New York, we have a problem.
As the New York Knicks’ star-studded spaceship comes tumbling back to Earth, Mike D’Antoni‘s seat is heating up as if he had been jettisoned from the cockpit to burn up in the atmosphere by himself.
While the Knicks load up on losses, the front office counts down the days until D’Antoni will inevitable be fired. The Knicks’ loss Monday night to the Boston Celtics dropped the Knicks to the 7th seed and sent their record crashing to .500. Now just 35-35 and sitting behind the 76ers in the East, New York looks worse than they did just a month ago. With no signs of a turnaround coming, the negative fan base is growing tired and frustrated by the New York minute. For all of this, their coach Mike D’Antoni, will unjustly shoulder the blame.
But is it all D’Antoni’s fault? Not all of it, no. To a degree, he has been responsible for their recent losses. His style of coaching and play calling doesn’t necessarily demand defense and plays into the laziness of his current roster on that end of the floor. But the roster he has to deal with — that’s not his fault; he can’t coach up a team that isn’t willing to be coached.
Carmelo Anthony, Amar’e Stoudemire and Chauncey Billups might be marginal superstars, but they have all been considered great players at some point in their careers. We’ve seen Carmelo channel his inner defender in the 2009 Western Conference Finals. We’ve seen Amar’e do whatever it takes to win as recently as two months ago when his MVP stock was at an all-time high. Chauncey is a former NBA Finals MVP and NBA champion. You don’t get to the level of NBA notoriety that these guys have reached by accident. These guys are all players. They can, when willing, play excellent offense and appeasing defense.
When they are willing.
The problem is that they aren’t always willing. That’s the characteristic of the majority of players on this roster. They are who they are and they aren’t going to change. Not at this stage in their well-established careers. It’s not their fault that they don’t mesh well — they are simply numbers in a formula. It’s not the numbers who are flawed, but the formula itself that doesn’t add up. And for that we have no one else to blame but the man who implemented the formula, Knicks GM, Donnie Walsh.
Donnie Walsh, someone who I thought deserved an extension a few months ago, deserves the condemnation here. Walsh is the architect responsible for building this unstable house of cards. He’s the one who thought he had traded for the Ace of Spades, but the foundation has been shook and the structure is beginning to fall apart. And as those walls topple over, so should Walsh’s job security.
Walsh knew what kind of coaching staff he had and what each player’s skill set was. It was at his discretion that this team was built. Sure, there were external pressures from missing out on the big free agents like LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, but a GM has to go above public pressure to do what is right. He needs to think clearly and make rational decisions. The fans aren’t the professionals here, Walsh is. He gets paid to sign athletes to million dollar deals and deliver pieces that will help a team win and compete for a championship. So while Walsh might not be the one missing jumpers or botching play calls, he is the one penciling in names on the roster, and for that he is the one responsible for this mess.
I’m not advocating that anyone should get fired, but the rumors are as red hot as D’Antoni’s seat and someone is going to get fired here if things don’t turn around quickly. If the coach is going to lose his job for his inability to lead this flawed cast to victory, perhaps the person responsible for assembling the flawed cast needs to be fired as well. Walsh and D’Antoni are both deserving of a little more time. Walsh can still fill in the gaps this off-season with defensive and 3-point specialists that this team desperately needs. D’Antoni also needs time to help mold this pitiful roster into a team, as well as incorporate whatever Walsh snags off the market in the summer. The real question is whether or not their inferior boss and Knicks owner, James Dolan, will give both of them enough time.
The real space cadet here is Dolan. He’s been the star-struck fool throughout all of this, insisting on landing Carmelo, no matter how hefty the price tag. It’s been Dolan’s bidding that Walsh has carried out, right or wrong. It’s Dolan’s, and more importantly, Isiah Thomas’ mess that Donnie has been forced to clean up, giving away assets just to clear the books of toxic contracts. And it was Dolan’s shameless and pathetic public courting of Thomas which Walsh has had to live through this season as he patiently awaits a contract extension, one that will most likely never come. Through all of it, Donnie has done nothing but deliver whatever misguided plan Dolan has had.
Dolan is oblivious to the real world and he’s unaware of who is responsible for the shortcomings of this roster. And that’s just how he likes it — shielded and carefree. He loves to hide in his office, strumming his guitar and swimming in his inheritance, all the while his team swirls around the porcelain walls, inching ever closer to the bottom of the bowl. In the end, it will be Dolan who flushes it all down. Let’s just hope he will finally wash his hands of the idea of Isiah Thomas returning to the Knicks.
Shane is a contributor to Larry Brown Sports, NBAoffseason.com and Stacheketball.com. You can find him babbling about basketball all over the net or tune in as he tweets nonsense on twitter @Suga_Shane.
