Just when you think things with the New York Knicks cannot get any worse, they do.
No, I’m not talking about the team having former player and fan favorite Charles Oakley dragged from Madison Square Garden and arrested on Wednesday night. Well, I kind of am. But first there’s the Carmelo Anthony-Phil Jackson business.
The Zen Master is so flagrantly trying to push Melo out of New York, it’s disgusting. And make no mistake, other players are watching this, which, as ESPN.com’s Ian Begley heard, is terrible news for the Knicks’ future:
But Jackson’s tweet on Tuesday might have impeded those efforts.
Multiple prominent agents said on Tuesday afternoon that the way Jackson has handled Anthony would turn off their clients and others to the idea of signing with Jackson’s Knicks.
For a team that has many holes to fill, that’s a problem — even if the new CBA will make it more difficult for opposing teams to lure free agents away from their present employer.
Great. Grand. Wonderful. New York wasn’t exactly a primetime free-agent destination to begin with, and now Jackson has torpedoed whatever marginal appeal it had.
Mix in the Charles Oakley incident—grotesque in the way it was spun by the Knicks—and this franchise is sending a message that it doesn’t care enough about star players, past or present, to function like a normal basketball team.
