I know that my sports Rants aren't that well received among those that read this column on a regular basis--they usually get the fewest amount of hits of any of my stories--but that has never stopped me from putting up stuff that I feel needs to be said about our sports environment.
Today, I am going to do it again, simply because I cannot believe what I have heard.
It appears that the New York Knicks--perpetually the worst run team in sports, a team that has not won a championship in 43 years and one that won't even make the playoffs again this season--are contemplating a revolutionary coaching move.
As reported by ESPN yesterday--and disputed as a hoax by others--the Knicks are supposedly contemplating having dual coaches, one for home games and one for road games.
The road game coach would be Kurt Rambis, who is already the interim coach after the Knicks fired Derek Fisher earlier this season.
The home game coach would be the most successful coach in U.S. professional sports history, the team president, Phil Jackson.
Due to health reasons, Jackson cannot coach on a full-time basis, but he could coach the team at home, without the traveling involved.
To my knowledge, this has not been done anywhere in sports. Supposedly, when Jackson was with the Los Angeles Lakers, he proposed this when his health came into question, but that organization rejected such a notion.
The Knicks might not.
The Knicks are perpetual also-rans in the NBA, a team with the darkest cloud over it of any team in sports.
They brought Jackson in to right this team, but he has made a mess into a bigger mess, demonstrating that it is much easier to coach than it is to run an NBA franchise.
He brought in a coach, Fisher, with no coaching experience, gave him a team pretty much made up of also-rans and never weres, and expected a winner, revolving around the heralded triangle offense, which can only run with certain players and teams.
It was a dismal failure. Last season, the team posted its worst record in its history.
Convincing its only star, Carmelo Anthony, to stay on the team, Jackson promised more this season, and yes, he did get more, drafting Kristops Porzingis, the find of the draft.
The team is better, but will have to go a bit to get past 30 wins this season. They won't be in the playoffs for the third straight year, and rumblings are that Anthony--and Jackson--might be looking to get out of their contracts.
So what you have is a mess, but only the Knicks could come up with a coaching plan like this.
And if it were any team other than the Knicks, the whole thing would be dismissed.
But with the Knicks, anything is possible.
In the mid 1960s, also with a lousy team, the Chicago Cubs in baseball, for a short period of time, actually had a head coach--not a manager--leading them. Bob Kennedy was their head coach, and I believe the only thing different about this arrangement was that it was baseball, and there are no head coaches.
Managers, yes, head coaches ... leave that to football, hockey and basketball.
The plan went awry, and the Cubs are still trying to figure it out after 100 years without a championship.
The Knicks' years of futility pale in comparison, but this dual coaching thing, if, in fact, it is actually being contemplated, is one of the stupidest, most desperate things I have ever heard a franchise to be doing, or even just thinking about, and what makes it worse, it is doing it out of sheer desperation.
Their home games, at venerable Madison Square Garden, always sell out at the top prices in the league, but the natives are getting restless, so perhaps this is something that the Knicks brass are looking into, because since Jackson has been on the scene, most people assumed that he would eventually coach the team.
I mean, he has nearly a dozen championship rings as a coach and a player, so you can never discount this possibility.
But doing it like this is all wrong.
It puts Rambis in a terrible position, an interim head coach who isn't the full-time head coach.
And who is going to get more respect, the incredibly successful Jackson, or the wannabe--albeit with a few rings himself as a player--Rambis?
Sure, the two apparently are on the same page, but one has to be the lead, and it isn't Rambis.
It puts the players in a predicament, too. Players like constants, and this plan certainly doesn't provide that. Who is the coach today? Who do I prefer? Who do I listen to?
No, this is a stupid plan from a franchise that prints money, but doesn't win championships.
Can the plan, get a real coach to lead this team, and you will see something better than what they already have.
Novelty coaching situations are fun to read about on paper, but they don't work.
And this one, I can tell you, isn't going to work either.
No way, no how.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.