Is James Dolan now a good thing?
When was the last time the Knicks truly made a horrible move? How much of that is coming from the top, from the avatar of the Knicks’ failures in the last 20 years, James Dolan?
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Imagine a crisp autumn day. The air has that smoky cold scent that comes every October. The trees are bare against a clear blue sky, the ground covered in leaves that have begun muddying to something impressionist. You’re five minutes from home, where a hot homemade dinner awaits. Your parents. Your little sister. Your dog. His little bird friend, too, probably.
As you cross the field that leads up to your backyard fence, your pace slows, then you stop. She’s here. She’s back. She doesn’t even acknowledge you, but you know she knows you’re there. After brushing away leaves and dirt til she’s cleared a good patch of grass, she drops to one knee, places the football upright, two fingers keeping it that way.
How many times has this scene repeated itself? You worked on this in therapy. Whether she pulls the ball away again or even if she doesn’t, that doesn’t matter. There is no football, the therapist had said. There is only you, Charles. You, deciding whether to move on or stay stuck in place.
“How will I know which is right?” you’d asked.
“No one can know but you,” she’d said.
You close your eyes. The wind massages your eyelids. Breathe in, deeply. Exhale, slowly. Breathe in. Feel yourself extend beneath the earth, root yourself in it. Exhale. S l o w l y. What do you want? Do you know? You breathe some more, then nod. You do. You know.
You break into a light jog, pick up speed. You don’t know what you expect to happen. You just know it feels different this time. There is no football. There is only ever now. You’ill spend yours chasing your dream. You can’t give it up. That doesn’t mean you can’t better your odds by changing your approach.
Linus echoes in your mind, the story of Achilles and the tortoise. You started 40 feet from the spot of the kick. You can never reach the spot. To do so you’d have to cut the distance from 40 feet to 20, then 20 to 10, 10 to five, to two-and-a-half, one-and-a-quarter, five-eighths, five-sixteenths, five-thirty-secondths, etc. You will not quit and cannot fail if the true reward is the struggle itself.
We must imagine Charlie Brown happy.
The New York Knicks are in a position they were in not long ago. In a sense, they’re in a position they always seem to be in or headed toward. The MSG marquee is missing a headliner and there are headliners out there. The viability of a downtown Manhattan/Donovan Mitchell arranged marriage is entirely a question of the dowry. Utah’s Danny Ainge is hoping the Kevin Durant sweepstakes resolves so teams will turn to Mitchell as the next available star.
For once, the Knicks have done all the right things to position themselves as the logical favorite to land a star who is known to have a taste for New York. So why hasn’t it happened yet? Why not just get the best player, the biggest name in the deal? Maybe the Knicks have grown up. Maybe that started at the top.
The Knicks haven’t really made a blatantly bad move in... five years, is it? No move is unanimously loved or hated, but the Patrick Ewing trade was instantly bad. The Andrea Bargnani deal was dead on arrival. The last just straight seemingly stupid thing the Knicks did was let Phil Jackson draft Frank Ntilikina and then fire him like a week later. Short of catching Mrs. Dolan cheating with Phil, it’s hard to think any one thing could happen in that one week to completely rewrite Dolan’s opinion of Jackson’s performance. But since then, the Knicks, while still not very good, have been pretty normal. It’s possible Dolan deserves credit for some of the turnaround.
The Knicks have pivoted quickly and well since Jackson was fired. It’s hard to imagine anyone since Phil having as much power, so I’m assuming Dolan took some of his authority or involvement back. Pretty much once Kristaps Porziņģis made it clear he wouldn’t mind leaving, he was gone. In the cases of Durant and Mitchell, their teams appear comfortable letting their disgruntled star continue disgruntling for a while. There are intangible costs to letting circuses fester, and though the Knicks have been plenty bad for plenty long, they haven’t been anything near a circus in quite some time. That directly coincides with the owner appearing to be less of one, too.
The day Durant and Kyrie Irving changed history by turning the Nets from a team nobody talked about to a team people who don’t live in New York occasionally wondered why more people didn’t talk about, the Knicks were the losers, the laughingstock. Did they sit around licking their wounds? Did they dissolve into infighting and civil war? Nope. They signed Julius Randle and Marcus Morris, who eventually (in a roundabout way) became the draft pick that became Immanuel Quickley. Randle has had more points, rebounds, assists, and wins than KD or Kyrie during their time in the big city.
Obviously that statistic comes with caveats. Here’s a hypothetical that doesn’t: imagine flipping the script. Imagine the Knicks had landed Durant and Irving and it was Brooklyn who signed Randle and eventually landed IQ. Imagine three years later that KD and Kyrie had both asked to be traded and that the Nets had gotten more out of Randle than the Knicks did from their duo. Imagine how Knicks fans feel in that reality. How they’re ridiculed. One more “LOL Knicks.”
When the Knicks didn’t end up with Durant, I remember they were unusually specific in their language afterward, in a way that made it clear Dolan wanted his name on the decision. He didn’t wait to see how it went and then use his front office as human shields. From the middle of the aftermath he let it be known he hadn’t offered Durant a contract. This wasn’t the Knicks being unable to get a meeting with a superstar. This was the Knicks passing on one.
Again, that decision could be more evidence of Dolan having learned lessons. On more than one occasion he’s been burned by heavily investing in acquiring and/or paying a big man with injury risks – Antonio McDyess, Eddy Curry, Jerome James, and Amar’e Stoudemire. Porziņģis was the first demonstration of the organization deciding the risk wasn’t worth it. Durant, a far different kind of 7-footer than the others, but a 7-footer regardless, has had multiple foot problems during his career, including the Achilles tear he suffered prior to the 2019 Finals.
Some of us (me, certainly) don’t hesitate to hurl tomatoes and criticisms at Dolan when he’s out of line or when he does something unpleasant. The fact that the Knicks haven’t been dumb for a while and are run by a front office of adults whom he doesn’t interfere with is about all a fan can ask for. Eleven years ago, Dolan got trigger-happy during the Carmelo Anthony negotiations and overrode his general manager, giving away so much in the deal the team’s lack of depth submarined whatever talent upgrade Anthony provided.
Like Charlie Brown, I don’t know if I’m making a mistake I’ve made before. To trust in the Dolan Knicks is to risk having to look back later and psychoanalyze what made you possibly think that was ever a good idea. But I feel good about the franchise. I’m confident they won’t make a bad trade. I don’t need the trade to happen to know I’m already in a better place than in the past. The fact that I’m hoping the Knicks go into negotiation deep waters with Ainge is as much proof as anything that I feel good about their direction. I say that unconditionally, something I haven’t been able to say since the 1990s: I think the Knicks are moving in the right direction, and that it’s sustainable, and that from the players up through ownership, they’re making it happen.
It’s nice.
