I stopped watching the Knicks this season because I just couldn't watch the obvious misery and dysfunction night after night.
But, after watching Phil's press conference, it's good to see him addressing it directly. What I see when I watch the Knicks is exactly what Phil mentioned, a team with an identity crisis. And throughout the year I saw the internal struggle play out in games.
Like Phil said, you had guys who fed off offense, and the spiritual leader of this group was none other than Carmelo Anthony. He gave life to that culture within the team where guys effort level was directly correlated to if their shot was falling.
For Derek Rose, a guy trying to re-establish himself as an elite athletic player, I can see how his entire mood as a player could be dictated by whether his shot was falling. Given what was happening in his personal life, he was especially vulnerable and was an easy convert into Carmelo's bipolar cult of "give me the ball, I'm hot."
With Kristaps, he was still a young and impressionable foreigner, playing with legendary scorers like Carmelo and Rose in a market like new York. He was vulnerable to falling victim to Carmelo's cult as well. To his credit, by mid season I think he got hip to the fact that something was wrong, but at his age you can't be sure he's able to conceive what's he's apart of outside of the fact that it's clearly broken.
On the flip side of that, the team was composed of workman like players, guys who's individual talent levels were basically mediocre, but guys who brought a positive attitude to the game and could at times become a "sum is greater than the parts" type of unit. There was significant tension between this group of players and the faction of the team who bought into Carmelo's bipolar cult. A couple of the players probably weren't even always sure to which group they belonged.
These tensions came to a head in several close games where the Knicks would inexplicably collapse in the 4th quarter, when the team would naturally lean heavily on the cultist practices of the school of Carmelo Anthony. But perhaps there was no better example of the tension than when Coach Hornacek would empower his workman like players in the fourth quarter and the Knicks would win. There's no surer sign of a broken culture then when success is met with disdain. On one particular night that sticks out in my mind, Hornacek benched Rose and Jennings for the entire 4th in favor of Ron Baker, who at the time had played extremely limited minutes. Baker gave a pure effort and as the 12th man, pushed the Knicks to a close victory. To my eyes the tensions were immediately obvious, especially in Rose who was visibly annoyed on the bench. Shortly after that he no showed a game without giving the team notice. It seemed clear to me what was happening, Baker's workman like effort exposed to all members of the team the futility of the culture that was being cultivated by the teams marquee player. Carmelo, being the likable and marketable brand that he is, had considerable power over the fate of this team, and Hornacek and Baker had subtly sent a message that probably no one wanted to speak aloud: we don't need the ball in the hands of our marquee players in the fourth to win games. At several points throughout the season players like Baker, Holiday, Willy and O'Quinn would make this clear. Yet the culture that Carmelo had made his career on, the culture of the hot hand, continued to fight for spiritual control of this team, to devastating effect on young, impressionable and relatively unknown, unmarketable and mediocre NBA role players.
I think Phil acknowledged this much during his press conference. I could go on about how the toxic relationship between the media and there Knicks organization perpetuates this cycle and is damaging to the psyche of developing players, but I think we get the point by now.
The media wants to make this about the triangle offense, but what it's really about is the failed Carmelo Anthony experiment, and the inability of a young team to establish a healthy identity when the marquee player doesn't embody any of the qualities management wants to emphasize. Phil made a bad choice resigning Carmelo, and when he's traded everyone will be better off for it.
shyt. Claiming the knicks don't deserve a player of this caliber, Phil is wrong etc.
