Not all of Phil Jackson’s former players will support him if asked for their input on the job he’s done with the New York Knicks.
Take Scottie Pippen, who played under Jackson for 10 years and won five titles with him. He thinks the Zen Master has to go.
Here’s what the Hall of Famer said during an appearance on ESPN’s The Jump with Rachel Nichols (via ESPN.com’s Ian Begley):
“To be honest with you, I’m gonna have to go at my old coach, Phil Jackson,” said Pippen, who played under Jackson with the Bulls, won six NBA championships and made seven All-Star teams.
“I just think he hasn’t put the right pieces on the floor. I give a lot of credit to Carmelo, who has been very professional in getting through this 82-game season, and now he’s being benched to some degree, they’ve taken a lot of his minutes away.”
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Asked if Jackson should be pushed out his job, Pippen replied, “Yes.”
Pippen isn’t wrong. The lack of continuity and cohesion the Knicks have experienced under Jackson is laughably nonexistent. He’s obsessed with the triangle, perhaps more so than he is about rebuilding the franchise. Everything he does seems agenda-driven.
Worst of all, those agendas appear to be shape-shifting. If Jackson is married to the triangle, fine. But at least put the right personnel in place. He almost completely deviated from those constructs before that start of this season, with the acquisition of Derrick Rose an anti-triangle point guard.
Stir in the Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James drama, and Jackson absolutely has to go. I mean, he’s turned the Knicks into a worse free-agency destination than they were when he came in. That’s pretty tough to do and grounds for firing on its own.
Of course, we already know owner James Dolan plans to keep Jackson for the duration of his five-year deal, of which he’s a little more than three years through. So Pippen and the rest of us better buckle up. It’s going to be another couple of tumultuous years in the Big Apple.
