The other day I mentioned we have had 8 coaches in 15 years, and 7 GM's.
I was also trying to expand on "culture".
I realize we as fans are about "what about trading X for X", or "OMG, Who are we going to sign!!!"
Clearly we are products instant gradificaton and fear of an uncertain process.
Nalod been saying this might take a few years. I don't articulate as well as the pro's, but here is a good article I agree with most of it........
With the Knicks on pace to shatter the franchise record for losses in a season, many fans—even some within the organization—have turned their attention to May’s NBA draft lottery and the Knicks’ chances of winning the top overall pick.
Nabbing the nation’s best collegiate player (widely believed to be Duke center Jahlil Okafor) would certainly help the Knicks repair the roster. But regardless of where and who they end up picking, the Knicks are going to have to get much better at developing young talent if they intend to build long-term success as a franchise.“The reality is that [bottoming out] is probably the best way to go about the business,” team president Phil Jackson acknowledged over the weekend. “To begin and to restart it, and to do it the right way. To put it together in a way that really makes sense instead of bringing dominant people in to try and fit it into a jigsaw puzzle that makes it pretty difficult. So we hope we’re on the right track, even though this isn’t the track we anticipated.”
The Knicks should have roughly $30 million in salary-cap space to spend on free agents this summer, but the fate of their first draft pick may be more integral to the track Jackson is referring to. Bringing along a potential star would mark a major shift for a franchise that isn’t known for patience or continuity.
“The Knicks have always had the money to spend. But because they saw that as their advantage, it might have also become a reason to put off being patient with a rebuild,” said John Nash, a former general manager for the Nets, 76ers and Washington Bullets. “They may have felt they didn’t have the time to truly develop young players.”
The Knicks have been a revolving door in recent years, with an NBA-high 87 players suiting up since the beginning of the 2008-09 season, according to Stats LLC. But they haven’t had a top-five pick since 1986, when they took Kenny “Sky” Walker at No. 5, and they haven’t re-signed any first-round picks to multiyear deals since Charlie Ward, whom they drafted in 1994.
The problem isn’t poor drafting. In fact, the Knicks have had three first-team All-Rookie selections—Landry Fields in 2011, Iman Shumpert in 2012 and Tim Hardaway Jr. in 2014—in the past four years, more than any other team during that span. The problem is that those players have all regressed offensively in their second full seasons. You have to go back seven years, to Danilo Gallinari, to find the last Knicks draft pick who was better in his second full season than in his first.
Why can’t the Knicks develop their young talent? Before he was traded to Cleveland last week, J.R. Smith suggested the team lacked leaders who could help guide younger players.
“The difference between now and [the Knicks’ 54-win season in 2012] was that we had leaders at pretty much every position,” Smith said, citing veterans like Jason Kidd, Rasheed Wallace and Kurt Thomas. “It was a lot easier then, because they all had so much love for the game to where it didn’t even feel like they were teaching.”
‘The Knicks have always had the money to spend. But because they saw that as their advantage, it might have also become a reason to put off being patient with a rebuild.’
—John Nash.
It’s difficult to gauge how a particular athlete benefits from playing alongside a particular veteran. But when fans and analysts ponder the similarities between Shumpert and 25-year-old Chicago Bulls guard Jimmy Butler, for example, it’s hard to ignore one key difference: Butler had the good fortune to learn under Luol Deng, the talented, hardworking swingman who’s respected around the league. Hardaway, on the other hand, has played behind and learned under Shumpert and Smith, who, for all their talents, were maddeningly inconsistent.
Coaching also plays a major role in development, and with eight coaches since the 2001-02 season, the Knicks haven’t exactly been the most stable organization in that regard, either. Asked recently how he emphasizes player growth in New York, first-year coach Derek Fisher said he has stressed the importance of preparedness to Hardaway and his other young players.
“There are some base-level things you need to survive in this league,” Fisher said. “When practice is at 11, it’d be smart for you to get there by 9 or 9:30 to get some work in before practice and after practice to work at your craft. Those sorts of things matter for a young player.”
The importance of drafting, developing and retaining young talent can’t be overstated for Jackson and the Knicks, especially in today’s NBA, where the salary cap makes it difficult to stockpile free-agent stars. Most contending clubs have at least one homegrown contributor—think Klay Thompson in Golden State or Mike Conley in Memphis—allowing those teams more cap flexibility early in the players’ contracts.
For years now, the Knicks have gone against the grain by betting the farm on big names—Carmelo Anthony, Tyson Chandler, Amar’e Stoudemire and Smith made $53.6 million combined last season, more than 91% of the salary cap—through trades and free agency. Whether the team can exercise the patience necessary to develop young players remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the one star they already have, the 30-year-old Anthony, isn’t getting any younger.
“This is testing my patience,” Anthony said recently. “I’m being tested for sure. But hopefully when I sit back years from now, I can look back on this time and tell myself, ‘We had to go through this to get to where we want to go.’ ”
Write to Chris Herring at chris.herring@wsj.com
1/14/2015 12:21 PM