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Let me paint a picture for you: you're an NBA head coach, one of the greatest ever. You've just won your second straight Eastern Conference Championship with a fairly young, very talented and supremely confident basketball team; and you should be confident. After all, you're the defending World Champion Pistons.
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| The NY Knicks are giving Head Coach Larry Brown a splitting headache.
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These guys play the right way. Sure, that's your coaching, but it's rare to have a whole team full of guys who listen to you in today's NBA. You're happy with your job, right? Not if you're Larry Brown. But I digress.
You're hangin' at home, right before the NBA Finals, and the phone rings. It's Isaiah Thomas. You remember him as a Hall of Fame-caliber guard who once won a ring with the very squad you now coach. He's the GM of the New York Knicks, or so he tells you.
Perhaps you know that he ran the CBA directly into the ground. Perhaps not. You are clearly unaware that (as a GM) he makes Michael Jordan look like Jerry West. He wants you to be his coach next year, nevermind your contract with the Pistons.
At this point you have a few options: 1) Hang up. Go back to watching tape of the San Antonio Spurs, your upcoming playoff opponents. 2) Tell Ike to chill, and that you'll holla back when you're done with the Finals. 3) Turn off the Spurs tape, put down your playbook, and let the worst GM in basketball convince you to come home and coach your childhood favorites. So, what do you do?
Larry and I answer this question in very different ways. For me, it's option one. If I'm really a die-hard fan (and how could he be when he's coached against them for so many years?) it's possible I go with number two. Larry went with three - and he had to know the press would find out about his little chat and make an issue of it. Not long after, he was a Finals loser and the coach of the New York Knicks.
Forget the effect on his Pistons team, because I don't believe they could have beaten the Spurs last year. One look at the Knicks roster and Larry should have known the job wasn't for him. Larry likes hustling defenders, and Isaiah had assembled a bunch of over-talented, under-inspired gunners, matched with some overpriced veterans.
Start with Stephon Marbury, self-proclaimed "best point guard in the league." In truth, he hates playing point guard and isn't the best at anything. To call him a poor man's Allen Iverson would be an insult to AI. In fact, the most distinctive thing about Marbury is the remarkable success of teams that trade him away.
Then there's Jamal Crawford, a personal favorite of mine but undoubtedly another shoot-first point guard. At 6'5" he can play some SG, but he's thinner than an Olsen twin after a tough break-up, and just as emotionally fragile.
During the draft, Isaiah adds a skinny, jump-shooting power forward and an incredibly athletic midget (Channing Frye and Nate Robinson, who is generously listed at 5'9"). Plus, he traded his only good rebounder and defender (Kurt Thomas) for another shooter in Quentin Richardson. To replace the interior presence: Jerome James at $30 million over five years. For the record, that's about 23 grand for every point he had scored in his career.
Still, Larry probably could have repaired his relationship with the Pistons and gone back to a Championship-caliber squad. He certainly could have looked at the roster he was being handed and seen what so many people saw: a lot of unfulfilled potential, a rash of bad contracts, and a team that would struggle to defend Larry himself 5-on-1.
Apparently that didn't bother Coach Brown, because he broke out the back door of his Pistons contract and signed on for his "dream job." As training camp approached, Isaiah traded away a solid, young PF (Michael Sweetney) and a valuable expiring contract (Tim Thomas) in order to overpay another potential-laden youngster - Eddy Curry at $60 million for 6 years. Even without questions about the health of his heart (which still haven't really been answered) Curry is a terrible fit for a Larry Brown team, given his deficiency on the boards and questionable effort on defense.
Sadly, even if Larry had spent hours combing through video and statistics for his new players, he never could have imagined how bad it would be. Through Thursday, December 22, the Knicks were 6-18 (the team's worst start in 19 years) and had lost seven in a row. You probably won't believe me when I tell you the record doesn't reflect the extent to which the Knicks stink.
I'll give you some statistics. Penny Hardaway (making over $14 mill this year) and Qyntel Woods have been complete non-factors, playing in 4 and 5 games respectively. Of the nine non-rookies who have played in ten games or more, seven are having their worst scoring years of the millennium. That includes career lows from Antonio Davis, Mo Taylor, Quentin Richardson and Trevor Ariza (albeit in his second year). Not one of those nine is averaging as much as they have in either of the previous two years.
Marbury, the leading scorer despite averaging less than 20 points for the first time in 8 years, is also dishing out a career-worst 6.3 assists (compared to an 8.2 average over his 9+ years). He also continues to turn the ball over nearly 3 times a game, which gives him a career-low 2.13 assist-to-turnover ratio. Crawford is second on the team in assists at 3.3, with a paltry 1.59 ratio. Nobody else averages more than 1.6.
The lack of a passing point guard has contributed to the Knicks scoring only 92.95 ppg as a team. Their point differential (-5 ppg) is fourth worst, behind only Toronto, Atlanta and Portland - a who's who of NBA cellar-dwellers. And they're getting worse: their seven straight losses have been by an average margin of more than ten points.
Coach Brown can't be completely blamed for the team's performance. Isaiah assembled the roster, and made the decisions to severely overpay a slew of unproven talents. But the roster was rank with the stench of underachievement before Larry took the job, so really he can't blame anyone but himself.
The lone bright spot has been the play of the rookies. In particular, Channing Frye has been great; to the tune of 14.7 points, 6.3 rebounds (which leads the team), an assist and a block. He is also the best free throw shooter on the team, at 87.7%, and hits 51.3% of his shots. All that in less than 30 minutes a game, without a competent point guard to feed him the ball.
The diminutive Robinson has been impressive as well, averaging 8 points in only 18 minutes. He also shoots very well from 3-point range (42.4%) and provides much needed shots of energy to an otherwise lethargic Knicks team. David Lee (the 30th pick) has seen limited time, but his 15.9 rebounds per 48 minutes leads the team, and he seems to have the makings of a good front line role player.
Brown has been known for his reluctance to give playing time to rookies, but on this team he has little choice. With Curry already missing a third of the games and the general ineffectiveness from his other veterans, Larry will probably look to the youth movement (including second-year man Trevor Ariza) for big minutes in the frontcourt. Robinson's presence in the backcourt would be more useful if he wasn't from the same shoot-first mold as Marbury and Crawford.
Given the seeming incompatibility between coach Brown and his team, it seems he took the Knicks job simply because it was the Knicks job. Isaiah has done little to improve the team in his two years as GM, and Larry should have seen that. He should have seen how bad the fit would be, for him in particular. He should have seen, above all, that the Pistons team he helped build is clearly head-and-shoulders above New York.
The Knicks won't struggle this much all year; Larry will get them playing better eventually, but at this point it's hard to imagine a playoff run. What's really scary is the glut of the players locked into expensive long-term contracts, because it suggests that this team won't really get better unless Isaiah can unload some of his bad signings.
In the end, Larry made a mistake. He probably wouldn't admit it, but he must realize: instead of coaching one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference, he is coaching one of the worst. Even a miraculous turnaround wouldn't bring the Knicks into championship contention.
If he could go back in time, do you think he'd still take that phone call? I think not.
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