Double Trouble for the Knicks and the Nets

To that crucial audience, it surely appears as though the Knicks are mistreating their most loyal supporter — with memories of Charles Oakley being thrown out of the Garden also still painfully fresh.

I get so many messages from Knicks fans asking why the news media focuses so much attention on their team’s missteps, but it is not done for sport. The intensity of this coverage stems from the fact that, with James L. Dolan as determined as ever to keep hold of the franchise — “I am not selling,” he wrote in a Feb. 6 statement — it is a two-decade pattern that shows no signs of abating.

Dolan made his “I am not selling” statement while the recent hiring of Leon Rose as the newest Knicks president was still underway. Among the reasons Rose was chosen, I’m told, is that Dolan had grown sick of people telling him he needed to pursue an experienced executive such as Toronto’s Masai Ujiri and turned to Rose instead after a decade of frequent business between the Knicks and Rose’s former employers at Creative Artists Agency.

You’ll recall, though, that the Garden drama began long before we ever heard Rose’s name. A 2-8 start this season had led to an unplanned news conference in which Steve Mills, then the team president, revealed that he felt “an obligation” to speak to reporters and announced that the front office was “not happy” with the team’s start.

No Knicks official has spoken publicly since, but David Fizdale was fired as coach soon thereafter, and Mills’s own ouster followed, two days before the trade deadline in February.

The Knicks then cannibalized the first win of the Rose era, over Houston on March 2, by alienating Lee and escalating the conflict after Lee criticized Dolan in a “First Take” interview with ESPN. Dolan’s new branding consultant, Steve Stoute, likewise had a rocky interview on the same ESPN show just before the All-Star Game, which earned a rebuke of its own through a Knicks statement.

Yet it’s only right that the Nets, after their own run of foibles, are kept under the microscope, too. Landing Durant and Irving in a same-day swoop remains a glorious achievement. It’s the sort of rebrand that has eluded the Knicks for ages, but the Nets still have plenty to fix, starting with the hiring of a coach (Tyronn Lue?) who can get the most out of Durant’s eventual partnership with the mercurial Irving.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/sports/basketball/double-trouble-for-the-knicks-and-the-nets.html