The Yankees are big news because they hardly ever lose these days. Matt Harvey is big news because he can't win, and finally got released by the Mets when he refused an assignment to the minor leagues. And the Knicks hired a new coach in David Fizdale. That is mostly how the Knicks make news, for a long time. They lead the league in that. They hire a new coach, at which point their fans are told that things are going to be different this time. Except that while the coaches come and go, the top of the permanent government at Madison Square Garden — James L. Dolan and Steve Mills — remains the same.
You know all of the dreary math on the Knicks by now, even as amazing math at the Garden — somehow they continue to fill the place to watch the home team play basketball — remains as constant as the city's traffic. It is now 11 coaches in 14 years, during which they have had the worst winning percentage in the league. They have won one playoff series in the last 18 years, during which time they've lost more games than anybody in their league.
The last time they were in the NBA Finals was 19 years ago, against the Spurs. The last time they were close to the Finals was the next year, when a wounded, veteran team made it to the sixth game of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Pacers.
Now they hire Fizdale, a fine coach and one who must think he's eminently prepared to coach the Knicks after the way the roof caved in on him after such a promising beginning when he was coaching the Memphis Grizzlies. And maybe he can be the one who finally begins to turn things around at the Garden. Maybe this can be a new beginning for the Knicks.
It is the way to root. Just not the way to bet, at a place where almost everybody who coaches there leaves as damaged goods. The only exception — now — is Mike D'Antoni, who has landed himself a winner with James Harden and Chris Paul and the 2017-18 Houston Rockets. But Mike is the exception rather than the rule.
Mike Woodson's record as head coach of the Knicks was 109-70. After he took over for D'Antoni, the Knicks finished 18-6 and made the playoffs. The next year they were 54-28 and won the Atlantic Division and Carmelo finished third in the MVP voting and J.R. Smith was Sixth Man of the Year. Before he got to New York Woodson had a 53-29 record with the Hawks one year. He is a good, tough, smart NBA lifer, currently working for Doc Rivers in Los Angeles. He has not gotten a head coaching offer since Phil Jackson fired him in favor of Derek Fisher (and send up a flare when Fisher gets his next head job). Woodson proves that even when you win at the Garden, you usually end up losing.
You want it to be different for Fizdale. You want nearly two decades of Biblical losing at the Garden to end, because loyal and passionate Knick fans deserve that, and more. But one thing everybody must do is stop talking about how the Garden is still some kind of mecca that will attract the best basketball talent. Young guys don't care about romantic notions like that out of the distant past. Young, talented basketball guys just want to be winners. And all they have seen from the Knicks, these young guys, for almost all of their lives, is losing.
We are currently told that Mills and general manager Scott Perry have a long-range plan in place, one that is different from the plans of the past. We are told that there is a brand spanking new path forward now. But please stop me if you've heard that one before. You know when you can allow yourself to believe there's a sensible and solid path forward for the Knicks? When you're no longer hearing or reading a single story or thinking or dreaming or even believing that LeBron James is part of that plan. Knick fans will still be talking about getting LeBron if his son is in the league someday.
Do I believe that James Dolan wants to win? Absolutely I do. He has shown that he is willing to spend big to win. But at this point, there is no evidence, none, that after nearly two decades of being the big boss at the Garden, after essentially deposing Dave Checketts after an era — the 90s — during which the Knicks produced two trips to the NBA Finals and made a Knicks ticket the hottest in town again, Dolan has any idea how to win.
He remains the big boss of the place. Steve Mills remains his top basketball lieutenant. Scott Perry is now the chief personnel guy after Phil Jackson and Donnie Walsh and Glen Grunwald and Isiah Thomas were chief personnel guys on 33rd St. The merry-go-round just keeps going 'round. Now the management structure is Dolan-Mills-Perry-Fizdale. They're the ones going up against Danny Ainge and Brad Stevens, the best coach anywhere, in Boston. They're going up against the young talent currently on display in Philly. And against LeBron. And the Warriors. And the Rockets.
"It's going to take time," Steve Mills was quoted as saying in April. "And that's been one of our issues over the years, that we tried to do it with quick fixes." Even though he was right there in the war room for so many of those quick fixes.
So the Knicks have a new coach. This is supposed to be another new beginning. There is another path forward, into the future. The problem is that the Knicks always make you think about the last line of "The Great Gatsby," the one about beating on against the current, borne ceaselessly back into the past. Maybe that's the problem with the Knicks. How often everything new always seems old again.
Watching LeBron, fearing Sanchez & GM Ainge . . .
- This is a time of great interest and great ratings for the National Basketball Association.
And great stars, for sure, with Steph Curry and Kevin Durant and James Harden.
But the sport is still never as interesting with any of them as it is when LeBron James is in the gym.
He remains the biggest star in American sports.
He continues to show you, as he tries to get this particular Cavs team back to the NBA Finals, why he is the most complete player in the history of his sport.
And as you watch the way he finished against the Pacers and started against the Raptors, let me ask a question:
Who do you think is the Most Valuable Player in the NBA this season?
Or any season?
No. 23 did it again Saturday night.
Thirty-eight more points against the Raptors.
Runner from the left side to win the game.
Just another night at the office.
- As many home runs as All Rise Judge and Giancarlo Stanton hit last season — and the two of them hit 111 between them — the guy other teams don't want to see coming to the plate in the late innings is Gary Sanchez.
It's going to be fun going forward for Yankee fans trying to decide whether they like Miguel Andujar better, or Gleyber Torres.
You know what might help the Mets right now?
For their other comic book guy, Mr. Thor, to start pitching like an ace again.
- Danny Ainge, as brilliant a basketball executive as there is, traded out of the No. 1 pick in the last NBA draft and still got Jayson Tatum, whom he knew was the best player in that draft.
You know who always has a clear organizational path going forward?
There really are a lot of nights when Red Sox fans are looking at their $217 million starter, David Price, and would be reluctant to part with $2.17 for him.
Hey, here's a question:
Whose conduct does upset evangelicals?
This is a rather fluid thing, year to year, but the most exciting two minutes in sports isn't the Kentucky Derby.
It's Rudy Giuliani.
Going gently into good Knight
Sandy Alderson was talking the other day, and not in a mean way, about how "fragile" Matt Harvey had become these days, not just because of the way Harvey had pitched this season, but because of everything that had happened to him over the past few years.
That includes, by the way, some of the things that Harvey made happen to himself and his own brand, both on and off the field.
And Alderson spoke of how Harvey was a "cautionary tale" for all young pitchers, because of everything that had happened to him since he was first called the Dark Knight of Gotham, and looked like the kind of young pitcher you wouldn't have traded for any young pitcher around.
There were two major surgeries, one a Tommy John surgery, the other for something called thoracic outlet syndrome.
But even three years ago, when he convinced Terry Collins to send him back out for the 9th inning of Game 5 of the World Series, on the night when he had pretty much pitched the game of his life, he looked like he still had the chance to be one of the brightest pitching stars they have had since Dwight Gooden was a kid.
Gooden had one kind of stunning fall.
Now Harvey has had another kind of fall.
Do you write Harvey off before he gets to the age of 30? You don't.
Maybe he can write himself a good comeback story, find mechanics that work for him better than the one we've seen from him this season, and even though he couldn't find them with Mickey Callaway and Dave Eiland, the Mets pitching coach.
Maybe he can somehow prove that he was right in thinking he was too good to go to the minor leagues, even briefly, to find himself.
For now, though, Harvey acts like somebody living in the past.
The all-too-recent past.
Even this season, when he started with five one-hit innings against the Phillies, he had a way of tricking you into believing he could still be something close to the pitcher he once was.
But by last Sunday he was pitching a mop-up 9th inning in a 14-2 game against the San Diego Padres.
Now he has been designated for assignment.
A day like that had arrived for somebody once known as the Dark Knight.