Just more proof that the NY media is a HUGE pain in the azz! Another call for Dolan to interfere!
Someone must force Phil Jackson to contact Frank Vogel
By Mike Vaccaro May 5, 2016 | 5:01pm
Knicks fans have spent the better part of two decades living in fear of those moments when James Dolan, the uber-fan who also happens to own the team, exercises his proprietor’s prerogatives and meddles with his billion-dollar toy.
Mostly, that fear has been warranted. Dolan’s whims have led to several of the missteps and maladroit missions that have led the Knicks to the bottom of the abyss. It was as close to a concession as he will ever give when Dolan hired Phil Jackson to run the team and promised Jackson would have autonomy. And Dolan mostly has adhered to that.
Yet even the most fervent Dolanphobes might be ready to make their own admission.
It’s time for the owner to deliver a message to his president:
Talk to Frank Vogel, and immediately – unless, of course, the cell service at his ranch in Montana is a little spotty. In that case, order him to go to one of his more populated getaways of choice – we hear you can get four bars of Verizon service in Sioux Falls! – and dial Vogel’s number. Now. Immediately. Yesterday.
(Assuming, of course, that Jackson even knows who Vogel is; because he’s so fiercely loyal to only his close circle of yes-man and boot-lickers, would it surprise anyone if Jackson would have a hard time picking Vogel out of a lineup?)
So that would make two orders of business for Dolan, or for Steve Mills, who actually would have to make that call:
1. Inform Jackson that Vogel was just let go by the Indiana Pacers, who play in the NBA’s Central Division, and that Vogel won 58 percent of his games there, and that he twice led the Pacers to the conference finals. And that the one year in the last 16 when the Knicks had a team with high aspirations, it was Vogel who knocked them out of the playoffs with a textbook six-game takedown of Mike Woodson.
2. Order Jackson to talk to Vogel about the Knicks’ coaching vacancy, and make it a serious talk, not a cursory one, not a courtesy one. Dolan can’t go any further than that, can’t force his president to hire a coach (unless he wants Jackson to walk), but as the owner he has every right to lead his horse to water – or, in this case, a blindly stubborn executive to his war room.
At this point, Jackson’s coaching “search” has been a farcical, fanciful journey to (quite literally) the middle of nowhere, and he seems intent on doing one of two things with it: a) alienate the fan base, who couldn’t be less enthused about Kurt Rambis as their coach if they’d all been lobotomized; or b) alienate Dolan to the point where the boss just writes one final check that will make it all go away.
That Vogel is even available, by the way, does show that Jackson isn’t alone in believing that residing exclusively in one’s own bubble, or one’s own head, is the way to success. It was Larry Bird who let Vogel walk, after all – Bird, whose flawed rosters Vogel made better than they deserved to be; Bird, a forever player who, it should be noted, has exactly zero titles occupying an executive’s office.
Or the same amount as Jackson.
We can listen chapter and verse to Jackson’s apologists talk about how he’s used to thinking four and five steps ahead of his competitors as a coach, but even they concede: This isn’t coaching. All along, this has been what nobody has wanted to say: Assuming a guy can be great as a GM because he was great as a coach is like assuming a terrific doctor can be a terrific dentist, too. They’re two entirely different jobs.
That’s the shell game Jackson surely ascribes to, whenever he flashes his 11 rings as a way of waving away his critics. He may have been a Zen Master as a coach; as a GM he is mostly a master of deception, wandering the wilderness now as his fans back home burn with fury, no longer wondering if Jackson can save the Knicks as much as if he even wants to try.
Is Frank Vogel a sure thing? Nobody is, not even Tom Thibodeau, who interested Jackson about as much as a strong case of strep throat might. Vogel is also 69 games over .500 as a coach, which might actually be the problem. The line for the job starts at 99 games under. What’s Kevin Loughery up to these days?
