The New York Knicks have been in turmoil for a long time. Constantly switching between coaches, implementing offensive sets that are not efficient any more, overpaying players and many other things have damaged the reputation of this great franchise. Not only these, but off-the-court controversies, including the incident with one of the franchise's legends Charles Oakley in MSG during the 2016-17 season, have also contributed to the reputation that this organization is falling apart.

A huge part of that, unfortunately, ongoing process is team president and former coach Phil Jackson. Jackson, of course, made his name by coaching the Bulls during the 1990's and the Lakers during the 2000's, but his tenure in New York was plagued by many controversies and issues. He constantly asks for players to implement the outdated triangle system, and the results of that have been visible. Since he became team president, the Knicks won a combined 80 games in three seasons, missed the playoffs every year and switched between three coaches.

After this season, Jackson “helped” the Knicks' bad reputation in the league by publicly asking for his team's biggest star and best player, Carmelo Anthony, to allow a possible trade during this offseason. As we all know, Anthony has a no-trade clause and many actually called for NBA commissioner Adam Silver to sanction or fine Jackson for his comments. Of course, under NBA rules, players will get fines if they publicly ask for a trade, and it was because of that rule that some people asked Silver to fine him. Finally, we have our answer.

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“We did not consider disciplining Phil Jackson for those comments about potentially trading Carmelo,” said Silver. “The view of the league is that it’s not reciprocal. Players can’t trade themselves. Teams can trade players. So there’s never been a history in this league of fining a team or disciplining a team executive for talking about trading a player. And that’s all I have to say on that.”

While it is simple reasoning behind what Silver said about the issue, we cannot run away from the fact that what Jackson said was incredibly disrespectful. Carmelo Anthony has, even though the cards were stacked against him due to bad team management, tried to carry this team to some playoff success, but it is mostly out of his hands.