When D'Antoni is being asked by reporters to take responsibility for the meltdown of all hope in the Knicks, Walsh interjects;
“I should take all of the responsibility,” D’Antoni said Monday. “My job is to get them to play well. So far, we haven’t done that. That’s about all I can say. I’m leading the team, and I haven’t led them anywhere so far. So I’ll take my part, definitely.”Walsh lives in a a charmed, cloistered reality.
Moments later, 20 feet away, came a sharp dissent. Donnie Walsh, the team president, said it was wrong to blame D’Antoni for the Knicks’ sad state.
“That’s unfair,” he said. “I’m happy with Mike. I’m very happy with Mike.”
It was Walsh who, upon being hired last year, called for a wholesale overhaul and began purging the roster of long-term contracts, with an eye toward the 2010 free-agent class. As a consequence, the Knicks have a roster that is designed not to win now, but rather to expire next summer.
Clearly, Walsh also wants the Knicks to be respectable in the present, which they are not. But he said he would not judge D’Antoni until “there’s something to judge him on” — i.e. after the roster has been upgraded. That time has not come yet.
“No, not even close,” he said.
A few years ago, Larry Brown, under similar circumstances, accepted complete responsibility for the poor play of the Knicks and lost his job attempting to fix it.
Desperation moves such as trading for Steve Francis became a rallying cry for Brown's head. Yet today the Knicks are considering signing Allan Iverson and everyone debates this as a serious alternative.
So D'Antoni and Walsh have become MSG's new bubble boy duo. They live in a teflon-coated reality that is called "the plan". The plan is little more than a theory that advocates gutting a roster to bare-bones so that your team can 'sign' free agents or swing exciting deals and so on.
It is the equivalent of a bread-winner convincing their family to save all their money to buy a lot of lotto tickets all at one time. What could go wrong?
Beck like so many other mainstream journalists refer to Walsh's actions as a rebuild but its not.
The only thing Walsh has done is to clumsily and brutally dismember a Knicks roster that was imperfect but far closer to respectability than anything in evidence today. And the next move Walsh makes toward making this roster more competitive will be the first. He has not lifted a finger toward the "rebuild" part of the equation.
In fact, as the Beck article points out, he seems to be operating under the delusion that until he and D'Antoni assemble a roster of shiny Free-agent stars and complementary cast-aways that they should not be judged.
Walsh enjoys the hubris of Wall St executives who continue to mock the plight of the hungry by feasting like kings.
An anthropologist might call this magical thinking, this luxury of charging fans to watch sub-par basketball until all the right pieces are assembled so that the accountability clock can start ticking and counting on the good-will of those fans to just hold their breath.
The NBA has created a system of talent acquisition that is wholly dysfunctional. For the league to expect the wholesale deformation and retardation of a sports franchise just to acquire talent two and three years away then heads must roll in the league offices.
This is institutional malpractice of a public interest institution and fans would be well within their rights to demand a class-action suit against the league.
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