They have the best center in the NBA in DeMarcus Cousins. They have the craftiest point guard in the league in Rajon Rondo. They have a proven, year-in, year-out scorer in Rudy Gay. They have a backup point guard in Darren Collison that half a dozen teams would kill for. They have George Karl running the show, for better or worse. They have Quincy Acy. OK, forget about Quincy .. along with the NBA’s most porous defense (allowing 109.1 ppg). The
The New York Knicks have run the Love Triangle offense off the court better than Phil Jackson’s version on the court thanks to coaches Derek Fisher and Kurt Rambis. Will this be the final straw for Carmelo Anthony to waive his no-trade clause and for the Knicks to scrap the Triangle offense for a proven winner in former Chicago Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau, the best available coach on the market? Speaking of the Bulls, Derrick Rose is averaging 26 points, 5.7 rebounds
“I’ve been through worse.” That four-word answer from Carmelo Anthony about his no-trade clause, sticking with the New York Knicks and continuing to trust team president Phil Jackson, perfectly describes the current state of both player and franchise. Of course, it had nothing to do with the question he was asked rather directly — “Would you consider waiving your no-trade clause? — but ‘Melo’s instant tangent was revealing nonetheless. Anthony, the 31-year-old All-Star forward with a sore, surgically repaired left knee, can waive his
There are few things that indicate futility more than when a coach loses the connection with his team. When that happens there is nothing to fix, nothing to do, nowhere to turn. It is over. The wonder of team sports is the coming together of a group of people willing to put personal agendas aside for the common goal of winning. When that happens you truly get a whole bigger than the sum of the parts, and magic happens. When people
Phil Jackson won’t be awful as president of the New York Knicks. He certainly won’t be as bad as Isiah Thomas was in running the club. And he will almost certainly be better than David Kahn, Bryan Colangelo, Joe Dumars, Otis Smith and Geoff Petrie have been in recent years. But Phil Jackson isn’t Isiah Thomas, or David Kahn, or Bryan Colangelo. He’s Phil Jackson, with a reputation of all things basketball that he touches turning to gold. And that’s exactly what
The month of July is typically an awkward one for NBA fans. We’re fresh off the NBA Finals and the NBA Draft, but suddenly realizing that there won’t be any legitimate competition played for the next three months. Of course, as with any NBA summer vacation, there are plenty of things happening with player movement and free agency, but also incidents of the more peculiar variety. Deals are made, teams are transformed, and players find themselves with a bit too much free time
Former player and coach Kurt Rambis has long been known for being the main assistant to Phil Jackson for a better part of the Zen Master’s tenure as the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers in the ’00s. The two are very close, and Rambis openly slammed Jim Buss back in November for the way he mistreated Jackson during the hiring process. Knowing these things, it was quite a surprise to hear that Rambis would be a real candidate to
Phil Jackson has been considered for the in-season vacancies with both the Lakers and the Nets. Both teams opted for an alternative to the most successful coach in NBA history. There were reasons why Jackson did not return to coaching, including this possibility: Could it be that Jackson wants to change his game plan and build a championship team from scratch? [Read more…]