Arguing for Phil’s competence is like arguing that Jar Jar Binks was one of the better Star Wars characters, or that the best ever member of the Grateful Dead was Bruce Hornsby, or that durian is an underrated fruit, or that Eric Trump has a great smile.

ahahahahahahahahahahaha

You’re right that I do have a similar response to this Jackson argument as I do when someone tells me that there’s no real quality difference between gluten-free and semolina pasta.

Phil wasn’t a good GM, but we were in less of a hole when he left than when he took over, mainly because he drafted Porzingis.

We were in less of a hole because the new CBA restricted the lengths of contracts, creating less garbage for other teams to dump on the Knicks. It had nothing to do with Phil Jackson or anything he brought to the table. In fact, he single-handedly created the worst contract that the CBA could possibly allow in his absolute best effort to emulate all the other fools before him.

Sure, he drafted KP who wound up netting a nice return in a smart trade. But that very important decision was surrounded by a ton of horrible ones both before and after that draft. I won’t go through them one by one, but will remind you that at the most pivotal moment in his tenure, he made an inexcusably foolish decision to sign Melo to the near mega-max/NTC/trade kicker deal. The decision to commit to building a winning team around an overrated, aging, and selfish player led to one terrible decision after another. I still contend that some of the deals (e.g. the Derrick Rose trade, the DWill and Afflalo signings) were not as bad in a vacuum as some made them out to be. Bnt the moves were never made in a vacuum, they doubled down on the original sin of the Melo re-signing.

So yeah, we could have had more bad long-term deals than just Noah and Lee, and fewer #1 picks, and the trade value of Mudiay or Hezonja instead of KP. But to say that Phil left us better than he found us requires rose-colored corneal implants, let alone glasses.

I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s because Phil is a Baby Boomer or something and other baby boomers identify with him and feel sorry for his doddering old ass. I can’t really understand why anybody would waste time typing letters into a box in an effort to defend his pitiful tenure as Knicks GM.

Or maybe it’s all the ringzz, or the fact that Phil was a member of the team 50 years ago when they were good. I really don’t know. I had some hope for this team when Phil got hired, I thought for sure he must know a thing or two about putting together a winning team. I was wrong. He didn’t know jack shit. He was here for three years and left five years worth of a hole to dig out of.

Arguing for Phil’s competence is like arguing that Jar Jar Binks was one of the better Star Wars characters, or that the best ever member of the Grateful Dead was Bruce Hornsby, or that durian is an underrated fruit, or that Eric Trump has a great smile.

I mentioned us having the 2/3 pick, meaning no Zion, but a good guard or wing. In which case having another value big would be ok. Not great, but ok.

Eh, maybe? He doesn’t seem to add much in wins which is fine but it feels like treading water. If we miss out on all the big K’s we should just keep trying to develop. The Pels are probably trading Davis to someone else (I really hope we don’t clear the cupboard without having Durant and Kyrie on board) but he’ll still be up for FA in another year and the chances that Boston or LA implode in the face of already existing powerhouses isn’t negligible. Keep building a core you can slot FAs into. After all, most of the failure teams built around stars were predicated on not having that core.

I’m pretty sure all he said was he wanted to play, whether it was with the Knicks or anyone else.

I remember it as asking for a trade because he wanted to play, but I could be wrong. I don’t think they planned to trade him though. I also don’t really think that two seconds was a bad return. Trad big men who are good defenders don’t have much perceived value in the league and as noted above, Willy was and still is trash on defense.

Fair enough; I’m happy for the Pacers your namesake did better for them than for the Knicks.

I’m pretty sure all he said was he wanted to play, whether it was with the Knicks or anyone else. The reason he wasn’t playing on the Knicks was because of KOQ and Kanter, one of which was on an expiring contract and the other, well, was Enes Kanter.

It was just a really poor way to manage Willy as an asset even if the eventual goal was to trade him.

This was nonsense at the time, and it has proven to be even more nonsensical at the current time. Willy didn’t play because he sucked balls on defense to the point of being an utter embarrassment on that end of the court. He never had more trade value than 2 of Charlotte’s #2 picks, and to think that his value somehow could have been built up by playing him more than Kanter’s or O’Quinn’s could have been built up by playing them is either disingenuous 0r delusional. If anything, not playing him might have actually increased his value, as there was less opportunity to see how terrible he really was.

If you want to argue that they missed the boat on trading Kanter and/or O’Quinn, who were actually, you know, good players, then fine. Kyle O’Quinn, who could probably have been re-signed for a pittance more than he got from IND and who now is glued to the bench there, is 10x as good as Willy, and yet he found out the hard way that he was not worth anything more than what he gave up by opting out. So once they dumbly didn’t trade him at the deadline, it was at least smart not to overpay for O’Quinn.

In summary, what we got 2 decent second rounders for Willy was a stroke of genius.

I would say Pseudo

6 eastern conference finals and one NBA finals is “pseudo-contention”? Wow, that’s a ridiculously high bar for contention. I don’t think any other franchise had that kind of success during that era without either Jordan, Hakeem, Duncan, or Shaq on their team.