Best Season as a Knick: 1987-88- 13.6 PPG, 10.6 Assists, 2.5 Steals- Rookie of the Year

When putting a top 35 list together as we have been doing on this site, it can be very difficult. One of most difficult parts is placing players on the list who were very good, but tenure with the Knicks was not very long. For example, we all know based on ability Carmelo Anthony would be no worse than top 8 of all time Knicks, but because he has only been a Knick for half a season, he is not even close to being that.

Mark Jackson is another Knick’s player who falls into this category. As a player, many could argue Jackson should be higher than 14 on the list, but because he only played 6 1/2 of his 17 NBA seasons with the Knicks. The Knicks drafted the hometown product out of St. Johns with the 18th pick of the 1987 draft. They even brought him back in the 2001-02 season at age 35.

Jackson was phenomenal as a rookie, averaging over 13 points and 10 assists a game, winning rookie of the year honors. Jackson fit in perfectly dishing the ball off to Patrick Ewing and helping lead the Knicks to the playoffs. He played another 4 seasons as a Knick, but was traded to the Clippers as part of the Charles Smith and Doc Rivers deal.

Jackson’s play as a Knick declined after his first two seasons. Once Pat Riley took over as coach, it signaled the end of Jackson’s Knick career. Riley wanted a quicker point guard who played defense, and Jackson did not fit that criteria.

Looking back at it, the Clippers probably got the better end of the deal just for Charles Smith alone. Smith was a disaster and cost the Knicks in the 1993 series against the Bulls. However, when you looked at Smith’s numbers as a Clipper, he was a very good player and appeared to be a great complement player alongside Patrick Ewing. Rivers, on the other hand, was a solid player and provided more of what Pat Riley wanted from his point guard.

Something else that hurts Jackson status is the fact that he played on the Pacer teams during the Knicks heated rivalry with them. I hated the Pacers and hated Jackson even more. Whether it was his stupid looking tear drop or his shimmy dance or pointing to the basket when taking a foul shot, I could not stand him. When I think of Jackson. I do not remember him as a Pacer, not a Knick.

By Rob Bonanni

Is it time for Mike D'Antoni to go?

Mike D’Antoni, the mastermind behind the run & gun Phoenix Suns. He was supposed to be the savior of Gotham, the architect behind a resurgence at the Mecca. He failed, and it has fallen on Amar’e Stoudemire to lead a rebirth at the Garden. He was supposed to be the main attraction for the much hyped free agent class of 2010. He failed, and LeBron James went south. He is supposed to be the coach that leads New York back to the finals. I’m going to go ahead and call that a fail as well, since the D’Antoni experience seems to be on the fast track too nowhere.

(more…)

In a lottery lacking surprise,
DeBusschere drafted “The Franchise”.
But the team was a shame
Losing game after game
And from the cellar they never could rise.

Al Bianchi assembled “the Bomb Squad”
Mark Jackson, J. New, and the Hot Rod.
Traded Cartwright for Oak,
But MacLeod was a joke,
And the roster, though good, remained flawed.

Grunfeld put together some winners
Reaching the finals when league talent got thinner.
He perfected the craft
Of dodging the draft
But his teams needed “Offense for Beginners”.

Ed Tapscot was GM for a day
With a roster on the verge of decay
Instead of drafting Artest
Took the player he thought best:
A Frenchman who stayed in Marseilles.

Scott Layden had the master solution:
Trading Ewing to begin the devolution
Getting Longley and Rice,
Swapping Camby for ‘Dice
And then brilliantly maxing out Houston.

And who could forget our Isiah
At one time, a Hall of Fame playah
But as an exec
Proved an utter train wreck:
A perverted, capped-out franchise slayah.

So now there’s a savior named Donnie
Who, to undo all Isiah’d done wrong, he
Traded all of our picks
‘Till Three Thousand and Six
But still wins if he gets us LeBronie!

(source: ESPN's "30 On 30")

Last night, ESPN premiered it’s most recent installation in their “30 on 30″ documentary series (inspired & led by Bill Simmons, it’s a look at 30 lesser-known stories from these past 30 years that ESPN has been in existence).  Even for a Knick fan, the Reggie Miller-centric documentary was funny, nostalgic, informative, and moving.  There’s something intriguing and different about a doc that looks back at something you lived through as opposed to introducing you to a new world you knew nothing about (although obviously for many people the doc will fall into the latter category).

First, at the time, New Yorkers (and probably most NBA fans in general) thought of Reggie Miller as the ultimate villain.  Michael Jordan was the guy who you wanted to defeat, but Reggie was the guy who you wanted to see get in an “unfortunate” car accident.  It wasn’t about what he did to the Knicks, it was about who he was and how he played.  He talked smack non-stop, played dirty, and would fake & flop to try to get non-existent calls.  And by dirty, I don’t mean physical, ‘cuz you were allowed to play darn physical at the time.  By dirty, I mean doing things when the refs weren’t looking.  Swingin’ them pointy elbows for sneak attacks whenever possible (by the way, there is no truth to the rumor that he rubbed his elbows with sandpaper to get them particularly sharp).  Read what his own sister, Cheryl, says about him in the doc:

(more…)

New Yorkers, rightfully, are worried that this is an all-or-nothing proposition.  Basically, unless we get LeBron James or Dwayne Wade, we’ll just be a slightly above average team.  Kinda like how we looked with Crawford & Randolph.  While there are other studs available this summer like A’mare Stoudamire, Chris Bosh, Joe Johnson, Carlos Boozer, none of ‘em are mega-stars who ensure you’ll have a legit shot at winning a championship.  Those second-tier guys just assure that you’ll make the playoffs.  Even if you do get two of ‘em.

So if we don’t get Plan A, does that mean Plan B is doomed to fail?  Not necessarily.  Most Knicks fans are worried about Plan B, but that’s ‘cuz they assume it means not just that we sign two lesser talents, but that we sign them to more than they’re worth.  The fear is that we do something like the Pistons did this summer, when they had a bunch of cash and felt compelled to spend it, thus overpaying for Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, both of whom are currently coming off the bench for Detroit.  Likewise, several years ago a few teams cleared cap space to sign Tim Duncan and Grant Hill.  After Duncan stayed with the Spurs and Hill went with Tracy McGrady to Orlando, Chicago paid a bunch of money to some scrubs just to say they got someone.

Now if Isiah was still in charge, sure, we all know he would definitely follow that path, but doesn’t Donnie Walsh deserve the benefit of the doubt?  Besides the remarkable salary dumping job he did for us, he had quite a run with the Indiana Pacers.  Not only did he assemble enough talent for them to constantly be in the top of the east during the late 1990s, but he even got that team to Finals against the Lakers in… what was it, 2000?  And after that within a year or two he had completely rejuvenated that team, getting rid of Rick Smits, Mark Jackson, Dale Davis, Antonio Davis, Jalen Rose, and turning them into a young Eastern Conference contender around Jermaine O’Neal, Brad Miller, Ron Artest, Stephen Jackson, Jamaal Tinsley, and the still effective Grandpa Reggie Miller.  This was a team that seemed poised to make it to the finals for the next few years until the unfortunate Malice At The Palace, players-and-fans-scuffle.  Has a team ever been turned around that quickly with a completely new cast?  The Lakers new team is still built around Kobe, one of their two supernova stars from their earlier three-peat.  The old-time Celtics won like 11 championships with various supporting stars, but they all centered around Bill Russell.

Fine, you say, we’ll give Walsh a chance.  But if he doesn’t get LeBron or Wade, what can he reasonably do to get the rest of the cream of the crop?  The key is getting some supporting parts at reasonable prices.  Houston has been excellent at that, getting solid unflashy guys like Shane Battier, Trevor Ariza, Luis Scola, and Carl Landry on the (relative) cheap.  Get Chris Bosh and Joe Johnson to agree to slightly less than the max, and then try to snag Ray Felton, Brendan Haywood, Josh Childress, Shannon Brown, Rudy Gay, Manu Ginobili, Kyle Korver, or Mike Miller on the cheap.  Maybe David Lee or TMac will agree to a lesser deal.  It would be pretty solid to have a line-up of Bosh, Lee, Gallo, Chandler, and Felton with Childress, Brown, Miller & TMac coming off the bench.

Yes, that’d still probably only get us to 4th or 5th in the East, but here’s the thing: it also would keep us out of the tax.  Since you personally don’t have to pay the tax as a fan, you probably don’t care, but it matters a bunch.  Why?  It means that the following summer, 2011, when Eddy Curry’s $11.3 million salary comes off the books, we can use that full amount to sign someone else.  If we give out excessive contracts this summer, we’ll go over the cap and won’t be able to add anyone new after we get rid of Curry.

With that $11+ mill, we could have a real shot at such 2011 free agents as Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Greg Oden, Jason Richardson, Samuel Dalembert, Jeff Green, David West, Zach Randolph, Marc Gasol, Mike Conley, Troy Murphy, Mike Dunleavy Jr., Shane Battier, Aaron Brooks, Tayshaun Prince, Rodney Stuckey, J.R.Smith, Nene, Caron Butler, Joakim Noah, Boris Diaw, Kendrick Perkins, Jamal Crawford, Al Horford, and some guy named Carmelo Anthony.  Adding just one of those guys to the above roster would probably elevate the team to one of the East’s elite.  Adding Melo would bring a very real possibility of winning multiple championships.

By having a few reasonable, desirable smaller contracts, we could also trade Curry’s expiring contract in the middle of next season, so we wouldn’t even have to wait for 2011.  Like by next year the Celtics will finally have to accept that Kevin Garnett is so half-dead he’s practically a zombie.  They realize they need to blow up the team, so they decide to get rid of Paul Pierce for an expiring contract.  He makes more than Curry, but we throw in Mike Miller to make things work.  Using those contracts would also help if say someone like Melo wants more than that $11 mill.  We basically give a Mike Miller to a team for free (like only getting a second round pick in return), and then we have like another $3 mill available to pay Anthony.

The point is that it’s not LeBron/Wade or mediocrity.  It’s about not returning to the ways of Scott Layden & Isiah Thomas (& honestly lots of other GMs), and overpaying mid-level players.

After scouring the internet, I was amazed at the dearth of material on Dick McGuire.  Here was one of the greats, and the only footage I could find of him playing bball was on MSG’s memorial for him.  In an age where every moment is recorded of people who are famous simply for being famous (like Paris Hilton or Jon&Kate), it’s sad that the exploits of a true pioneer will likely fade away into nothingness eventually.  How many websites do we need devoted to David Hasselhoff?  It’s up to us to keep our history alive.  How many great films, great books, great songs have been lost?  Someone recently said to me that the reason most books from before 1900 haven’t stood the test of time is because they weren’t that great.  I have a hard time believing that.  Yes, they may not have been Shakespeare, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have books that if they came out today would be considered one of the top 50 books of the year.  It’s also not just about whether things from the past are as “good” as things in the present, it’s about understanding how things have evolved.

For instance, one silent film which was considered a shocker at the time it came out was the original “The Great Train Robbery.”  If you watch it today, well, probably the recent “Taking Of Pelham One Two Three” is more suspenseful to our modern sensibilities.  However, the key to appreciating “The Great Train Robbery” is understanding why it was a shocker.  It wasn’t about the plot.  It was about a shot that they showed at the very beginning, and then the exact same shot shown at the very end.  It’s completely unremarkable to you and me.  It’s just a guy looking at us (ie.the camera) and shooting his gun.  The thing is that up until that point, they’d never had a person look right at the camera before, so when he shot that gun, the audience was literally instinctively afraid that he was shooting at them.  They ducked to the side.  In a sense, it was to them what the first 3-D films were to our times.  That’s incredible.

Similarly, while doing a bit of research on McGuire, naturally a lot of things came up about his contemporary dribbling maestro, Bob Cousy.  There’s an anecdote on him that reminds me of Michael Jordan’s famous improvised shot against the Lakers.  The one where he went up in the air for a right-handed lay-in, then seeing Sam Perkins preparing to block it, mid-air MJ switched the ball to his left hand and flipped it in.  Here’s the description of Cousy in a 1949 college game from an old Sports Illustrated article:

(more…)