The James Dolan of it all
I’ve had different conversations on social media while I’ve been writing this series and one, in particular, stands out to me. I was told that the Knicks’ futility has little to do with Dolan himself and more to do with the basketball minds around him.
Yeah, they said “around him” as if Dolan wasn’t responsible for those people being in their positions. Isiah Thomas is the foremost example of a basketball mind that didn’t get the job done but Dolan just couldn’t seem to move on from.
And what about when he did have savvy basketball minds in key positions who didn’t want to trade away all the team’s talent for Carmelo Anthony? What good is hiring good executives if you’re going to ignore their advice just because it’s not what you want?
Multiple articles expressing hopes, on the part of fans and writers, that Dolan would just sell the Knicks are only a Google search away. But Forbes’ valuation of the Knicks tells me why it’s unlikely he ever will.
In the last year, when the Knicks matched their franchise-worst record on the court, the Knicks were 11 percent more valuable than they were the previous year. Do you know how much 11 percent of $4 billion is? I don’t know about you but if I’m getting an 11 percent raise for doing absolutely nothing good, I’m not very motivated to change.
Looking forward the to 2019-20 season, there is, of course, loads of speculation surrounding what the Knicks may or may not accomplish but at the end of the day, it seems that no combination of players and executives will be enough to overcome the James Dolan of it all.
A word to Knicks’ fans
When I first got the idea to do this series, I think my opinion of Knicks fans reflected that of most fans of other teams in the NBA. It included Knicks’ fans being antagonistic and angry to an extent that seems to be above and beyond simply being tough New Yorkers.
My thoughts on Knicks’ fans being angry over not getting a December 25, 2019 game was, “Get over it. Your team is terrible. What makes you think you deserve a Christmas Day game?” This was doubly true being a Raptors fan and seeing them get snubbed on Christmas with year after year of winning records while the Knicks got to play.
Now that I’ve done a deep dive on the Knicks over the last 20 years I have to say, I feel a lot differently than I did when I started. In this 4-part series, I covered the Knicks problems in really broad strokes. There was much more that could have been said, and this series could have easily been five or six parts and still only covered the organization’s struggles.
No wonder Knicks’ fans are so angry. No wonder it feels like such a blow that the Knicks’ didn’t get scheduled to play on Christmas this coming season. I get it now. Before I found it ridiculous that the Knicks have been scheduled to play so many times on Christmas while their team was terrible and the organization was toxic and dysfunctional. Now, I understand that the Christmas day game hasn’t been because the team or the organization deserves it. It’s been because the fans deserve it.
The League cannot do much to address the way an owner decides to run their team, what trades they choose to make, what players they draft, which executives they hire but they can control the schedule. And in that, the League can give something a little special to a fanbase who have endured 20 years of terrible.