Rick Carlisle’s response to David Fizdale being fired by the New York Knicks is probably not what you would expect.
Carlisle, head coach of the Dallas Mavericks and president of the NBA Coaches Association, would be expected to sympathize with Fizdale after his firing. But Carlisle took a different approach — stating he’s “happy” that Fizdale escaped a horrible situation that wasn’t his fault.
Rick Carlisle: “I’m happy for Fizdale to be out of that terrible mess that he had nothing to do with.”
— Brad Townsend (@townbrad) December 7, 2019
There’s a large degree of truth to this. The Knicks have a horrible roster that Fizdale didn’t build, and there’s only so much he can do with that. Ultimately, he didn’t win enough games, and that was always going to cost him his job, but Fizdale might be better off now that he’s out of that situation — nobody else is going to do any better, and he can set himself to finding a job that gives him a better chance to succeed.
As for the Knicks, there are only 30 NBA coaching jobs, and they’re hard to get, so someone will step up and take New York’s. Still, it’s not exactly a quality advertisement for the position, especially when Carlisle’s beliefs are being echoed by other big-name coaches in the business.
