Despite two years worth of losing, New York Knicks fans could at least be sure their young star wasn’t going anywhere…until now. It’s time for Phil to go
It’s been a little over three years now since Phil Jackson took over as president of basketball operations for the New York Knicks. It would be easy to say that he had nowhere to go but up, but that’s not quite true.
Under Donny Walsh just a few years earlier, the Knicks were actually building something real, sustainable and – gasp – pretty good. That all started to go to pieces the moment that James Dolan intervened in the trade negotiations with Denver for Carmelo Anthony. Walsh was out soon after, and following the most successful year the franchise has had this decade, things started to revert back to the norm.
Enter Phil Jackson.
The first year was – pretty clearly in retrospect – a takedown. Phil admitted as much during his press conference on Friday. Starting in the summer of 2015, however, it was time to start building things back up. And build back up they did rather quickly in the form of a 7-foot-3 Latvian wunderkind named Kristaps Porzingis.
He was the new hope.