Phil Jackson, save for a tweet here and there, has mostly remained silent in the three weeks since his season-capping press conference. The Knicks president appears to be on vacation, while his team is undergoing a head coaching search.
That’s the technical take, at least, because most of the NBA expects Jackson to make interim head coach Kurt Rambis the full-time Knicks coach as soon as Jackson returns. Rambis, who for the exception of his disastrous turn coaching the Timberwolves has been on Jackson’s coaching staff since Jeannie Buss encouraged Phil to hire him as an assistant prior to the 2000-01 season, would seem to be the “simpatico” hire that the Knick prez is looking for.
Whether he would be the right hire or not is an entirely different story. Knicks star Carmelo Anthony, according to one report, has another preference: David Blatt, the former Cavaliers coach who was fired midway into his second season running the team.
From Marc Berman at the New York Post:
The source stated Anthony believes Blatt, because of his vast international experience before joining the Cavaliers, would be better for 7-foot-3 Latvian phenom Kristaps Porzingis than would interim coach Kurt Rambis.
The source said Anthony feels Blatt could develop Porzingis into an All-Star quicker with his international touch. Blatt has dominated leagues in Israel and Russia, where he also was coach of the Olympic team, guiding the country to the bronze medal in 2012.
Anthony’s friend LeBron James soured on the former Maccabi Tel Aviv coach this season, and though the Cavaliers worked up a similar regular season record under replacement Tyronn Lue, the team is playing better than it ever has, working with an undefeated record through the postseason thus far.
Blatt rubbed some players, staff and media the wrong way during his initial turn with the Cavaliers, but he remains a talented coach, and for Carmelo to prefer someone who clearly clashed with a star of LeBron’s stature says quite a bit about Anthony. And Blatt.
And, most of all, Kurt Rambis. Who is still acting as any shoo-in should:
 | @IanBegley | |
Kurt Rambis is in Chicago with the Knicks at the NBA's draft combine with GM Steve Mills & other front office members, per league sources.
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Blatt played basketball at Princeton with Steve Mills (the technical Knicks general manager), and though the two offenses aren’t strikingly similar (and though Blatt didn’t run explicit Princeton cuts while in Cleveland), there are parallel lines to be drawn between the Princeton offense and Jackson’s beloved triangle offense. Better for Blatt is the fact (that Jackson seems incapable of seeing or at the very least admitting) that Rambis didn’t run strict triangle sets in his time with both the Knicks and Timberwolves.
Even Jackson, gifted with two low post behemoths in Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum, wasn’t really running a whole heck of a lot of triangle sets during his last few years with Los Angeles. His triple post hardly reminded of the sets seen during Jackson’s time spent coaching the Chicago Bulls, or his first (and co-incidentally lone pre-Rambis) year with the Lakers. Be it due to evolution, boredom, acquiescence (Kobe wasn’t a fan) or lousy execution, we really haven’t seen much strict triangle offense since the early part of this century.
All of which would be in Blatt’s favor if Rambis weren’t around. And because Rambis is around, don’t count on potential head man Brian Shaw being around:
“Kurt Rambis is there,” Shaw said Monday night on ESPN’s “SportsCenter.” “He’s very adept at running the triangle, and if Phil Jackson wanted a coach that’s going to run that system for him, he has a guy that’s there that he has confidence in. So I don’t see him bringing in somebody else who has the knowledge of that system when he already has somebody there.”
In some context-derived circles this was read as a dig at Rambis, but that’s hardly the case. Even if another coach is hired, Rambis will still be around to mind the triple post, and Jackson wouldn’t need another Triangle Guy on the bench.
And, as you’d expect, none of this is going to drive Carmelo Anthony out of New York:
When asked by Yahoo Finance if he will be on the Knicks next season, Anthony said, “Oh, yeah, you’ll see me here for the Knicks. Absolutely.”
The reminder here is that Carmelo Anthony, working with a no-trade clause and a 15 percent trade kicker, cannot be driven out of New York, unless he wants to go – and so far, he’s shown no inclination that he wants to go:
“ ‘[…]New York [is] the greatest city in the world,’ he said.”
This is the same guy who committed to a rebuilding franchise bereft of draft picks back in 2014, he digs the city and apparently does not mind losing while working out of it. That’s not a shot at Anthony, either.
Jackson is also the same president that committed to pay Carmelo Anthony nearly $130 million to be a Knick through his 35th birthday, paying max money for a past-prime star to work for a franchise that badly needed to rebuild from the ground up. The ground floor work got a nice little shot in 2015 when it drafted the 19-year old Porzingis, but by and large the franchise’s philosophy seems unclear.
Things will become a bit more transparent when Jackson, after sitting out the coach vetting process that several other NBA teams just worked their way through (or are still in the midst of interviewing through), hires Kurt Rambis. It will become obvious that Phil Jackson doesn’t really care what anyone else thinks, and that he’s going to hire his heretofore unsuccessful friend regardless of how bad this all looks.
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