Count Rasheed Wallace among the minority who do not think James Dolan is the problem with the New York Knicks.
The former NBA big man, who spent one season with the Knicks in 2012-13, doesn't necessarily place the blame on Dolan for the franchise's ineptitude over the last couple of decades:
“No, not really, because it's just a matter of who you put in place,” Wallace said on WFAN's The Moose and Maggie Show when asked whether the Knicks will be in bad shape as long as Dolan is at the helm. “You can't win if you're changing your coach every year or every two years. You can't win if you only have that one player and you're not bringing no backup help in here for him. You're not bringing no bench into your forum. You can't win.”
Wallace then said that the 1998-99 Knicks, who made it all the way to the NBA Finals, had all of the ingredients a team needs to be successful, unlike the recent Knicks squads:
“That year that the Knicks made the championship, they had a solid team,” said Wallace. “Solid team, solid coach. They were respected at each position. That's what it's gonna have to get back to. You are gonna have to be respected at each position from the head coach, the first five that you put out there, and the first two, three that you bring off your bench. Guys are gonna have to know who this is, who you are, what we're gonna do.”
Wallace is essentially saying that New York hasn't gotten a whole lot from its general managers over the year, but it's important to remember that Dolan is the one putting all of those guys in a position of power.
So while Wallace is right in saying that the Knicks' problems are not solely Dolan's fault, Dolan is the head of the snake and should be doing a better job of identifying good front-office executives.
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