Knicks fire Phil Jackson, here are his worst moves as team president

Phil Jackson’s days of destroying the Knicks franchise as team president may finally be numbered, as he appears to be on his way out, shutting the door on a three-year stint that saw his team win only 34.5% of their games during that time.

Jackson, who has served as president since March 2014, has made a number of atrocious moves since being hired, and it’s finally catching up to him. We’ll get to that in a second, but first, we want to share this report from Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical.

Owner James Dolan is weighing the future of Phil Jackson as New York Knicks President, league sources tell @TheVertical. Story online soon.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 28, 2017

UPDATE: ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne provided some further details after the initial report was published.

Knicks and President Phil Jackson are expected to announce that they're parting ways early Wednesday morning, sources told ESPN.

— Ramona Shelburne (@ramonashelburne) June 28, 2017

Conversations between Jackson and Knicks owner James Dolan accelerated this week when the Knicks decided they would NOT buy out Carmelo

— Ramona Shelburne (@ramonashelburne) June 28, 2017

Phil had obviously made it known he thought it was time for the organization to move on from Carmelo, but with no way of doing that….

— Ramona Shelburne (@ramonashelburne) June 28, 2017

And no plans to lead the organization beyond the remaining two years on his contract, Jackson and Dolan had to decide how to proceed

— Ramona Shelburne (@ramonashelburne) June 28, 2017

This would obviously be a huge shakeup in the front office, and would likely have a domino effect across the organization. But what better time than now? The Knicks are horrible, with a barren roster, and they’re rebuilding. Outside of Kristaps Porzingis, they don’t have anyone to build around, and would be better off shedding contracts and starting over.

And now we’ll touch on why Jackson appears to be on his way out. Here’s a timeline of the awful moves he’s made since being hired.

• Derek Fisher — One of the first moves Jackson made was firing Mike Woodson, who the players seemed to like, and hiring one of his former players, Derek Fisher, which he did in June 2014. Fisher lasted only 1.5 seasons, after going an abysmal 17-65 in his first year, and 23-31 in part of his second.
• Tyson Chandler — Fresh off winning Defensive Player of the Year honors, Jackson looked to trade Chandler, and did. The Knicks traded both him and veteran guard Raymond Felton, and received Shane Larkin, Jose Calderon, Samuel Dalembert, and Wayne Ellington — none of which are still on the team.
• J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert — Jackson traded both of these guys for literally nothing. He was shedding contracts and received Alex Kirk, Lou Amundson and Lance Thomas in return. Both Smith and Shump went on to win a title in Cleveland — brutal.
• Derrick Rose — The Knicks moved the few decent players they had — Robin Lopez, Calderon and Jerian Grant, and received the aging and oft-injured Rose, who will probably depart in free agency this summer. Oh, they also received Justin Holiday in the deal.
• Joakim Noah — This was arguably Jackson’s most embarrassingly awful move. The Knicks signed him to a 4-year, $72 million deal, and not only was he terrible on the court, but he’s also serving a 20-game PED suspension. Oh, and he likely needs surgery on his shoulder.

The one good thing Jackson ever did during his tenure was draft Porzingis, and we’re going to chalk that one up to luck.

Jackson was a solid player, great coach and one of the worst executives the NBA has ever seen. He needs to go — now — and it sure seems like he’s on his way out.

There are some media members that believe Jackson may have been trying to get himself fired, in looking at some of his recent moves, specifically how he handled the Porzingis exit meeting situation. Well, he may now get his wish.