How Phil Jackson is hurting the Knicks

A playoff coach hit the market last weekend, a solid boss with a proven track record and a keen basketball mind. Dave Joerger isn’t a marquee name, but his 147-99 record in three seasons in Memphis was pretty good, and the job Joerger did navigating a battered Grizzlies team to the postseason this year was even better. Sacramento thought so, inking Joerger to a three-year, $12 million deal within days of his ouster.

The Knicks? Not so much.

Team president Phil Jackson wants you to trust him, and man, doesn’t that get harder by the day? Joerger may not be the right fit in New York, but for one of the NBA’s flagship franchises to let another coach come off the board without even a token effort to interview him is a terrible look. The list of coaches at which the Knicks have shrugged continues to grow, while Jackson shows none of the urgency expected as the overseer of a franchise in disrepair.

It’s time to accept a certain reality: Jackson just isn’t cut out for this gig. The world has gotten bigger, and the talent pool has grown with it. An NBA executive must be a tireless workaholic, not an ex-coach who acts like his 11 championship rings make scouring the globe for talent beneath him. Jackson nailed Kristaps Porzingis, a transformative 7-foot-3 big man who will revolutionize the center position. Yet the frontrunner for the Knicks’ coaching job (incumbent Kurt Rambis) has suggested Porzingis play some small forward while staying loyal to a system (the triangle) that doesn’t seem to suit the young star.

The Knicks don’t have a pick next month, which is all the more reason for Jackson to put in the extra work. No asset is more attainable than a second-round pick, particularly from the handful of teams (Boston, New Orleans, Denver) with a few of them. Finding NBA talent there is difficult, but every year yields a Norman Powell, a Jordan Clarkson, an Allen Crabbe, and it’s often the most relentless executives who grab them.

Now is the time for Jackson to marshal his resources, not cruise through the Plains States on an ill-timed break. There’s video to be dissected, college coaches to be called, international scouts with information to be bled dry. Free agency – Jackson’s rebuilding method of choice – has changed, evolved. The magnetic pull to big markets has weakened, replaced by a marketplace of players fueled by a desire to win. New York, with its instability, its annual failures, just isn’t where the elite talent is looking to play.

For years, Knicks owner James Dolan has been derided for being too meddlesome, but this is fast becoming a situation that calls for him to step in. No one knows Jackson’s commitment to the organization, if he will opt out of his contract next summer or stay on for the full five years for which he signed. Jeanie Buss could be a year away from assuming control of basketball operations with the Los Angeles Lakers, and wouldn’t Jackson, her fiancé, a Lakers legend, be just whom Buss would want to help her?

Dolan empowered Isiah Thomas and ran off Donnie Walsh, yet here an intervention is warranted. If Jackson is determined to hire Rambis, Dolan needs to know: Will Jackson be around to see it through? The Knicks have the cash to outbid everyone for Frank Vogel and have had ongoing discussions with David Blatt. If Jackson is ready to pull the rip cord, if his heart just isn’t in it, the Knicks need to commit to a coach, not a system, to a philosophy that’s sustainable, not one Jackson is determined to make work.

Any ambiguity on Jackson’s part and Dolan needs to let him go. The Knicks have a tent-pole player in Porzingis, and they need a top executive eager to spend the next few years supplying the talent around him. Running a team isn’t a young man’s game, but it requires a young man’s hustle. Jackson is a brilliant basketball mind, but it takes more, much more to build a winner.