Life in Knicks Hell
http://www.observer.com/2007/life-knicks-hell
by John Koblin Published: November 27, 2007

Basketball inferno: 4-9 team, Thomas’ harassment, hostile Dolans; reporters claw at exits: News’ Isola exiled, Post’s Vaccaro: ‘A gulag’; Times’ Beck: ‘Beat makes me miserable’; Star-Ledger halts coverage



Knicks Inferno: Courtside Dantes Mike Lupica and Pete Vecsey peruse Isiah Thomas, the Dolans, Stephon Marbury, Edy Curry.

On Nov. 24, a little before noon, 16 bleary-eyed reporters shuffled into a tiny interview room a few feet away from the Madison Square Garden basketball floor. It had ivory cinder-block walls and dim fluorescent lighting that didn’t recall a media workspace so much as it did a detention cell.

They were attempting to interview the Knicks’ religiously evasive head coach Isiah Thomas, who informed them, after a contentious exchange, that they indeed had the right to criticize the team.

Afterward, the reporters complained about what they viewed as a patronizing lecture. One called him a “psycho.” It was, in all respects, a typically bitter start to a day in the life of a New York Knicks beat reporter.

Not that it was always like this. After all, covering the Knicks was once one of the most coveted beats in the country.

“It’s Madison Square Garden, it’s New York City, it should be one of the top beats in New York,” said Newsday beat reporter Alan Hahn.

Instead: “It’s maddening. What it should be and what it is—it’s a shame.”

Frank Isola, the 12-year Knicks-beat veteran for the Daily News, said, “It used to be fun here. Now, there are some nights when you’re trying to talk your boss out of sending you here and maybe lie and tell him you’re sick or something.”

“I’ll admit,” said Howard Beck, the New York Times Knicks reporter, “that the beat makes me miserable.”

The job, under the weight of the regime of Garden chairman James Dolan, has become the most demoralizing reporting gig in the city.

It doesn’t help that the Knicks are such a lousy team: Their 2-9 start, before a recent two-game winning streak, was tied for the worst in franchise history; they haven’t had a winning season in six years; their star player, Stephon Marbury, feuded openly with Mr. Thomas; the team’s off-season was occupied by a sexual harassment lawsuit that led to, among other embarrassing episodes, Mr. Thomas offering his opinion on the difference between a white person and a black person using the word “bitch.”

But that only skims the surface. What really separates the complaints of Knicks writers from those of every other browbeaten city reporter—and reporters are definitely a whiny lot—are their unironic, and apparently accurate, tales of systematic repression.

“It’s the gulag,” said Mike Vaccaro, a columnist for the New York Post.

“We all know what it’s like to cover a normal team,” said Mr. Beck, who previously reported on the Lakers for the L.A. Daily News. “Covering the Knicks is so much worse.”

“Some of the things they practice here are completely against what you’d expect a normal team to do,” said Mr. Hahn, a second-year reporter on the beat who said that he now misses his old job as a hockey reporter covering the provincial New York Islanders. “They come up with things all the time. There’s zero access to players. They would rather you don’t even write.”

The stories from the reporters are endless: layers of institutional paranoia; public relations officials who openly eavesdrop on private conversations with executives and players; the threat—and implementation—of cutting off reporters who are perceived to be critical of the team.

“Everyone is so worried about upsetting Jim Dolan, or getting fired, and as a result people aren’t themselves,” said Mr. Beck. “If you transplanted the same individuals and put them in another city, then they’d be far more interesting. They’d be themselves.”

To their credit, the Knicks’ press officials don’t deny Mr. Dolan’s unusually hands-on role in managing their downtrodden core of reporters.

“I think it’s fair to say that Jim [Dolan] is aware of, and a part of, the shaping of the media policy,” said Barry Watkins, the senior vice president of communications for the Garden.

The policy was instituted in the summer of 2001. (Coincidentally, one supposes, the last year the Knicks had a winning record.)

Two years earlier, Mr. Dolan’s first year as chairman of the Garden, the Knicks made it to the N.B.A. Finals. But partly because of squabbling between head coach Jeff Van Gundy and general manager Ernie Grunfeld that made its way into the press, Mr. Dolan later described that season to reporters as “one of the worst years.”

“I BELIEVE OUR policies work for everybody across the board,” said Mr. Watkins. “If some particular people don’t like or don’t feel good about it, I can’t control what they think.”

Garden policy has meant that before and after every game, there is a media relations official—a minder, really—with a BlackBerry in hand who furiously types away while listening to reporters’ conversations. The notes that the official takes are then e-mailed up the chain of command.

When I spoke with Mr. Isola, the News reporter, on Saturday afternoon on the Garden floor, he pointed to a media relations official watching us. “He’s taking note that I’m talking to you,” he said.

On Monday night before a game against the Jazz, six reporters were speaking with forward Malik Rose. Nick Brown, a public relations official for the Knicks, was recording the proceedings on his BlackBerry, in an e-mail prepared for the Knicks’ head of P.R., Jonathan Supranowitz.

Sometimes Mr. Supranowitz does the monitoring himself.

“I take notes, absolutely,” said Mr. Supranowitz. “A P.R. person must be present for every interview. That’s a Garden policy.”

(Even, apparently, for interviews with other P.R. people: Mr. Supranowitz typed into his BlackBerry while I was speaking with his boss, Mr. Watkins.)

Even if a reporter pitches a fluff piece on a player, it can’t be done alone.

“Once you give a one-on-one interview, they all want one-on-one interviews,” said Mr. Watkins. “Instead of being available all at once, that player or coach has to do separate interviews every day, and that’s just not something we can do. We want to make sure players and coaches and all executives can focus on the task on hand.”

This is not standard practice elsewhere.

“There are very, very successful teams out there that treat the media with dignity and respect and recognize that 90 percent of the time it’s a mutually beneficial relationship,” said David Waldstein, the former Knicks beat reporter for The Star-Ledger. “Every writer who covers the Knicks gets the impression that we are treated as the enemy.”

(Starting this season, The Star-Ledger eliminated the Knicks beat, opting instead to run wire copy.)

“We have three people here tonight,” said Mr. Vaccaro of the New York Post on Monday night. “That’s 16 inches of copy and 16 inches of free space for the Knicks to sell their product, for better or for worse. To make those three stories as difficult as possible to write seems counterproductive to me.”

“[The policy] works against them,” said Mr. Hahn. “It allows for more speculation.”



THE TEAM HAS been willing to create especially hellish conditions for reporters who run afoul of management.

Mr. Isola now looks back wistfully on 2000, a year in which the Knicks were defending Eastern Conference Champions and once again bound for the conference finals. “One time, [former Knicks president] Dave Checketts came out to Vancouver and took the media out on a boat, and it was catered. Walt Clyde Frazier came, and so did all the media people who were traveling. As we were on it, a bald eagle flew right over the ship,” he said, breaking into an enormous smile.

“On the same trip,” he continued, “I went jogging with Barry Watkins from Marina del Rey to Santa Monica, and then back. At night we all hung out together and watched the Final Four.”

The next year, Mr. Isola recalled, Mr. Dolan’s third as the Garden’s chief executive, the Knicks instituted their new media policy. He took a breath. “And now Barry Watkins—I haven’t spoken to him since February.”

Mr. Isola says it’s because he asked Mr. Watkins to stop sending security officials to follow him around the Garden. (Mr. Watkins would not comment on this).

Whatever the cause, Mr. Isola’s excommunication has been complete. The press office doesn’t return his phone calls, and they don’t include him on e-mails, text messages or calls with basic information about games, practices or injuries. Earlier this year, when the Knicks made phone calls to each of the beat reporters to inform them that Isiah Thomas’s contract was being extended, every reporter got a call except for Mr. Isola.

Mr. Watkins declined to discuss specific reasons for the freeze-out. “What I would say,” he said, “is the N.B.A. has certain guidelines—or certain rules, actually, not guidelines, rules—that require us to make practices open and available and make games open and available for all the writers.”

“Frank loves the Knicks,” said Mr. Hahn, the Newsday reporter. “They don’t see that. They think he wants to cause trouble, to get people fired. There are little things like having a security guard follow him. There are people who work there who always make a reference that they can’t talk to him because they say they’ll get fired. It’s a joke, but you know they also mean it because it’s true.”

For working reporters at the Garden, typical meal options include a small plastic cup of coke and a sandwich with ham, processed turkey, swiss cheese and hard white bread, all for $8. When they’re at their floor seats watching the game, they’re given small fuzzy-picture TV’s to watch replays.

It’s a strictly no-frills operation.

“I guess it doesn’t matter what they do to us, the beat guys,” observed Mr. Hahn. “But you’d think they care a little more about presentation when other reporters come to town. They don’t.”

Of course, the reporters shouldn’t be there for the frills. The Knicks should be a good story, even when they’re bad. The spectacular crash-and-burn of a storied franchise, after all, doesn’t lack for narrative tension or drama.

But for the reporters assigned to cover them, there’s something worse about this Knicks team. They’re not so much bad as unbearable.

In a column on Sunday, Mr. Vaccaro wrote: “Take the Jets, who now sit at a relentlessly unremarkable 2-9 after Thursday’s brutalization in Dallas. They do not inspire much of anything within the souls of their fans. They’re just bad. … The Knicks? They inspire something else. They inspire anger. They inspire hatred. … There is an unmitigated loathing for this team, for the men who run the operation. … Knicks fans hate these Knicks. HATE them.”

On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Thomas—by way of appearing to accept responsibility for the ongoing disaster he has orchestrated—acknowledged the journalistic dilemma of having to chronicle the same catastrophe over and over again. “I gotta think that you are tired of writing the same stories that you’ve been writing for the last couple weeks,” he said. “We gotta give you something better to write about, something better to talk about, and a different subject.”

“I’ve been writing the same thing for six years,” said Marc Berman, the Post’s beat reporter since the late 1990’s. “That is so depressing.”

“I don’t know how many times I can use ‘chaos,’ ‘mayhem,’ ‘dysfunction’ to describe this team,” said Mr. Beck. “You feel like a broken record after a while. On a beat like this, you write 250 to 300 stories a year on a team and occasionally you’d like the theme to change a bit. If you’re writing the same theme every day, it’s not satisfying.”

“I’m in shock now,” said Mr. Berman. “The sexual harassment trial was bad enough, and then to have a November like this, when you’re a national joke, for someone covering the team it’s depressing ’cause you want to write positive stuff. Soon the readers aren’t going to care anymore.” His voice got quiet. “In December, who’s gonna read my stories?”

The headline writers seem to have maxed out, too. After a particularly tragic 26-point home loss to the Golden State Warriors last week, the headline for the Times D1 sports story was, “Boo, Boo, Boo, ‘Fire Isiah,’ Boo, Boo, Boo!” On Thanksgiving, Mr. Thomas’ head was transposed onto the body of a golden-brown turkey, with the headline: “Stick a fork in Isiah … HE’S DONE.”

Knicks fans, however, are a resilient bunch. Six of the first seven games this year were sellouts, and in a victory against the first-place Utah Jazz on Nov. 26, they actually stood and cheered at the end.

It was a reminder, however brief, of what it’s like to be in the Garden when things are going well.

After the Nov. 24 win against the Bulls, Mr. Isola sat in the stands with me at the Garden while the Knicks basketball court was in the process of being converted into a hockey rink.

“It’s really sad now,” he said. “There are very few nights where you can feel a buzz in the arena. The thrill is gone.”

He spoke about a colleague, Johnny Ludden, who recently stopped reporting on the Spurs. “He was covering the Spurs for nine years and when he left, ha-ha, they threw him a going-away party,” Mr. Isola said. “I leave the Garden sometimes and think, ‘Should I look under my car before I turn the ignition?’”

“You can get stale on the beat,” he continued. “I shouldn’t be doing it anymore after 12 years. If everything was status quo and if everything was great, I probably would be the wrong guy to have on it. But now I’m the right guy to have on it because they’re trying to screw me over, and by trying to screw me over, it kind of lights a fire in you a little bit. It makes you more motivated to find stuff out and expose what’s going on here.”

I told him it sounded as if he was sticking around out of spite.

“Absolutely,” he said.

“They thought it would be the opposite—they thought they’d beat me down and run me off. I thank them for it.”

wow, just wow.

Posted by VDesai:

That's awesome. I went to college and worked on Rutgers radio with John Koblin.

you know him? Cool man. Can you contact him?

Posted by martin:

Posted by VDesai:

That's awesome. I went to college and worked on Rutgers radio with John Koblin.

you know him? Cool man. Can you contact him?

Yep, I haven't spoken to him in a bit, but I certainly could. Do they have his email address at the Observer? The link doesn't work for me (its asking me to download some program). If not I have other means. Let me know what you'd like to ask...

Posted by tkf:

This organization is a joke, just a real mess, led by a shyt stain owner in dolan.. jimmy dolan that is...

It's a horrible atmosphere and I don't blame these guys for lashing out at it. Then ask them to cover a bad team in that atmosphere and you begin to realize why they rail the team for their poor play and refuse to wade through the trash to find random nuggets of gold to report about.

Dolan's going nowhere anytime soon so situations such as this will never change. All we can hope is he eventually gets rid of Steve Mills and hires a Jerry Colangelo to fire Isiah and appoint a competent GM to clean up the Knicks. Then maybe we can at least watch good basketball again someday regardless of Dolan's crap.

Posted by Cosmic:

Dolan's going nowhere anytime soon so situations such as this will never change. All we can hope is he eventually gets rid of Steve Mills and hires a Jerry Colangelo to fire Isiah and appoint a competent GM to clean up the Knicks. Then maybe we can at least watch good basketball again someday regardless of Dolan's crap.

Even if we did get a Colangelo-type or a West-type or a Thorn-type, I HIGHLY doubt Dolan would give him the leverage or freedom to do his thing.

Posted by islesfan:


It's getting really hard to work up the passion for even hating on this organization anymore.

HAHA. Stale, is it, isles?

Alan Hahn absolutely KILLS IT!


______________

Fixers, I must address the topic of the New York Observer story about the Knicks beat writers. For anyone reading this blog over the past year, nothing in that story should be news to you. Some of you have even asked in the mailbags about these issues and I've answered them just like I answered the Observer's questions.

What you should also consider is that we were separately approached by the Observer. No one sought them out to write this story. From my perspective, I was asked questions and answered them honestly. I also made sure the reporter understood that to endure an 82-game season, the travel, the back-to-backs the practices and the tons of missed family time and last-second changes in schedule, you have to have a passion for the subject you cover. If you don't, you'd be swallowed whole. The job sounds easy, but it's not as simple as going to a game and writing about it.

So, again, if you don't have passion, you can't possibly do the job. You owe it to the readers, the fans, to have passion and show it. And from that passion comes the emotional response you saw in that story.

Should any of you care that the team treats the media with contempt and offers minimal access to its players? Yes. Because that impacts the stories we write. It's not about being miserable and that comes through in our attitude, but more that we're all sharing the same scraps of information drawn from the same limited conversations. As I said in the story, it only leads to speculation.

As I also said in the story, the environment right now on the beat is maddening, because you know it's the Garden, it's New York City. You know this should be the greatest job in town. I think it could be, regardless of how the team is doing.

But no one tried to suggest we have it so difficult and it is ridiculous for anyone -- especially a fellow reporter -- to compare us to those embedded reporters in the Middle East. That kind of comparison is asinine because by saying it, you're suggesting no one in America has the right to complain about their working conditions as it related to their job, because it still doesn't compare to the conditions faced by the Reuters journalist in Tikrit.

Hey, I bet at least that person gets an ocassional one-on-one with a General.

Does it mean none of us can call out this team for limiting our ability to give you the best possible coverage? Does it mean we should go along with their restrictions and give you nothing more than just the canned quotes from the locker room and, at most, the agenda-based comments from agents?

Is that what you want? A pack of reporters who just take whatever the team dishes out? Regurgiates the rhetoric? Doesn't demand that the city's lone NBA franchise raise their standards not only on the court, but off of it?

Aren't you the least bit alarmed that a guy who grew up a Knicks fan just like you, and dreamed of one day covering the team finally realized this dream only to find it didn't come close to living up to the expectation? And it didn't, especially after traveling the NBA for a year and seeing how it's done elsewhere.

I won't even get into how much I realize the Islanders were more of a classy organization that I realized based on the fact that they took a lot of negative pub and still had the understanding that some negative pub is unavoidable as long as it was fair. And no matter what, they had the decency to treat you like a human being even after some of the worst of times. (For the record, by the way, No, I never said I wanted to go back to the Islanders beat. I said I never really wanted to leave it in the first place, but now that I'm here, I want to be around to see this franchise and this beat get back to the elite level it once had).

If demanding a greater standard out of your team isn't what you want out of your beat writer, then enjoy the controlled, watered-down company line info you get on the team's website. You're clearly in the wrong place.