The living has not been easy for this star-crossed franchise, not since the 1998-99 season, when the Knicks reached the N.B.A. finals before losing to the San Antonio Spurs. Even then, the tension between the front office and the team was so excruciating that it continued into the finals.

Walsh has the experience to change the culture of losing. But he is also stepping into a twisted, deeply rooted culture of silence, secrecy, suspicion, chauvinism and distrust.

And that’s just the Knicks City Dancers.

There is a sprawling network of loyal fans, supposedly too cool and too detached to care, but who in fact care deeply and yearn to be inspired by a winning team. After five seasons of being told the team was turning the corner, these fans are almost to the point of being anesthetized to hope.

This would not be a good thing.

“I know New York,” Walsh said during a telephone interview this week. “This is a town you got to prove it. You don’t prove it by what you do in the summer, you prove it by what you do in the winter and the fall.”

So far, Walsh has told Knicks fans the truth. It’s going to take time.

“We’ll try to get it competitive next year and the year after, but we’ve got to be real careful about messing it up over the long term,” he said.

An enduring myth — largely perpetrated by the news media — is that former players, especially great players, do not make good coaches. That is nonsense, of course.

Bill Russell coached the Celtics to back-to-back championships; Bill Sharman coached the Lakers to a championship. In the 1980s, all but three N.B.A. championship coaches — Chuck Daly, Paul Westhead and Bill Fitch — had been former players. In the 1990s, all but two (Daly and Gregg Popovich) were nonplayers, and in the 21st century only one (Popovich) has been a nonplayer.

Walsh hired Larry Bird as head coach in 1997; Indiana reached the 2000 finals.

“There have been an awful lot of ex-players who have won N.B.A. championships,” Walsh said. “There are an awful lot of ex-players who are very successful coaches, and it’s becoming more of a norm.”

He added, referring to Jackson: “I think that could work. I agree: you want to have experience most of the time and that pays off, but there are times when there’s an exception to that.”

Sounds as if this may be that time, although Walsh said he wasn’t leaning toward Jackson.

“I’m really not doing that,” he said. “I know Mark well enough to know I’ve got to sit down and talk to him.”