Let’s start with the breaking news: Derek Fisher has been fired by the New York Knicks. He finished the first season and a half of his coaching career with a 40-96 record after losing 9 of his last 10 games.
So another coach bites the dust. Fisher had a 5-year deal worth up to $25 million dollars, but there were team options and bonuses involved in that total value, so he’s not getting all of that money. Still, he’s getting paid to chill at home and train for a rematch with Matt Barnes.
The Knicks, meanwhile, remain an utter joke under the stewardship of James Dolan.
Reminder of @nyknicks futility: In last 15 years, they’ve finished above 500 a whopping 3 times. #mecca
— Chuck M. (@RedsArmy_Chuck) February 8, 2016
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsDolan climbed into the Knicks driver’s seat in 1999. That was a 50-win Knicks team.. so if we want to be kind and go back one year from Chuck’s tweet, they get an extra above-.500 season. The following year they won 48 games, and then suffered 9-straight losing seasons. In the middle of that stretch they did this:
On October 4th, 2005, the Chicago Bulls signed-and-traded center Eddy Curry, center-forward Antonio Davis and a 2007 1st round draft pick (Wilson Chandler) to the New York Knicks for guard Jermaine Jackson, forwards Mike Sweetney and Tim Thomas, a 2006 1st round draft pick (LaMarcus Aldridge), a 2007 1st round draft pick (Joakim Noah), a 2007 2nd round draft pick (Kyrylo Fesenko) and a 2009 2nd round draft pick (Jon Brockman).
Then Isiah Thomas happened. After Donnie Walsh successfully cleaned up Superfund site the Knicks had become, Dolan saw fit to get rid of him. Now the Knicks are in Phil Jackson’s hands.
behold, the phil jackson coaching tree and all its glorious bounty pic.twitter.com/MVn0XDwDG6 — Ben Detrick (@bdetrick) February 8, 2016
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Oh how bad is it? We’re adding Fish’s 40-96 to this:
SB Nation put this little ditty together back in December of 2014. Now Rambis gets to add to his record as the Knicks interim coach, and, maybe, Shaw will come in to tack on a couple of L’s.
Kurt Rambis is Knicks interim coach but league sources believe Brian Shaw and Luke Walton are top long-term replacement candidates
— Brian Windhorst (@WindhorstESPN) February 8, 2016
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsMaybe teams are lining up to throw money at Luke Walton. Maybe Tom Thibodeau will resurface in New York. Who knows, but we do know this…
…as long as James Dolan is there, they’ll make the wrong moves. Even if they make the right move, they’ll do something to undo it. They have a bad owner who’s more interested in being a bad blues singer. He’s an egomaniac who hired another egomaniac in Jackson to run a cornerstone NBA franchise.
They say the NBA is better when the Knicks are good, but there are college kids out there who don’t understand that concept. Meanwhile.
When all these teams keep hiring mediocre coaches, but you got Brad Stevens pic.twitter.com/yZwE3uBG66
— Trey Adell (@TreyAdell) February 8, 2016
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