Madison Square Garden and Knicks chairman James Dolan hired Leon Rose to oversee the Knicks’ basketball operations and change the perception of this sorry franchise.
So far, the results turned out to be horrendous. The Knicks failed to sign anyone of significance that could change the fortunes of their team or acquire a star to get the franchise going.
The Knicks can openly brag about their cap space because that’s what losers do when they are desperate. They can design another delusion of grandeur about Kawhi Leonard, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Victor Oladipo, or whoever next season. They will always talk about this great future or whatever.
Here’s the bottom line: The Knicks failed once again to make themselves better.
No matter who they hire, no one wants to sign with them. Sorry, Knicks fans, but bringing back Elfrid Payton and Theo Pinson and signing Austin Rivers, Omari Spellman, Jacob Evans, Nerlens Noel, and Alec Burks does not scream excitement the way Gordon Heyward or Fred VanVleet would have. They couldn’t even convince Carmelo Anthony to come back to play for them. Donovan Mitchell resigned with the Jazz rather than waste his career playing for the Knicks. They had nothing to offer to get Chris Paul, and reportedly, he did not want to play for the Knicks.
Knicks fans like to say this is a great thing, but they are missing the point. Once again the Knicks turn out to be an undesirable destination for any player. Forget the A-list players. Not even B-list or C-list players such as D.J. Augustin and Jeff Teague wanted nothing to do with them. Who can blame them? No one wants to play for an idiot who is out of touch in Dolan. He causes so many distractions with his insecurity and nonsense that wears out players. Players have enough pressure as it is, and they don’t need to answer questions about Dolan or deal with his nonsense that comes with it.
No one can blame Dolan if he is disappointed Rose failed to get the job done. After all, the new president of basketball operations exerts influence with the players in the league from his days as an agent. He was hired for the purpose of getting players to play here.
Dolan yearns for the Knicks to be a playoff team again, and preferably this year. He aims to see them be relevant in the NBA and the local sports scene. After watching the Los Angeles Lakers win the championship this year by signing and acquiring stars in recent years, he does not have the stomach to watch another rebuild turn into another Ls and misery. He never had the patience, to begin with.
So now the Knicks have no chance but to go with youth and hope for the best. They pray that the free agents will somehow come to play for them in 2021, even though that is slim to none at this point.
Don’t be fooled about this is the plan all along. If this was really the plan, there’s no way Rose and Tom Thibodeau would have been hired. Those guys came to the Knicks to win, not be part of another rebuild.
The Knicks talked big things such as remaking their brand and talking up stars to come here. This does not scream a rebuild, does it? Signing players to a one-year contract does not scream hope at all.
The Knicks can talk about developing with youth, but we saw and heard this before and it ended up as a failure. Lack of patience and inability to develop players put the Knicks in a bad place they are in right now. It’s hard to think they will get it right when they haven’t got it right in the first place.
Even Dolan knows this is not the way to do it in New York. He speaks from experience after watching Isiah Thomas and Scott Perry experiment building a team from within.
The Knicks understand they have no choice but to hope for the best with the rookies such as Obi Toppin, Immanuel Quickley, and Myles Powell. Hope is never a plan. Hope means being lucky.
Knicks fans wait once again. They will be fed with more promises by the Knicks.
Sadly, they believe all this because they have no choice and they want to believe.
They really should know better after 20 years of Dolan’s ineptness.
