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Keidel: Time To Blow Up The Phil Jackson Experiment

By Jason Keidel
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Any true sports fan knows you pick a team before puberty and you ride or die with them until they close your coffin. You can no more swap teams than you can change your height or family history.

But you are allowed to leave a club, a forlorn franchise that is so inept that you've moved beyond the paper bag at home games. You just can't pluck a new club, and thus are banished to a kind of sporting purgatory.

So it is with yours truly, a basketball gypsy who lives outside the NBA bubble because I was raised a Knicks fan. My parents fell  in love with those iconic clubs from 1969 through 1973, when we saw the world through grainy, black-and-white cubes.

I most adored the Hubie Brown clubs, with Bernard King and Rory Sparrow and the rest. Especially King, who was beautiful for a fleeting, few years, his lightning turnaround jumper from the baseline, that high rainbow that always found the bottom of the net. Those Knicks never came close to winning a title, but they were fun. And isn't that what sports are all about?

Phil Jackson
Knicks president Phil Jackson (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

But once Pat Riley jumped ship, there was a deep sense of foreboding I could not shake, a new team I couldn't fathom following, spending time and cash and sweat on ownership so misguided that they let Pat Riley walk.

The rest of you have gone down with the ship, through the Lenny Wilkens and Herb Williams and Larry Brown epochs. You even stuck around -- lord knows why -- through Starbury, Isiah Lord Thomas and sexual harassment lawsuits. You even thought Carmelo Anthony would bring relief, even when yours truly assured you it was all a mirage.

MORE: Schmeelk: After Just 6 Games, Dissent (AKA Business As Usual) At MSG

You are loyal, if nothing else.

But finally, the 2016-17 Knicks gave the rest, their remaining, misguided fans, a sense that this year would be different, a crack of sunlight in this 20-year dungeon you've called home. Between Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah and the gaggle of new faces, there was suppsoed to be an infusion of ability and attitude. A new world order on 33rd Street.

Not so much.

The Knicks generally implode by Christmas, but not before Thanksgiving, which is what we have now, the NBA iteration of the Hindenburg. They are 2-4, which isn't end times, but the back page and bold ink are indeed apocalyptic.

We're seeing November mutiny at MSG. Phil Jackson, who fired Kurt Rambis and hired Jeff Hornacek, has called on the former to help the latter as a defensive coordinator.

Maybe Jackson is confusing sports and thinks the NBA has mutated into the NFL. If so, why not get someone bigger or better than Rambis? Maybe Lovie Smith or Dick LeBeau could remold the Knicks' league-worst defense.

MORE: Schmeelk: The Odd Impact of Joakim Noah

You can't make this up.

Word is Jackson is also chafed by the new coach's allergy to the triangle. That's Hornacek, the new coach, not Rambis.

Jackson became an icon by doing the inverse of what he's doing now. Wherever he coached, from Chicago to Los Angeles, there was a single, monolithic voice -- Jackson's. He even had the stones to chase Jerry West -- the league logo -- from the Lakers' locker room.

Yet Jackson now wants to coach by committee. He sees the NBA bench as a democracy, not a monarchy. Imagine the GM of the Spurs telling Gregg Popovich that Avery Johnson would help him run the defense.

This isn't about Hornacek, Rambis or the influx of free agents dashing across the hardwood. This is about Jackson, who had never run an NBA club before returning to New York, and that's obvious. If you have a wildly gifted but chaotic club, Jackson can coach the crap out of it.

But clearly Jackson hasn't the time, energy or acumen to be the boss. Word is he doesn't have an affinity for scouting players, clocking those 18-hour days that most personnel bosses do to mine those gems buried in obscure colleges or overseas leagues -- even though that is precisely his job.

WFAN's Craig Carton, a proud, pom-pom waving fan who says the Knicks are his favorite team in any sport, says Jackson has to go. Not on a scouting or fishing trip. Go. Leave. Quit or be canned as team president.

Mr. Carton is correct. You hate to think that this team has to go through its nth incarnation, already 43 years removed from its last title. But rather than perpetuate an error, correct it.

Jackson is merely the first in an endless montage of mistakes. If owner James Dolan has any basketball sense, he will remove the man he mistakenly hired rather than watch him add coaches and chaos to a team that can't afford any.

Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel

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