Assistant coaches rarely speak on record to members of the media, partially because it’s discouraged by most teams but mostly because assistant coaches don’t have to and they’d rather do anything else in the world besides spending time in front of a reporter’s recorder.
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Special occasions do allow for assistants to bend the rules a bit, such as the setup we saw in New York on Wednesday night when the Los Angeles Clippers visited the Knicks. Former Knicks head coach Mike Woodson was fired by Knick president Phil Jackson last spring, and Mike is currently an assistant on Doc Rivers’ Clipper staff. Woodson decided to go on record with a few statements about the current state of the Knicks – only after Rivers asked Woodson to act as the Clipper spokesman in the face of the media following the Clipper win.
And, because there is a slight difference of opinion involved and because New York and Los Angeles are involved, we’re going to relay Woodson’s inflammatory and downright slanderous thoughts. From Newsday:
"They've had a tough season so far and hopefully they can rebound this summer and put some pieces together and get back to winning basketball games."
[…]
"Had I stayed on board I probably would have pushed to keep Tyson [Chandler] and keep that core group together because that's what won the 54 games two years ago," Woodson, a Clippers assistant, said in his return to the Garden. "But people change and you've got to live with it and it's what it is.”
“It is what it is.” Hope you brought your preferred over the counter ointment of choice to this particular figurative rodeo, Phil Jackson, because your hind quarters were just laced by a flame that disagrees with the core temperature of your epidermis.
With Phil Jackson wobbling, Woodson went in for the Super Burn:
"I think when Phil came in he had his mind made up based on what he wanted to do and I can respect that," Woodson said. "There's nothing I can say bad about Phil. Phil has had a helluva career as a coach and he had other ideas in terms of the direction he wanted to go and I respect that."
FINISH HIM MIKE WOODSON LET THE STREETS RUN RED WITH THE, UM, BLOOD OF THE BLUE AND ORANGE:
"I've kind of moved on. Two years ago was a great run for our ballclub. A lot of things have changed since then. Hey, all I can say is I wish them nothing but the best and I truly mean that when I say that."
Though Phil Jackson predicted a playoff appearance for his Knicks prior to his first full year running the team, and though he probably wanted his Derek Fisher-led team to top the 37 wins that Mike Woodson managed in his final season in New York, even a competitor in Jackson knew that the writing was on the wall for these Knicks heading into 2014-15. Woodson’s 2012-13 Knicks squad, the one that won 57 games, probably overachieved, and the Jackson had just about figured out that he was going to punt 2014-15 (as we wrote last summer) when deciding Tyson Chandler’s future with the team, and the deal that sent Chandler to Dallas with Raymond Felton for Jose Calderon, Shane Larkin, Samuel Dalembert, and some second-round draft picks.
Dealing for a ball dominating point guard in Calderon didn’t seem in Jackson’s wheelhouse, but Calderon was always going to be a better fit than the reviled Felton was in Jackson’s preferred triangle offense, and the addition of a potentially solid-enough minutes sopper in Dalembert along with second-round draft picks and a flier on the young Shane Larkin seemed like an excusable move at the time.
Yes, Chandler has been terrific in Dallas this year; but even if he was terrific in New York this season it wasn’t going to move the needle much. Larkin hasn’t played well and Calderon has suffered through an injury-plagued year, all while New York has bottomed out to the tune of the NBA’s worst record. Even with that in place, and even with Calderon set to make $3.5 more than Felton next season and $7.7 million in 2016-17, the move doesn’t feel as nasty as the moves of Jackson’s predecessors.
Of course, Knick fans are tired of their intended saviors being compared to past general managers like Glen Grunwald and Isiah Thomas. Or even being compared with the benign one-year term of Steve Mills, or the relatively successful (if Isiah-addled) work of Donnie Walsh.
They want a president in Jackson to compare to winners in San Antonio and the like, and the initial returns have been miserable. New York’s draft pick future is still rather hazy, and even the team’s chances on the 2016 free agent market will be dimmed by the fact that seemingly every NBA team will have ungodly amounts of cap space that summer, with nobody rushing to play alongside a 32-year old Carmelo Anthony, already injured and with four years and over $102 million left on his contract.
If Phil Jackson falls flat on his face in New York, it won’t be because of the Tyson Chandler trade. In the meantime, as the Knicks ready for an uncertain future, let’s continue to bring the wicked heat and major headlines, as Mike Woodson did on Wednesday.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
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