NY Knicks' Nightmare Season Makes Assessing Derek Fisher Basically Impossible
When he was hired on June 10 as the New York Knicks' newest head coach, Derek Fisher's prospects in his new role were a complete unknown. Team president Phil Jackson made the decision knowing two certainties, however.
One was that players around the league held the former point guard and NBAPA president in a high regard. The other was that no matter how the 2014-15 campaign panned out, the focus would remain almost entirely on Year 2 of this regime, when the front office will have the opportunity to hit the restart button and form a roster in its own view.
More than seven months later, it's impossible to say the team has learned much—if anything—else about the Zen Master's hand-picked head coach.
That's not a jab at Fisher, who's come away with just six victories through his first 42 games—including a 99-92 win over the New Orleans Pelicans on Monday night—in his new role.
The roster's constant state of flux has made it difficult to get a true feel for the coach's strengths and weaknesses, which is disappointing considering the sole purpose of this season is growth and development.
Thanks to injuries and roster gutting, Fisher has been forced to trot out 25 unique starting lineups over 42 games. The two most frequent units, with four appearances each, both contain players no longer on the roster.
Carmelo Anthony, the one presumed constant entering the season, has missed 10 games so far and may soon be shut down with a lingering knee issue that likely requires surgery.
Four other players deemed major contributors in October—Jose Calderon, Amar'e Stoudemire, J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert—have either missed significant time with injury, been traded away or both.
The result is the team's current roster, which largely resembles its summer league one. Six summer Knicks have found their way into a big-club uniform, with a potential seventh on the way soon in draft pick Thanasis Antetokounmpo.
With wins and losses completely devalued, the benefit of the roster's current construction is that its core has been exposed to the triangle system for some time—Fisher first instilled it during the Las Vegas Summer League, and the team's NBA Developmental League affiliate also runs it in Westchester.
With Jackson and Fisher set on moving forward with this system, loading the roster with young, moldable players who've been exposed to it all year only makes sense.
But with a roster so devoid of talent, it's nearly impossible to evaluate Fisher's strengths and flaws, because the players simply may not be good enough to carry out his desires.
A specific example of this lies in New York's shot selection. Entering Monday, New York had attempted the second-most mid-range attempts and the fewest restricted area attempts in the league, according to NBA.com, while also ranking in the bottom third in three-point tries.
This inefficient approach has often been used to indict the triangle as obsolete in today's league, which values rim attempts and three-point looks above all. While the system does feature plenty of mid-range action, it's this roster's poor talent level that has left so many possessions ending there.
The 2010 Finals-winning Los Angeles Lakers, the second-most recent sighting of the triangle in the NBA, finished with the 22nd-most attempts from mid-range and in the top 10 in three-point shots. With sufficient talent, the system creates efficient, open looks. Without it, it results in the Knicks' 26th-ranked offense. That's not on Fisher.
Between dealing with perpetual injuries through the first half and essentially starting with a new team in mid-January, using the team's struggles against Fisher isn't a well-thought-out argument. A small number of big-picture issues, though, are more concerning.
The one that's stood out is Fisher's handling of Anthony—the player New York's success entirely depends on over the next five years. Per Chris Herring of The Wall Street Journal:
The Knicks' season has been decided for some time now, and it now exists solely for developmental purposes—rendering Anthony's participation completely unnecessary. Injuries that have sidelined him sporadically all season only strengthen this notion.
But Anthony's instinct is to play through his ailments and help his team, which is fine—that's a quality you want from your team's best player. It's leadership's responsibility, though, to judge the situation with broader perspective and realize the faults in letting players make impactful, long-term decisions regarding their health.
In this regard, Fisher—along with the rest of New York's leadership regime—has failed. If Anthony needs surgery, which he has admitted he likely does, there are no benefits to him suiting up for the worst team in basketball. Especially in the first year of a five-year deal.
Like Mike Woodson before him, Fisher has also been guilty of overplaying Anthony, which is even more questionable given that Fisher isn't coaching for his job the way Woodson was last year.
Though Anthony's not leading the league in burn like he did in 2013-14, his 36 minutes per game are still far too many considering the team has lost games he's played in by more than 10 points on average.
It's a concerning trend, but perhaps more concerning for New York is how little it has learned about its rookie coach's strategic abilities during the one season designated for rebuild.
With ample cap space this summer, the team is expecting to return to the playoff conversation with eyes on adding a max-salary player through free agency to pair with Anthony and a presumed top-four draft pick.
Discovering and making Fisher's necessary first-year adjustments were key priorities in this expected down year for the Knicks. But by floundering harder than anyone could've expected, the team has made it difficult even to build off the one season designed for growth.
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