Did anyone actually think the Knicks were going to do well this year? If you did maybe you don't know basketball. But let's talk about the NBA commissioner making comments about the triangle offense, an offense that won't be effective until the knicks have a team that Phil Jackson likes. Do you think Jackson likes Amar'e Stoudemire and Andrea Bargnani? I don't think he does. He inherited those players. What's he to do? They're both under contract until the end of the year and it would be ridiculously dumb to trade them now, like the Knicks traded Pat Ewing for Glen Rice, the Lakers backup center Travis Knight and Phoenix Suns center Luc Longley. That put so much money on the Knicks books and prevented them from signing top free agents.
Lets talk for a second about another more recent decision which I was very critical of made by former Knicks GM. The Knicks were always on the hunt for NBA all stars and they had a few good candidates in the 1990's the played with Pat Ewing, Allan Houston, Latrell Sprewell and Larry Johnson were quality players that almost won the championship, the 1994 team was pretty impressive and could have won also (they lost to the Spurs in 1999). But I'm going to do something here that will certainly piss lots of people off including my dad, Neil Drossman, my dentist Daniel Rudolph, and my cousins, Joey Rosenberg, David Bulhack and Noah Ross. Isiah Thomas although a first rate asshole and a terrible coach, did something that no other GM in recent times was able to do with the knicks. Get a team together with two NBA all stars David Lee and Zach Randolph and even more quality players like Jamal Crawford. The knicks would consider themselves the luckiest of NBA teams if they could get players of David Lee and Zach Randolph's quality in this year's free agent market. Had Larry Brown even attempted to coach that team instead of trying to sabotaging the team in hopes of getting Isiah Thomas fired as GM, the Knicks could have been a quality NBA team with at least two NBA all stars. But instead they let Lee, Crawford and Randolph go and got nothing in return.
Now I hear criticism of Phil jackson all the time. Ignorant people say, yeah Phil jackson won all those championships, because he had Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman and then Shaq and Kobe and then Kobe and Pau Gasol. I do think the lakers would have done much better if instead of being a pig head and an ego maniac, Jim Buss hired Phil Jackson to coach the Lakers instead of hiring bad coach after bad coach to take the helm of the team. Jeanie Buss, Jim's sister is now engaged to Phil Jackson.
But lets get back to the criticism of Phil jackson all the time. People say anyone can win with NBA teams with two or more NBA all stars. And those teams that have had two or more NBA hall of Famers include, the Lakers under Pat Riley, Magic, Kareem, James Worthy etc, The Celtics under KC Jones, had Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, The Celtics under Doc Rivers Rajon Rondo, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Kevin Garnet. Gregg Popovich's Spurs had Tim Duncan and David Robinson. With the exception of Maybe the Dallas Mavs championship team even other NBA team that I recall winning the championship has had at least two hall of famers, maybe even the best players in basketball at their time.
So before I hear "yeah Phil Jackson win the championship as a coach (not not even talking about as a player here which he won two championships)" consider that basically even other NBA championship winning team has had a least two NBA all stars who were the top players at their time.
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