Knicks' Looming Offseason Will Define Phil Jackson-Carmelo Anthony Marriage
Experts and fans have long understood the New York Knicks' rebuilding plan. The signs were, and remain, everywhere.
But there's something both reassuring and unsettling about the team itself publicly beginning to address the obvious: The looming offseason, in all its planned grandeur, means everything to Phil Jackson and Carmelo Anthony, and to the way in which their New York tenure will be remembered.
Though widely known, this has been a guarded fact. After re-signing with the Knicks, Anthony began his summer positing that they weren't far away from contention. Jackson entered the season asserting his team could make the playoffs as currently constructed.
One 16-game losing streak, 39 total losses and a full-blown roster teardown later, and the Knicks are eating their own words and coming to terms with a drastically different actuality: failure.
“Like nothing I’ve seen before,” Jackson told The New York Times' Harvey Araton of the Knicks' season. “So far, my experiment has fallen flat on its face.”
Failing to contend for a playoff berth stings—especially in the Eastern Conference, where a team like the Boston Celtics is flirting with a postseason appearance after taking a similarly sized wrecking ball to their roster.
Still, silver linings exist. The Knicks own this year's first-round draft pick, so they're in position to land a real game-changer without forking over El Dorado in the process.
Twenty-nine games under .500, the Knicks remain in play for the league's bottom-most record, a 25 percent chance at landing the top pick in June's draft and a 100 percent chance at falling within the top four. Their record is worse than that of the Philadelphia 76ers, and they're just 1.5 games off the NBA-worst Minnesota Timberwolves.
Names like Jahlil Okafor and Karl-Anthony Towns are already being tossed around. The impending means for developing within are en route. Losses are being stressed as good things. This is failure at its most valuable.
Yet through it all, you just know this season is about more than losses, draft picks and Okafor.
If the Knicks are able to dump Jose Calderon's contract by the Feb. 19 trade deadline, as Yahoo Sports' Mark Spears says they're trying to do, they'll have upwards of $30 million in cap space to burn through after cap holds and pick signings, affording them financial flexibility they haven't enjoyed in five years.
Such maneuverability comes just in time for a star-stamped free-agency class. Goran Dragic, Marc Gasol, Paul Millsap and DeAndre Jordan are all slated to hit the open market. Long shots like Kevin Love and LaMarcus Aldridge could decide to take meetings. Fringe stars like Wesley Matthews, Rajon Rondo, Draymond Green and Reggie Jackson will all be able to field offers.
The Knicks will have the cash to chase any one or possibly two free agents they choose. And for all the talk about patience, process and Okafor, that remains the plan.
“The time is now,” Anthony said to kick off February, via ESPNNew York.com's Ian Begley. “The time is now to kind of start building for the future. I don’t think we can wait. Not just for my sake, just in general, I think the time is now. The window is now. I think we’ve got to take advantage of that.”
Months away from turning 31, Anthony's time is certainly now. So the Knicks' time is now, too.
Teams won't shack up with over-30 superstars if they don't plan on contending in the near future. Any notion that the Knicks' rebuild can be gradual fails to adequately acknowledge this. Their draft pick may play a big role in building toward that quasi-instant turnaround, but the Knicks don't even own next year's selection.
This is not a draft-pick-dependent plan; it's a cash-crucial venture.
Which means Anthony, Jackson and the Knicks are hastily approaching a turning point in this still-vernal era.
Jackson himself has a laundry list of things to prove, starting with the triangle offense. The Knicks have implemented a butchered version of the system to disastrous consequences. They rank 25th in points scored per 100 possessions and 29th in pace, and their shot selection, while changing, is often considered obsolete.
Frank Isola of the New York Daily News provides just a taste of that criticism:
Whether or not the triangle can be adapted for success within the modern-day, three-point-heavy, drive-loaded, mid-range-allergic NBA has become secondary to what's actually happening.
Previously prevailing beliefs viewed the triangle as some sort of tactical panacea. That vantage point is being ripped to shreds more than anything else. As CBS Sports' Matt Moore wrote:
"However, and this is key: the conversation about the triangle being some sort of mystical concept that is superior is dead. The triangle is not better than other systems. It is not inherently superior, unless we're talking about something like Mike Woodson's "If they ISO, they ISO" sewage pit he ran in New York in his last few years. The things which advocates trumpet about the triangle (ball movement, decision-making, spacing) are elements in every good offense. Moving the ball creates better shots. This is not mysticism, this is common sense where it relates to basketball.
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Legacy is another part of Jackson's undertaking. He's out to prove that he can build something from the ground up and hack it as an executive who has not been gifted with Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan to do his on-court bidding.
As Isola points out once again, Jackson is off to a rocky start there:
In spite of all this—the Knicks' record, the non-thriving offense, the controversial trade resume—Jackson will have to convince free agents to roll the dice on New York. Even with 13 championship rings, there's no telling if he holds the necessary clout.
Not even he knows at this point.
“Of course it’s a concern of mine, the perception that it’s too difficult to learn or too difficult for today’s players to embrace,” he told Araton of the triangle offense's potential impact on free agency. “But I think anyone that believes he’s a total basketball player is going to want to do it."
Now, there's a refreshing levelheadedness to Jackson's approach. He talked with Araton about the importance of shrewd spending, saying that "having to always chase the best talent in free agency eventually becomes a mindset of, well, the best talent wins as opposed to who plays the best team basketball."
It's safe to say there will be no repeats of the Amar'e Stoudemire fiasco in which the Knicks dole out egregious amounts of cash to unfit consolation prizes. This side of 2010, such comfort cannot be overstated. The Knicks botched their last opportunity, reflexively squandering cap space and trade assets on flawed and overlapping talent. Jackson cannot, and by all appearances will not, let that happen again.
But there's still so much riding on this one offseason, his second at the helm.
Inserting themselves into the Kevin Durant conversation for 2016 free agency demands the Knicks piece together a winner before then. Making the most of Anthony's swiftly approaching twilight mandates the same.
And that's the other thing: The stakes are equally high for Anthony. Not just because he chose the Knicks over championship-ready teams, but because every season that passes without a title or playoff berth tests his patience—the same endurance that seemed to be waning even upon his return, according to Yahoo Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski:
Anthony has said all the right things publicly this season. He even believes his offseason seduction tactics will trump the Knicks' sorry standing when it comes to free agency, per Begley:
Just as much as this offseason is a test for Jackson, though, it's a measuring stick for Anthony— a chance for him to validate his outside appeal and, most importantly, start proving his decision to stay might not have been wrong after all.
Should the Knicks miss out, should Jackson and Anthony be unable to mine diamonds from the free-agent rough, it will go a long, long way in determining how their time together is remembered.
Said Jackson to Araton: "This is just the first chapter.”
It's also the most important one.
Second and third and fourth chances are not commodities the Knicks own. Each year they don't take a giant leap forward, it becomes harder for them to right past wrongs, to execute the about-face Jackson is being paid for, to assemble the Finals-fated squad Anthony is supposed to headline.
Failing to deliver over the summer ahead of next season would not be an isolated defeat. It could be, but probably won't.
More likely than not, this summer, whatever it entails, will be a preview of what's to come. And if what's to come is going to stray from the disaster-draped losing that has become synonymous with New York, the Knicks must find a way to ditch tradition and traffic in something new, something of the utmost importance, this offseason.
Success.
*Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and are accurate as of games played Feb. 3, 2015. Salary information via HoopsHype.
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