Mike D'Antoni bailed on the Knicks today as the mightiest sports city in the world claimed another easy victim. The team has lost its last six games, and questions about the relationship between D'Antoni and Carmelo Anthony were clouding the future. The Knicks' best player is a poor fit for the coach's system; it was all too much for D'Antoni, so he skulked back to the hills of Appalachia where he could further his efforts to clone Steve Nash from a single strand of hair.
Of course, last month, D'Antoni's system turned Jeremy Lin into an overnight sensation with Melo in street clothes, had Tyson Chandler looking like a two-way beast, and made invaluable contributors out of Steve Novak, Iman Shumpert, and Landry Fields. The Knicks went on a seven-game winning streak, Lin became the most popular athlete on the planet, and the team had finally found its identity. D'Antoni was vindicated then, but hey, before Lin's emergence, he had been on the hot seat. No one said this town played fair.
It's true that neither D'Antoni nor Melo seemed to understand how they could practically work together. D'Antoni has a system that's been proven to get results, and wring the most out of players far less talented than Melo; Anthony's deliberate pacing and need to work with the ball in space has made him one of the game's most potent scorers, and not in a way easily discounted or explained away.
Do we want to believe that the two butted heads, and over a matter of weeks, things got so bad that D'Antoni decided to throw in the towel? Could the man who coached one of the best teams of the decade through several deep playoff runs not handle the attention? Is Mike D'Antoni so weak? Is Carmelo Anthony that virulent a coach-killer, even with stand-up dude Tyson Chandler and Amar'e Stoudemire, who owes his career to D'Antoni, as important voices in the locker room? Is there any man up to the challenge of coaching the New York Knicks?
Maybe D'Antoni was frustrated with his team and yes, probably the New York tabloid media. It's hard to imagine, though, that a little bit of professional discomfort, and a freaking basketball problem, could make him storm out the door. Something pushed him, making D'Antoni lose that famous temper of his and storm off, more annoyed than defeated. We may never know exactly what it was, but again, he's a pro who also happens to be one of the decade's most successful coaches. I seriously doubt that New York, in all its majesty, reduced him to brainless jellyfish of a man. It's special, but not that special. Media is media, and the Knicks, really are just a basketball team.
But what does make the Knicks special, and working for them so singularly unpleasant, is their famously rude, stupid, arrogant, impatient, meddlesome, and counter-productive ownership. The work environment James Doland creates, as has been documented a zillion times over, is far from ideal. He wants Isiah around because only Isiah feels this stuff is normal. If this were just about basketball, even a stubborn Carmelo, D'Antoni probably would have stuck around through year's end.
Coaches solve problems; it's their job. At the same time, Melo isn't exactly interested in being seen as the guy who ran a big name coach out of town. Chances are, something happened in the last few days, to make D'Antoni decide it wasn't worth it, something above and beyond what coaches are used to dealing with. My bet would be on Dolan. He's what makes the Knicks unlike any other basketball team, and why a coach like D'Antoni might truly come face to face with things he might not have deal with anywhere else (well, except for maybe with the Clippers.) New York exceptionalism is vain, if illusory; Knicks exceptionalism is a plague.
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