http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/18587... As he nears the one-year anniversary of his firing, Derek Fisher believes the New York Knicks were doing a better job with less talent when he was the head coach than how they currently are under Jeff Hornacek.
Fisher was fired on Feb. 8, 2016 by team president Phil Jackson after the Knicks started the season 23-31. The current Knicks are 21-28 entering Tuesday's game in Washington with a roster assembled to win now.
"We were able to take a team that wasn't as talented as the team they have now, and we were much better and much further along than this group is that they have now," Fisher told Bleacher Report. "Because the foundation was being laid.
"That's different than just trying to coach basketball -- and it takes longer. That's the part that you can't measure in wins and losses either. That's what we were doing the best at."
The Knicks have lost 15 of 20 games since Christmas. Hornacek, in his first year with the Knicks, has had to deal with plenty -- from Carmelo Anthony's relationship with Jackson, to Anthony trade rumors, Derrick Rose's one-game absence and injuries like Kristaps Porzingis' Achilles and Rose's sprained ankle.
Fisher says what bothers him was that all the positive he was doing with the Knicks was "overshadowed by actually-inaccurate opinion about a personal matter" in reference to his much-publicized run-in with former Lakers teammate Matt Barnes over Barnes' ex-wife.
After Jackson was hired to become the Knicks president, the legendary coach hired his former Lakers point guard Fisher to a five-year deal when Steve Kerr took the Warriors job. Fisher, though, didn't even make it two seasons before Jackson let him go.
"It was strange to me that it was cut short prior to really seeing it all the way through," Fisher said.
Fisher had never coached before taking the Knicks job, and he says it was even harder trying to execute what Jackson wanted, installing and teaching the triangle, as the Knicks were rebuilding.
"To observe something from the place that Phil has sat and experienced, you can't compare to that," Fisher said. "You can't try and say someone else isn't doing it the way possibly one of the greatest who has ever been able to do it, did it when he did it. They don't teach ninth-grade algebra the same way they used to teach ninth-grade algebra."
"One of the challenges for all of us was we were in the basketball department under the umbrella of Phil Jackson and who he was and who he is and what he was able to do as coach and leader," Fisher also explained. "Then [when you're] asking me as a head coach in a sense not to create the same results, but take the same system or way of playing and try and teach these guys how to play it -- and utilize it in similar ways as when he taught it -- I think at times it was more challenging for our players to really understand, 'Who am I committing myself to? Who am I selling myself to? Who am I running through the brick wall for?'"
Fisher went 17-65 in his first season with the Knicks in 2014-15. Fisher thought the Knicks were on the right path and that Porzingis was developing nicely when he was fired. But he admits that he and his former Lakers coach didn't mesh as they had hoped in their new roles as coach and president.
"We both didn't know exactly what we were doing," Fisher said. "Being the head coach is not like playing. Being president is not like being the head coach. That's one of the reasons why we didn't quite complete our meshing and blending of talents and thoughts, because those two positions are not always aligned."
In hindsight, Fisher admits that maybe he rushed into his Knicks job.
"When we're young, sometimes we're quick to go after the first or the newest or the shiniest opportunity that is in front of us, because we don't quite know any better," Fisher said. "The prettiest girl, the shiniest car, the best-looking house. Then once we open the door and walk inside the house, we realize the walls aren't painted, the foundation's cracked, the plumbing is leaking in the backyard and the pool is about to collapse.
"You don't see those things or you don't have a feel for the idea that you kind of have to inspect all of that before you decide to buy that house."
The first-time coach's reputation was damaged by the altercation with Barnes over Barnes' ex-wife, Gloria Govan, in Southern California where he flew to on an off-day during Knicks training camp. While Barnes was suspended for two games by the NBA for the incident, Fisher says that the judgement passed on his "character and integrity" had been difficult to deal with until recently.
"If the worst thing someone has to say about me is that I'm now going out with a woman who used to be married to this guy I worked with for a year six years ago," Fisher said before pausing according to Bleacher Report, "cool."
"I see how quickly it shifts and changes when people are told something they don't even know if it's true or not," Fisher added. "It's comical and hypocritical that we seem to live that way. For whatever reason, we've become that type of society. Particularly in sports. There's this tough-guy bravado culture we've created in sports -- where if you're not the toughest, baddest, craziest, strongest dude on the block, then you're maybe the softest dude on the block. Our point of reference with these things and how we judge someone else's situation so quickly is crazy to me. It is beyond crazy."
Fisher is still with Govan and works as a basketball television analyst.
"My life has gotten easier over the last several months," Fisher said. "Because there was so much judgment made and assumption passed through this situation that people read about on me, my character and my integrity that isn't true. So it has made it easier for me to focus on me.
"We were doing a lot of really good things with the Knicks. That's what bothers me. The good that was being done got overshadowed by opinion, actually -- inaccurate opinion about a personal matter. Nobody really knows what happened, because there's been just noise about what happened."
