David Fizdale’s Knicks coaching career got a major jolt from the defibrillator on Thursday, with the Knicks getting a big, big victory over the Dallas Mavericks in the Garden. Two-thirds of the Knicks’ victories this season have hilariously come against a pretty decent Dallas Mavericks team. The Knicks clearly should pretend that every NBA team has offended them, as they are now 1-3 in “revenge games” with their only other win coming in Bobby Portis’ “revenge game” against the Bulls. Portis’ good initial game clearly led to him feeling sated, as he then sucked in the rematch.
Anyhow, if you’re Fizdale, then these next two games are ones you have circled in your calendar as, “Holy shit, these two games might save my job,” as the Knicks get two very winnable games here against the Charlotte Hornets and then the Cleveland Cavaliers. Two wins here and suddenly they’re 5-8 and that’s halfway respectable. I always tend to assume that the Knicks, all things being equal, will always trend towards the middle of the pack, since that’s the worst place to be when it comes to the draft, so I think we’ll see a period here where Fizdale’s coaching career gets off life support for a time.
If Fiz could somehow hold on to the job due to some good coaching on his part, I would be quite grateful, as I don’t want Steve Mills and Scott Perry hiring another coach at the moment, because Keith Smart is a real possibility and Mark Jackson always lurks out there, as well, as a sort of shadowy coaching monster, reading to fuck things up even further.
So here’s to you, Fiz, hopefully you figure some shit out and beat an overachieving Hornets team that is still just 5-7 (some fine coaching from Poppovich coaching tree hire, James Borrego).
Let’s go, Knicks!