Impeded by decades of alarming ineptitude, the New York Knicks finally created a splash for the right reasons.
They went out and hired the Zen Master, Phil Jackson, as president. We've been assured that the chairman with zero championships, James Dolan, will leave the 11-time champ alone to do what is best for the team. There's a new coach in town with five rings on his résumé. There's a $124 million star locked down for the next five years, a decent point guard, a young kid who can shoot with a pedigree you can believe in, and a level of structure unseen in these parts since Jeff Van Gundy and Patrick Ewing were patrolling Gotham City.
If you closed your eyes, prayed, then blinked, you wouldn't believe these are the same Knicks we've been suffering with for decades.
That is until you scour the rest of the Eastern Conference, and the schedule, and the players on the Knicks' roster supposedly eager to make amends for a dismal 37-45 season that kept them from the postseason. And only then is it clear: "We have an awful lot of work to do," new Knicks coach Derek Fisher told me over the summer.
Ya think?
Without a title drought at 41 years and counting, it's safe to say this much about the 2014-15 Knicks: They should make the postseason. But is that really saying much?
The real question is: Are these Knicks truly contenders? Or are they just pretenders taking up space in the last week of April?
When Carmelo Anthony appeared reluctant to accept $124 million from the Knicks to stay on board for the next five years -- dangling the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers in New York's face for two weeks -- it wasn't difficult to see why. As the league's second-leading scorer last season, those buckets didn't come easy. Time and again, Melo had limited help. He found himself double-teamed. Repeatedly, he zipped passes to open teammates, only to watch J.R. Smith shoot 41.5 percent from the field, Iman Shumpert shoot 37.8 percent, former Knicks point guard Raymond Felton shoot 39.5 percent, and Andrea Bargnani barely stick around to shoot any shots at all.
The result was a season of immense frustration, sullied further by internal griping and friction. There was even an accusation of quitting on the part of now-former Knicks center Tyson Chandler, followed by the exodus of coach Mike Woodson and the arrival of Jackson and Fisher.
Months of cautious enthusiasm followed as we witnessed Jackson ship Felton and Chandler out of town. He then acquired the steady Jose Calderon as the team's newest floor general. And he maneuvered the team's thinking into making Tim Hardaway Jr. more of a focal point with this team.
Fast-forward to Wednesday, when the Knicks are scheduled to host Derrick Rose and the Bulls. Fantasy lovers are salivating over Melo playing in the triangle, surrounded by shooters in Calderon and Hardaway, and fascinated at the prospect of what a hopefully healthy Amar'e Stoudemire might bring to the season. Yet no one seems to be paying much attention to the competition.
In the East, that is. We're not even talking about the teams in the Western Conference.
LeBron James is now back in Cleveland. A healthy Rose has returned to Chicago. And with Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and the rest of Pat Riley's crew in Miami now agitated over the perception that greener pastures lay home in Cleveland instead of South Beach for LeBron, does anyone really expect the Knicks to be relevant in a championship equation?
If so, congratulations! You're the new fool on the block.
Before hitting a basket, running a play correctly or actually winning basketball games, the Knicks will first need to learn how to execute Jackson's vaunted triangle offense. Only then can we consider the notion of them being a contender.
It's one thing for Melo to come to the rescue when things inevitably break down (i.e., like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant) in Jackson/Fisher's system. It's another thing entirely to expect guys like Hardaway, Shumpert and Smith to execute from the 2-guard spot -- accurately reading defenses, reading their teammates and reacting accordingly and effectively.
As Jordan explained: "The league is tough. There are a lot of good players in this league, and they're spread throughout. No matter what you think you have, what you believe you have, you're going to need to be ready. That applies to everybody and everyone knows it. Those who are ready will win some basketball games. Those who aren't . . . "
He didn't need to finish the sentence.
Before we even get to the Knicks, there's Toronto and Brooklyn right in the Atlantic Division with New York. There's Jordan's Charlotte Hornets in the South. There's still Atlanta, with Al Horford returning. Detroit may be on New York's level now that Stan Van Gundy is running the show, as will the Washington Wizards now that they have a recent playoff appearance under their belt. And without even considering the rest of the teams in the Eastern Conference, that still leaves the Knicks as a sixth, seventh or eighth seed -- at best.
"Essentially, we're talking about the Knicks possibly making the playoffs, then going home in the first round," one Eastern Conference executive said. "That's not to say they're not going to improve. But they'll probably need six or seven extra wins to make the playoffs. I just don't see where that's coming from with the roster they have."
Neither does anyone else.
The thing is, Melo could negate such negativity. When you're 6-foot-8, 240 pounds, with a 3-point shot, a jump shot and a midrange game, and you're also a career 25 points-a-night scorer, you can erase a lot of ailments. Some nights it may not matter as much that Chandler's replacement, Samuel Dalembert, can't defend the way he once did. Nor may it matter that Bargnani can't defend at all, and that neither he nor Stoudemire may choose to rebound.
But all of those characteristics will matter on most nights -- especially for Fisher, the first-year coach who may have never known the definition of frustration until this season takes shape. The same thing could be said about president Jackson, too.
"We know we've got our work cut out for us," Fisher said upon first accepting the Knicks job. "This won't be easy, and this won't be quick. This will be a process. That much I'll admit."
A very long one, one would say.
Is there light at the end of the tunnel? It all depends on your definition.
A trip to the playoffs? Probably so.
A long run in the playoffs?
Not a chance.