Longstaff, 34, was well-respected in the Knicks’ locker room so the decision will likely come as a surprise to players.

The Knicks are not retaining assistant coach Josh Longstaff. George Kalinsky/NBAE via Getty Images
Players such as Porzingis, Willy Hernangomez, Ron Baker, Chasson Randle, Mindagaus Kuzminskas and Marshall Plumlee credited Longstaff and fellow assistant Dave Bliss for helping them with individual development. He played the same role in the development of Lance Thomas and Langston Galloway.

Longstaff was the assistant coach who was closest to Porzingis.

He was the lone Knicks coach to attend Porzingis’ camp in Latvia last summer. Porzingis worked closely with Longstaff and presumably will be unhappy with the club’s decision not to bring the coach back.

Porzingis had already been frustrated about the dysfunction and drama surrounding the team, leading him to skip his exit meeting with team president Phil Jackson and general manager Steve Mills.

Nalod wrote:Was Longstaff causing confusion among players? Lets be neutral here for a moment, if you have a young coach not on the same program as the others?
Before we all get crying that he alone was the reason for the Yoot progress and now he gone and all is lost, perhaps there was a divide he was causing in the "Chaos"?

Phil meets with Janis, then Josh is not renewed? Maybe Janis don't like the ideas Longstaff was putting in his head? Maybe getting "Too close"?

Sinix wrote:

knickscity wrote:

Vmart wrote:

knickscity wrote:This is a players league. Phil has no power at all in this. Phil isn't likely to build a good team in the next two years, and if he traded KP he'd really look like a fool.

It's players league if the player is the top 3 or 4 player in the league. The rest are not in a position to demand anything.

Sure they are. They can walk at a certain time. But no sane organization is going to allow their best young piece to be malcontent for their the tenure. I dont think it's understood how bad of a situation the Knicks are in. If teams called about KP at seasons end, it will be ridiculous on draft night.

If we are lucky melo will choose to walk very very soon.

KP is a liquid asset. Knicks don't have to be married to any plan right now. Especially if Phil doesn't believe he has the mental make up to be a franchise corner stone.

KP is such an amazing player..... how do you justify trading him on his rookie contract? Who the hell trades a player of KP's talent on their rookie contract?

This is becoming very ridiculous

wargames wrote:

Sinix wrote:

knickscity wrote:

Vmart wrote:

knickscity wrote:This is a players league. Phil has no power at all in this. Phil isn't likely to build a good team in the next two years, and if he traded KP he'd really look like a fool.

It's players league if the player is the top 3 or 4 player in the league. The rest are not in a position to demand anything.

Sure they are. They can walk at a certain time. But no sane organization is going to allow their best young piece to be malcontent for their the tenure. I dont think it's understood how bad of a situation the Knicks are in. If teams called about KP at seasons end, it will be ridiculous on draft night.

If we are lucky melo will choose to walk very very soon.

KP is a liquid asset. Knicks don't have to be married to any plan right now. Especially if Phil doesn't believe he has the mental make up to be a franchise corner stone.

KP is such an amazing player..... how do you justify trading him on his rookie contract? Who the hell trades a player of KP's talent on their rookie contract?

This is becoming very ridiculous

Explain to me why the Knicks should be married to any assets at this point.

If you could get equal or better value in assets for KP, why not look into it?

I think what might tip the scales is that Phil might not see KP as a franchise corner stone. If he can get them, maybe he sees Fultz or Ball as ones.

Sinix wrote:

wargames wrote:

Sinix wrote:

knickscity wrote:

Vmart wrote:

knickscity wrote:This is a players league. Phil has no power at all in this. Phil isn't likely to build a good team in the next two years, and if he traded KP he'd really look like a fool.

It's players league if the player is the top 3 or 4 player in the league. The rest are not in a position to demand anything.

Sure they are. They can walk at a certain time. But no sane organization is going to allow their best young piece to be malcontent for their the tenure. I dont think it's understood how bad of a situation the Knicks are in. If teams called about KP at seasons end, it will be ridiculous on draft night.

If we are lucky melo will choose to walk very very soon.

KP is a liquid asset. Knicks don't have to be married to any plan right now. Especially if Phil doesn't believe he has the mental make up to be a franchise corner stone.

KP is such an amazing player..... how do you justify trading him on his rookie contract? Who the hell trades a player of KP's talent on their rookie contract?

This is becoming very ridiculous

Explain to me why the Knicks should be married to any assets at this point.

If you could get equal or better value in assets for KP, why not look into it?

I think what might tip the scales is that Phil might not see KP as a franchise corner stone. If he can get them, maybe he sees Fultz or Ball as ones.

They should not be married to any assets that aren't married to them. In the case of Melo - if he wants to only stick around being the center of the Knicks universe - he should find the door.

If Porzingis, who Phil *IS* building around suddenly decides its all about him and not the build - gee, isn't that a shame. KP is not the only player that the Knicks can build around. KP's value is high - no reason not to shop him to see what the Knicks can get.

Sure, it would be a shame to see him go but he hasn't won anything yet worth shedding tears over. And his warts are showing. Like Melo, KP's had time to show he is a cornerstone and given his recent behavior that idea remains an open question.

wargames wrote:http://forums.lakersground.net/togo/thread.php?topic_id=68874&&start=0

Phil is known for firing coaches who do a good job but who he doesn't personally like

Quote:
It was Phil Jackson’s great misfortune that at the height of their discord Krause gained irrefutable evidence about one of Jackson’s own misdeeds involving the 1994 firing of assistant coach Johnny Bach.

Like Winter, Bach had been an elderly influence on Jackson when he joined the team. A spirited sort who was popular with Bulls players, Bach apparently fell into Jackson’s disfavor because he sometimes encouraged Jordan to follow his own inclinations and ignore the triangle offense. But Bach also was a strong supporter of Jackson’s, which leaves his dismissal as something of a mystery. There was something about Bach that annoyed Jackson.

“We were very different people,” Bach acknowledged.

At the time and in later accounts, Jackson portrayed Bach’s firing as a result of Krause’s anger over the 1991 book “The Jordan Rules” by Chicago Tribune columnist Sam Smith. The text contained fascinating inside detail on the team’s drive to its first championship, detail that portrayed Krause as something of a buffoon and Jordan as somewhat ruthless and selfish. Both Jordan and Krause hated the book, and Jackson later joked that “The Jordan Rules” was one of the few things the team executive and star player could agree about.

Krause alleged later that Jackson deceived him into believing that Bach was the anonymous source for most of the inside detail. Krause learned in 1998 that it was Jackson himself, not Bach, who was the source for much of Smith’s book. How did Krause discover this? He learned it from Bulls chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, who was told of the situation in confidence by none other than Sam Smith himself. Smith had revealed his sources to Reinsdorf with the caveat that he not tell anyone. Reinsdorf was not supposed to give that information to Krause, but he did.

Smith independently confirmed those events and Jackson’s role in his book.

“Phil and the players had much more of a role than Johnny Bach,” Smith said in acknowledging that he had told Reinsdorf of Jackson’s part in “The Jordan Rules.”

Jackson, though, had continued to explain Bach’s firing as a result of the elderly assistant coach’s involvement, clearly a prevarication on Jackson’s part.

"It was Jerry Krause’s relationship with Johnny Bach that created a very uncomfortable situation," Jackson said of the firing in a 1995 interview. "It made this have to happen eventually. It had gone all wrong. It was bad for the staff to have this kind of thing because we had to work together.

"Jerry basically blamed Johnny Bach for a lot of the things in the book. And there’s no doubt that Johnny did provide that information. Jerry felt that Johnny talked too much. And Johnny, in retrospect, felt that animosity that Jerry gave to back to him, the lack of respect, so Johnny refused to pay allegiance to Jerry just because he was the boss.

"It had gone on for too long a period of time," Jackson said. "I could have kept them apart, at bay from one another, I suppose for a while longer. But I didn’t like the fact that it wasn’t good teamwork. That was my staff and my area. I agreed to do it. I felt it was a good opportunity because Johnny had an opportunity to get another job in the league quickly. It worked out fine for Johnny, although I would just as soon have not put him through the disappointment, or have to go through the situation myself."

“Phil lied to me,” Krause said in a 1998 interview. “Phil actually got Johnny fired.”

“It was Phil’s idea to fire Bach,” Reinsdorf said in 1998. “Phil told me that the bad relationship between Krause and Bach had made things impossible. It was Phil’s idea. Nobody told him to do it.”

Contrary to Jackson’s later assertions that things worked out fine for Bach, Bach himself said the firing came at a terrible time in his life, after the 1994 playoffs, just weeks shy of his 70th birthday. The irony, Bach said, was that the coaching staff had probably never worked better together.

“At the end of that year I had every reason to think my contract would be renewed,” Bach recalled in a 1999 interview. “The first person that told me was Phil. He said, ‘We’re not gonna renew the contract.’ I was stunned. Before I could say much in defense, he said, ‘It’s really best for you that you do leave. The organization has made up its mind.’ I was disappointed. Shocked is a better way of saying it. I didn’t quarrel. I just couldn’t believe it. I went to see Krause and he said the same thing. I just got up and left. I had a lot of crisis in my life at that time. I was end the divorce courts ending a long-term marriage. I had to move. I thought everything was collapsing around me that summer. Then I had a heart attack. It was all a shock, and it took some time to believe and trust people again.”
old Melo?

An excellent coach, Bach was later hired by the Charlotte Hornets. He subsequently learned that he was supposedly fired for the inside information he provided to Smith. Bach said he went back and read the book three or four times looking for damaging information he might have provided. His quotes, though, were on the record and relatively basic.

“I didn’t see a single quote in that book that was out of order,” he said. “Sam is obviously a good investigative reporter. There was a portrait in there that Michael did not like, based on whoever gave it to Sam.”

The book “was quite an accurate portrayal,” Bach said. “I don’t think Sam painted someone as he wasn’t.”

Krause was supposedly distraught more than three years later to learn that he had been deceived into firing an innocent Bach. By then, Bach was working in Detroit as an assistant coach. One night when the Pistons were in Chicago to play the Bulls, Pistons executive Rick Sund told Bach that Krause would like a word with him.

“I had mixed feelings,” Bach recalled. “You sort of protect yourself.”

He agreed to the meeting, however, and was more than a bit surprised.

“When Jerry spoke to me he was emotional, and so was I. I always thought the organization had made that move, not Phil. I thought it was a huge concession on Jerry’s part to come up to me. I thought he meant it,” Bach said of Krause’s apology. “And I accepted that.”

Honestly, does this really sound like something Phil would do. Come now.

nixluva wrote:It's good to know that Phil spoke to Janis but this article was short on any new details and full of Bondy slanted presentation.

WHY should Phil budge from his vision just cuz Janis disagrees with him in some way! What qualifies Janis to be offering Phil any advice on team building or running? Janis needs to fall back and be an Agent for KP. The Knicks have many more concerns than just KP's personal gripes.

Janis should be telling KP to communicate with his team and following orders! KP is on the team. He's not running the team!

To be fair isnt that how all NBA superstar players act? KP is just a little premature in this behavior because he isnt a superstar.

Is this the guy who encouraged KP to develop a cross over before a hook shot?

My initial thought was perhaps a mole

It is brinkmanship if nothing else.