It’s All Phil All The Time in New York these days. No Knicks story can be written without a reference – or more – to Phil Jackson’s imminent ascension as the new Czar of MSG.
Jackson, as is his wont, is playing it every so coy and cagey, relishing in the mystery of it all.
He knows what he’s doing, right? (OK, he’s getting $12 million, so he got that part right.)
But this whole thing runs counter to Jackson’s usual M.O., which was to let other guys take a team to the brink – Doug Collins in Chicago, Del Harris in LA – then swoop in and get them over the hump.
He always had Hall of Famers. That’s plural. One is not enough in most cases (and three was not enough back in the Golden Days of the 1980s). And – here’s a key – he always had a sharp guy above him writing the checks. In Chicago, it was Jerry Reinsdorf. In Los Angeles, it was Jerry Buss.
In New York it’s … James Dolan.
Good luck, Phil.
If Jackson wondered what happens to Hall of Famers who cross Dolan’s line of fire, he could have contacted Larry Brown. Hard as it is to believe, it was eight years ago that Brown coached his one and only season in New York. It was the shortest and most humbling year of his Hall of Fame career, but he was ultimately paid about $30 million for his time.
Brown says now he never really wanted the Knicks job. He was getting out of Detroit, supposedly going to Cleveland to be the basketball ops guy.
But that never materialize, and instead he ended up back in the city where he grew up, coaching one of the marquee franchises in the NBA. It was, he said at the time, a “dream job.” Or so he – and we – all thought.
“I didn’t really want to go to New York in the first place,’” he says now. “But my family, which was living in Philadelphia, did. It was a lot closer. And, if you do a good job in New York, you help the NBA. And the NBA has been great to me.”
He added, “having a great franchise in New York and me being a part of it would have been a neat way to end my career. It didn’t work out.”
No, it didn’t, for a number of reasons.
Brown took over a 33-win team that had been coached by Lenny Wilkens (fired) and Herb Williams the previous season. He looks back now and can’t believe the players he had on a nightly basis.
“Matt Barnes. Jackie Butler. Mo Taylor. We were bad,’’ Brown said. “I mean, c’mon. How can you win with that? But, in the end, I am what my record says I was. I won 23 games.”
Brown clashed with Stephon Marbury, and his public criticism of some players did not sit well with Dolan. (Anyone with simply remote knowledge of Brown would have shrugged and said, “Larry being Larry.”)
Brown and his titular boss, Isiah Thomas, hated each other by the time it ended.
“I trusted Isiah,’’ Brown says today. “But I did a dumb thing. Dolan wanted to win and he wanted me close to him. But I went through Isiah, chain of command and all that, and it didn’t work out.”
After getting fired, Brown had to file a grievance and go to arbitration to get some of the estimated $40 million he was still owed by the Knicks. The team said he violated his contract. As he says today, “that was the most humiliating thing in my life, that I had to go through that.”
Former Commissioner David Stern was the mediator.
“They wanted me to sign all this stuff,’’ Brown said. “I mean, I had a contract. C’mon! My wife said I shouldn’t sign anything because of how it might impact all the future coaches. She wanted me to stand firm. But I couldn’t.”
Brown said the Knicks were less than forthright during the deposition process. He offered the following example:
“I wrote one day that Nate Robinson was certifiable,’’ Brown said. “I wrote I couldn’t imagine anyone doing the things he does. And I wrote, ‘but that’s why I love him.'”
But when he got to mediation, he said the Knicks left out the last part, the part that said “that’s why I love him.’”
“The stuff they did was unbelievable,” Brown said.
Brown walked away with a boatload of cash for his one failed season in New York. Iago, er, Isiah Thomas replaced him and was just as bad. Mike D’Antoni had one winning season in three-plus years.
Now, with this season’s team underachieving despite their current six-game winning streak, and with an underwhelming future, Mike Woodson will be next. You can book that.
The one constant in all this madness is Dolan. (We won’t even get into the sexual harassment suit that cost him more than $11 million and had Stern calling the Knicks “not a model of intelligent management.”)
GM Donnie Walsh had enough of Dolan’s meddling and went back to Indiana.
The latest GM, Steve Mills, doesn’t talk to the media (like his predecessor, Glen Grunwald, an amiable Midwestern chap who was similarly muzzled per Dolan’s orders.)
This is the nest of vipers into which Jackson is now venturing. Hopefully, for his sake, it will be just about basketball.
But history tells us Jackson better have long nails, because he very likely is going to need them.
Peter May is the only writer who covered the final NBA games played by Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. He has covered the league for three decades for The Hartford Courant and The Boston Globe and has written three books on the Boston Celtics. His work also appears in The New York Times. You can follow him on Twitter.
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This article = yeeeaaahh…
Phil Jackson at least has a lot of experience with manipulating front offices and the press. It was in the service of keeping a good team – as well as himself – but should serve him well in New York. Phil is a great coach, but somewhat unproven as a front office manager. We should all wish him well, but don’t waste a lot of sympathy on him either.