues in Jackson’s case that he should have to answer for in the interview process – the potential bigotry, the stories about his paranoia, etc. but I don’t think it’s some outrage that he’s getting an interview. His resume on its face stacks up with the other candidates.
On the one hand, it’s fair to assume the dialogue around Mark Jackson would be different if he was white. That’s a fair assumption when it comes to just about any prominent person of color.
On the other, just what is publicly known about him alone (i.e. nothing in that Reddit thread that I personally find credible) is enough to stay far, far away.
He was a bad offensive coach and people called it out at the time, he makes one particular religious domination a feature of the teams he coaches, he says dumb shit about basketball on national television all the time, he’s the worst kind of hypocrite, and we know at a bare minimum that he doesn’t actively seek out a productive working relationship with his front offices.
I personally find rumors about him that go beyond what I just said credible, but it honestly doesn’t matter at all if none of them are true. Everything we know for a fact should disqualify him without so much as an interview.
This seems to be a surprisingly early case of “Maybe the dumb thing that the Knicks did isn’t so dumb.” Usually it doesn’t come until the Knicks actually do the dumb thing. Perhaps it is just so clear that they’re going to do it that things sped up this time?
Did you read the blog Frank posted? Lacob & co seemed a little fucked up to me. I think because Golden State went on to have so much success that we automatically assume they were right. That’s not logical. It could just mean that Kerr and Lacob were a better fit together than Jackson and Lacob. Maybe Mills and Perry is the right fit for Jackson. They’re certainly less likely to insult his intelligence by sending old white men to check up on him and forcing him to hire white assistants because they don’t think he’s smart enough to install a system.
It sure seems to me like Mark Jackson uses religion in a self-aggrandizing way, and he uses it to create a clique on a team of which he is the leader. There’s a difference between somebody who is a religious person and somebody who exploits religion. Mark Jackson is a televangelist-style Christian. It’s a hustle to him, a way for him to gain status. That story with Steph Curry and the oil and the congregation made me want to vomit. Fuck all of that shit.
I think it’s fair to say a few things:
1) essentially no one here wants Mark Jackson as our next coach, for a variety of reasons, basketball and non-basketball.
2) We have zero idea what actually happened in GS, but it’s probably more complicated than a random Reddit thread makes it out to be
3) re: the religion thing – I am not a religious person and so it is hard for me to make judgments on the way other people talk about religion. The black church is a world unto itself that I don’t understand at all, and so calling him a hustler and assuming I know anything about his motivations seem out of bounds to me. But that’s just me.
We have good reason to always assume the worse from the front office at this point, Brian.
Amen.
I still have a smattering of hope that Fizdale could get the gig!
I think they’re going to end up with Fizdale. My second choice would be someone who is not among their underwhelming list of candidates.
This whole thing started (from me) when someone said Mark Jackson would be death to Frank. His one saving grace, and the one reason I wouldn’t be mad if we got him, is I think he’d do a great job getting the most out of Frank and KP, especially defensively. Curry, Draymond, and Klay all still swear by the guy.
My worthless prediction is that Fizdale is offered the job.
I don’t want Jackson either, but I really don’t have a favorite among all the others. I just hope they make a good choice.
the difficulty in assessing jackson’s influence on the young warriors squad is the same difficulty in evaluating coaches in general…. in other words.. i don’t think they’re that important… i mean in the fact that they are very rarely the difference between a bad / good team…. what matters is the quality of the players on the court and that’s generally the gm’s job with drafting and trades and what not….
coaches do aid in development but it’s hard to parse their effect… that’s why in the end… i don’t necessarily think who the coach is matters too much… in terms of in-game x’s and o’s most coaches are for the most part fairly similar… plays breakdown all the time and good players overcome that or are able to work in off the cuff fashion….
i do know if frank, kp and hardaway don’t take a step up.. the next coach isn’t going to last long…. so it would behoove them to invest as much energy as they can in making them the best players they can be…. i think veteran coaches are more focused on the game to game strategy and don’t necessarily take the long view… in the nfl that might work but in the nba alot of your team’s success relies on a handful(or less) of players… and if they don’t succeed you won’t either…
Fizdale’s arrival coincided with drastic improvement in the Grizzlies shot selection. Maybe that was just getting rid of Joerger, who I think sucks, but it’s a positive sign for Fizz. On the other hand he did have that anti-data rant after one of the Grizz playoff games.
Isiah Thomas’s role in the Melo trade
https://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/249592/New-Book-Details-Involvement-Of-Isiah-Thomas-In-2011-Carmelo-Anthony-Trade
I love the idea that Isiah just piped in to tell Dolan, “Oh, by the way, some dude thinks that we can’t afford to piss of Melo and his friends.” 🙂
I saw this name mentioned elsewhere and I think it’s about as intriguing a name as there is out there. And honestly, I’m not enamored by any of the candidates proposed so far.
What about Becky Hammond?
You can find examples and exceptions in everything.
That doesn’t make them the most likely outcome, a likely outcome, or even something you should expect to happen often enough to meaningfully consider. I can find horses that looked so bad they were 99-1 in a major race. They won anyway.
Does that mean I should throw out all the data and stats I’ve studied for decades?
Getting high draft picks will tend to add better players to your team, which in turn will make your team better, which in turn will produce lower picks going forward.
That does not mean you should not try to build through the draft. It just means that if you are one of the teams that is successful in the draft, it’s more likely you will do it with a series of picks that could include a dud near the top and/or a lucky strike lower in the draft as your players develop.
Anyone that argues that the 76ers would have Fultz now if Embiid and Simmons came out as healthy rookies is being silly. It’s very unlikely they’d have Simmons if Embiid came out healthy.
I’m a big Hinkie fan. He’s a brilliant guy. But their success included random injury events that worked out spectacularly to their advantage. Where I also part ways with everyone else is that I think Morey, Riley, Ainge and a couple of others are also brilliant men that did it other ways.
There’s not just one way.
I’m not sure why some people are resistant to that notion as if the draft is the only way. The common denominator is a brilliant guy not the method.
It seems like a believable story to me and fits my memory of how the trade got held up over Mozgov and how Dolan supposedly got involved on some level.
I’d love to see this organization try to move past its awful history with women (kind of hard to do when your slimy owner remains in charge and the guy who helped screw over his friend when she was being sexually harassed is the current president of the team) by giving a great coaching prospect like Becky Hammon a shot. I don’t think it has any chance of happening, but I’m all for it!
Oh, I believe it, too. It’s just so stupid, though, as well.
Something interesting that got brought up on the Dunc’d On Podcast last night was that coaches might be hesitant to take lower tier jobs before the Milwaukee job is filled. The Bucks job seems to be both universally expected to be open and universally seen as a really good job due to their pretty high talent level overall and top-5 player already on the team. They specifically mentioned Fizdale in connection with that since he seems to be getting connected with pretty much every open gig. I wouldn’t be shocked if we do end up offering it to him if he tries to keep the Knicks on the hook until Milwaukee is eliminated and he has a chance to interview for that job. Might apply to other guys we’re looking at as well.
Adding Mozgov to the trade would be a huge mistake for most teams, but huge is a relative term when we discuss the Knicks. It’s trivial compared to other Knicks moves.
I hadn’t even considered the possibility of a few more jobs opening up that are more attractive than the Knicks. I liked our position relative to Charlotte and Orlando. Damn. I thought we had our choice, but maybe not. If Fizdale keeps us on the hook, that might increase the chances of someone like Blatt because of the connection to Mills (not that I have a problem with Blatt) .
It’d be a cool story but I don’t think she’s quite at that level yet. She has only been an assistant for a few years and isn’t the lead assistant (Messina, who by the way I’d strongly prefer to Blatt if we wanted to go for a Euro connection). I think she probably needs a little more seasoning (and possibly to do some coaching outside the Spurs bubble, either as a lead assistant somewhere else or as a G-league head coach maybe) before she’s really in the running for head coaching gigs.
Yeah I don’t think a Kerr/Fisher scenario where we end up with our 2nd choice is at all out of the question here.
Maybe once a decade a rookie comes into the league that, by himself, can take one of the 5 worst teams in the league and improve them by 10-15 wins the next season. Even if you nail the pick, it takes time to develop him into an impact player.
More often than not, a bottom 5 team stays in the bottom 5 unless they hit on their pick *and* acquire extra talent.
It’s really easy to stay in the bottom 5 two years in a row. Minnesota nailed the Towns pick and were right back in the top 5 the next year while we were trying to make the playoffs.
I’m looking through recent draft history… almost every team that got a good player with a top 5 pick was in or around the top 5 again next year.
New Orleans nailed Anthony Davis. Picked 6th the the next year.
Cleveland nailed Kyrie. Picked 4th the next year.
Bradley Beal was a good top 5 pick. Washington picked third the next year.
John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins were good top 5 picks. Their teams were 5th & 6th the next year.
Golden State got Steph Curry at 7. Next year they moved up to 6.
Minnesota got Love in the top 5. Got a top 5 pick the next year.
LaMarcus Aldridge was the 2nd pick in the draft. Portland picked 1st the next year.
You have to go all the way back to the 2005 draft to find top 5 picks that moved their teams up the next year: Chris Paul and Deron Williams. Dwight Howard did it in 2004. And LeBron/Melo/Wade did it in 2003. Those were all time great rookies.
Derrick Rose a top pick but Chicago was a borderline playoff team that won the lottery on long odds.
I think it would be a great step just to interview her.
Am I the only one supporting Fizdale based 75% on that one amazing press conference? plus….as someone correctly pointed out yesterday; sweet glasses?
Can the Big 3 please be held at the garden this year, so Oakley can make a triumphant return? His team features Metta WP and Stephen Jackson, plus Chauncey Billups, who they will probably amnesty instead of Amare.
If it takes a rapper at Ice Cube’s level to attract this sort of talent, in what rappers’ league would most of our roster get to play in? I’m guessing Vanilla Ice or Kris Kross?
That seemed like it was directed specifically at someone saying that he was ‘eye-testing’ the refs or something, not that he was anti-analytics. Fizdale seems like he’d be fine. I worry that he might get into arguments with the press which is a losing battle here.
Jackson seems like he’d at least be a good defensive coach, and probably a non-entity in terms of offense. Also might be a reasonable choice for not fucking up players’ development. There’s so much potential baggage there that I’d steer clear. That was an interesting article though.
JVG apparently isn’t even interviewing.
LeBron was a great rookie if you ignore the assessment of every stat available to us from that year, and instead use the rest of his GOAT career as your basis for that argument. Carmelo sucked, too.
Chris Paul and Dwight Howard were stars from day 1. Everyone else had adjustments to make.
Like I said, The Process almost certainly took into account that you can’t predict whether a player will become a superstar AND that even future stars most always have bad rookie years relative to the average NBA player.
Man I really fucking hate the Celtics