The Knicks, being the Knicks, have done the Knicks in.
After firing Tom Thibodeau — their most successful head coach since Pat Riley — the organization is at a crossroads, stuck in a mess of its own making. The Knicks didn’t have a successor ready when they fired Thibodeau, believing they’d be granted permission to talk with sitting head coaches. No questions asked.
But that’s not how this works.
After being denied permission to interview Jason Kidd, Chris Finch, Ime Udoka, Billy Donovan, and Quinn Snyder, the Knicks arereportedly turning to recently fired retreads, such as Mike Brown and Taylor Jenkins.
So who’s to blame? Is it James Dolan? The reclusive Leon Rose? Other NBA owners?
Tony Kornheiser says the Knicks’ “arrogance” is to blame.
The Knicks acted like their name gave them a free pass to interview coaches under contract elsewhere. But NBA rules exist to protect teams, and those coaches are with playoff teams who won’t just hand them over. The Knicks underestimated that. And, now, they’re paying the price.
“This is sort of unbelievable to me, Mike. And as you know, I grew up a Knicks fan,” Kornheiser told his PTI co-host, Mike Wilbon. “But, this is a team that won a championship for the last time [52] years ago. And they think that their name is so prestigious that everyone wants to coach there. Well, not everyone. Jay Wright didn’t want to coach there. I think if they get one of these three guys and one of these three guys wants them, they’re going to have to do it by trade.
“They’re not going to swoop in like a pack of birds. And this leaves me to the thing I said the last two days about this story. Why would you want to go work for Dolan? Why? He just fired a guy who took his team to the Conference Finals for the first time in like over 20 years. And why would you work for a guy like Leon Rose, who just let his former client go down the drain?”
We’re about to find out what kind of coach would work for a guy like James Dolan or Leon Rose. And chances are, it’ll be Plan B since the Knicks’ Plan A was to poach a sitting head coach.
“I’m not going to disagree with you on any of that,” Wilbon replied. “In fact, I’m going to applaud you because your depiction of New York arrogance — I know it’s confined to this one thing — that’s the way most of us feel about New Yorkers all the damn time! They’re so arrogant they look at the world and say, ‘Yeah, you just want to be here.’ Yeah, that’s what I think of you people all of my life, and it is more than 60 years. But that was so well done by you; I’d hug you if I was there. I got nothing to add to that because I think you slayed that just now. You killed it.”
And in the process, the Knicks killed any chances of having a smooth coaching search.