Can’t fix stupid with Dolan’s Knicks

Forbes values the Knicks at $4.6 billion when its annual valuations came out Tuesday.

Can’t make this up. This team stinks, and it will be seven years and counting the Knicks failed to qualify for the playoffs. Not one NBA star wants to play for this sorry franchise. Young players such as RJ Barrett, Kevin Knox and Mitchell Robinson keep regressing. The Knicks fired David Fizdale as their head coach this season, and they recently fired the incompetent Steve Mills as their president. What’s wrong with this picture? Does it even make sense?

For the next Knicks’ stupid trick, they recently hired a branding specialist in Steve Stoute, and he made his presence felt right away by going on ESPN’s First Take and announce the Knicks will hire a new coach and a new general manager. He also said the Knicks can recruit free agents to play for them. He spoke like he had all the answers, even if he came off so delusional.

Stoute said everything that sounded good for Knicks CEO and chairman James Dolan. That’s the problem right there. It’s about sucking up to Dolan to be in survival mode. This explains why Mills and Isiah Thomas stayed as long as they could, even though they have been so awful at their jobs. Dolan created such a lousy culture in pleasing him by never telling him that he is doing it wrong. This explains why the Knicks have been a running joke in the NBA since Dolan took control of the team in 2001.

Give Stoute credit for being honest about the Knicks’ coaching job situation. Knicks interim head coach Mike Miller has no shot to coach next season, even if the Knicks make the playoffs. The new front office plans to hire its own guy as a head coach since they want a guy that can collaborate with them on how to build this team. Plus, the Knicks plan on hiring a brand coach that can get fans to watch them on television next year.

Here’s the problem with Stoute’s act the other day on ESPN: He acts like he wants power all of a sudden just because he got the job from Dolan five minutes ago. Basically, he campaigned about being a president of basketball operations while he was at it.

This shouldn’t be his job. Stoute really should have no business even being on television to talk about his plans when he is nothing more than a consultant at best. What consultant even goes on television to talk about the team and promote himself in the first place?

The Knicks have yet to hire their new president of basketball operations, even though rumor has it that it will be Leon Rose. But if Rose considered wanting the job, he may have second thoughts now after Stoute’s power play.

Stoute created such a bad optic that the Knicks forced him to retract whatever he said to ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman. The Knicks also have to play defense to his behavior the other day.
It’s every man for himself under Dolan. That’s a problem. Stoute spoke for himself than the organization. He apparently thinks he has the power now that he got hired. We all knew what his intent was when he went on First Take. Don’t buy into this nonsense about being transparent to the fans. The Knicks couldn’t care less about the fans.

Dolan can’t seem to have everyone on the same page it seems. He has yet to hire Rose officially as the team president, but somehow he lets Stoute come in and hijack everything by talking about the moves and plans the Knicks will make.

One man should be the one voice speaking for the organization. Dolan can’t be that guy since he is dumb to be one, and it sure as hell can’t be a consultant. You can’t have a head coach being the face of the franchise since he has other things to do like run a practice. This belongs to Rose or whoever will be the president of the basketball operation.

Dolan likes to insult everyone’s intelligence about everything has changed with every business move the Knicks make, but it’s one of the same. More dysfunction. More backstabbing. More chaos. He likes it that way, too since it keeps everyone on edge.

One would figure Dolan would change it up since it got to nowhere in his awful stewardship of this franchise, but that’s not how he operates.

I never thought Stoute would make much of a difference in branding the Knicks in the first place. I doubt Rose will, either. Dolan hired competent people such as Larry Brown, Donnie Walsh, Mike D’Antoni and Phil Jackson, and the results turned out to be the intersection of losses and dysfunctional. Why should this be any different when Dolan turns out to be the constant? He’s not going away, and he never intended to go away.

This is who Dolan is. If he wanted to change, he would have done it a long, long time ago.

Stoute’s act becomes just par for the course at what goes on with the Knicks.

And you know what? Dolan loves this in reality.