Derek Fisher Will Get Fair Assessment as New York Knicks' Coach Next Season
The New York Knicks may be having a terrible season, but it shouldn't have too much of an impact when it comes to assessing Derek Fisher's long-term competence as head coach.
Typically, a lottery year—especially for a franchise as desperate for immediate success as the Knicks have been recently—warrants serious consideration of a coaching change, but this is a unique situation. Fisher has been given a particularly bad roster to work with, and it's hard to imagine any other coach getting more than a handful of extra wins with this group.
This is just Year 1 of what could be a long rebuilding process, and with Phil Jackson having already given Fisher a five-year contract, it's clear he wants to see what the coach has to offer to a better set of players before making any drastic decisions.
Fisher hasn't been great by any means, with rotations, chemistry and late-game decisions all being serious issues. There's no denying that he has work to do—as would be the case with any rookie coach—but that doesn't outweigh the fact that he's been relying on the likes of Jason Smith, Shane Larkin and Quincy Acy in featured roles.
Continuity has also been a major obstacle. Through trades, injuries and buyouts, key players like Carmelo Anthony, Iman Shumpert, J.R. Smith and Amar'e Stoudemire are no longer at Fisher's disposal.
This coming offseason, the Knicks will have plenty of cap room to work with, and at their current rate, a high lottery pick, too. It will be difficult to build a serious contender in just one year, but at the least they should be able to put together a competitive roster in the Eastern Conference.
They'll also have Anthony back at full strength—his knee had been bothering him throughout this year before ultimately requiring season-ending surgery.
Assuming the front office has a successful summer, New York will get a much better look at Fisher in 2015-16. He and Jackson came in with a specific system in mind, that being the triangle offense, and it's essential to actually have a roster tailored to its needs. A defensive-minded center, a younger point guard who can spread the floor and a wing to complement Melo will go a long way toward making that a reality.
Toward the end of his playing career, Fisher earned a reputation as an on-court extension of the coach, capable of managing the players and egos around him. With the Oklahoma City Thunder, the key was having serious talent to marshal, so he should be more comfortable getting good players to jell rather than teaching less experienced players from scratch.
Skills like that tend to be honed in assistant or college roles, which is why most rebuilding teams hire coaches with those backgrounds who have working experience with less talented players than the likes of Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.
This doesn't necessarily mean New York needs to acquire elite veteran talent in order for Fisher to fit as head coach; it just means the learning curve is going to be a lot steeper.
If everything goes to plan, Fisher will be growing with his players, which is exactly what you want when trying to build an organic structure where everyone understands his role. It's also why judging his tenure based on his work with players who are only here for the short term is counterintuitive.
As 2014-15 has progressed, Fisher has definitely improved in his guidance of young players.
The Knicks recently managed to put together their first back-to-back wins of the season, and a number of players on the team, including Smith, Larkin and Langston Galloway, are playing some of their best basketball so far. Even Andrea Bargnani, who is thought of as nothing more than an expiring contract, is averaging 18 points on 50 percent shooting from the field in four starts.
Ultimately, it's difficult to take too much away from this season—if anything, it will serve purely as a learning exercise for Fisher (and Jackson, for that matter). He is simply too inexperienced and has too little to work with for anyone to make any real judgments just yet.
The real assessment will come once New York starts to put together its long-term roster and raises its expectations beyond the lottery.
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