Keidel: Why Would A Top Free Agent Want To Sign With The Knicks?
By Jason Keidel
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The premise of any rebuild is that you, the fan, tolerate the ephemeral failure for the larger goal of winning in a year or two or three. Or, in the case of the Knicks, four decades.
The New York Knicks are so wretched that The New York Times has commissioned one of its reporters to write a series of features under the banner, "Not the Knicks." Sunday's piece was about the Atlanta Hawks, who certainly reside in an alternative basketball galaxy that the Knickerbockers are not a part of.
Another article from The Times compared two free-falling franchises -- the Knicks and Lakers -- and gauged each team's potential for prosperity.
It wasn't close. Even though Kobe Bryant is substantially older than Carmelo Anthony, the Lakers can sell the 10 titles they've won since the Knicks last won one. And the truth about Melo is he gave the Knicks his prime years and they didn't sniff a ring. He turns 31 next year and is coming off knee surgery. And he will be in only the second year of a five-year, $124 million contract.
Beach versus Broadway. Sounds like a complicated sell, but it's not. Even if you're a New Yorker to the bone, and abhor the idea of endless traffic, smog and mountains of Botox, it's hard to sell the snow, cold, taxes and the reality that New York City just isn't a premier hoops destination anymore.
We brand it a blessed hardwood because it's all we got. But the truth is Gotham can't hypnotize you on the success and mystery of a major market anymore. Even the Yankees are struggling, and they can roll out a conga line of luminaries who played just a few years ago and retired with a fistful of rings.
If the Yankees need to sell you on the splashy nostalgia of a recent dynasty, what can the Knicks offer a high-end free agent who can play in warmer climes for the same contract and, in some cases, no state tax?
Cap room can't clear your driveway after a blizzard, and 40-year-old bromides don't cater to the key demo. You can't be relevant unless you win, which spawns the chicken/egg argument. Do the Knicks stink because they recruited the wrong people, or because the right people refuse to bite on the Big Apple?
Michael Jordan used to pour his soul into MSG, taking particular pride in killing the Knicks. The iconic double-nickel was maybe his most famous, but just one of many memorable efforts. Same with Reggie Miller. Great players wanted to do great things because the Garden still had gravitas.
But that was a long time ago; 20 years removed from their last title, not 40 years. And you had Pat Riley stalking the sidelines, starting a revival and summoning the ghosts. You had reason to respect and fear the Knicks, even if they fell one game short of a championship under Riley.
LeBron James muses profoundly over playing at MSG. But you get the sense he's just being kind. Or perhaps he's got some subliminal business model in mind. But there's no real reason for fearing, playing or mentioning the Knicks anymore. And it's hardly a recent problem.
When can New Yorkers expect the Knicks to be relevant again? Nothing they've done this year injects any hope. At 13-53 -- that's a .197 winning percentage -- they make you ashamed to say you're from the five boroughs. And you're tired of the platitudes about progress, because there isn't any.
You can't jam to the retreads like you could in the 1980s or '90s, when the old salt recently sprouted salt and pepper to their beards. Now they're either gone or close to it. You can't just queue up some Frank Sinatra and pretend these are the glory days.
Phil Jackson was supposed to cure all of that. He was the perfect cocktail of memories and accomplishments. But the frothing fans who assured us that the Zen Master would spin his brand of mystical spells on the Knicks didn't acknowledge that he'd never done this job before.
Maybe it's not exactly like asking a point guard to play power forward. But nothing replaces ability, having a basketball barn full of studs who just need a little tweaking. "Give me talent," Vince Lombardi once said. "I can teach technique."
What can the Knicks be taught? With a rookie coach and president, it doesn't matter how many rings Derek Fisher and Jackson bagged together. Though it might be useful to remember that they did win them in Los Angeles, which is probably where both would rather be right now.
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