If Phil Jackson wanted to know how New York Knicks fans feel about the possibility of Kristaps Porzingis being traded, he only needed to look at the massive yellow billboard outside Madison Square Garden earlier in the week.
The sign had a very simple message: “DONT TRADE PORZINGIS.”
The Garden right now pic.twitter.com/6dLbXsaWOz
— Cycle (@bycycle) June 23, 2017
As you can see, the ad space was rented by a digital media company called Cycle. It went live at 10 p.m. Thursday — the night of the NBA Draft — and ran for 24 hours. Rob Perez, a lifelong Knicks fan and anchor for Cycle, told Marc Berman of the New York Post that executives at the company “brainstormed” and came up with the idea.
“We were looking for a message we believe in, saw it as an opportunity to comment from a marketing standpoint with fun content,” Perez explained.
While the billboard probably had zero influence on Jackson’s decision to not trade Porzingis before the draft, it got plenty of attention. A source told Berman that the 24-hour spot likely cost a few thousand dollars.
Perez, who is 30 and has followed Jackson since his championship days coaching the Chicago Bulls, doesn’t think the Zen Master ever actually intended to deal Porzingis.
“We’ll never know what Phil was thinking, but one school of thought could be to show Kristaps, ‘I’m still the man and president and you’re still a player,’” Perez said.
That may be true, but Knicks fans who want their team to keep Porzingis shouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief just yet. A report we shared with you over the weekend indicates there could still be trouble in paradise.
