The New York Knicks fired David Fizdale as head coach on Friday, ending an experiment that lasted a year and a couple of months.
The Knicks stunk during Fizdale's short tenure as coach, going 21-83. That much is true. So, on the surface, New York's decision to can Fizdale looks sound.
Except it's not.
Here is the thing: the Knicks stunk before Fizdale got there.
After all, this is a franchise that has not made the playoffs since 2013 and has made just four playoff appearances since 2002 overall. And during that span, New York has won one postseason series.
But somehow, this is all Fizdale's fault, right? It has nothing to do with executives Steve Mills and Scott Perry automatically assuming that Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant would sign this past summer and then scuttling and signing whatever free agents were left after Irving and Durant joined the Brooklyn Nets?
It has nothing to do with what has been an inept Knicks front office for the better part of two decades?
The fact that New York seriously thought it could be an interesting team with this roster speaks volumes as to just how out of touch the organization is.
What made the Knicks think that signing all of Julius Randle, Bobby Portis and Taj Gibson was a good idea? Did they really think Elfrid Payton would solve their point guard issue? How much did they expect from Wayne Ellington?
And don't even get me started on how they handled the Kristaps Porzingis situation, where they traded away a potential future superstar and franchise cornerstone for scraps.
Fizdale was not the problem here. He is only a victim of the problem, a problem that includes a history of bad drafting, horrendous free-agent signings and head-scratching trades.
To be fair, we don't know if Fizdale can coach or not. Maybe he doesn't know what he's doing. But we never really got to find out with the Knicks. Not even Gregg Popovich could have coached this group to some type of modicum of success.
It seems that New York has this plan all along: hope that this cluster of weird free-agent misfits works out, and if it doesn't, place the blame on the head coach.
The only issue is, I don't think anyone with a fully-functional brain is buying it.
Mills and Perry may have been looking for a scapegoat, but good luck getting anyone to side with you, fellas.
At its core, this was an inexperienced coach in Fizdale being thrown into an impossible situation. It was basically expecting to squeeze an orange and extract apple juice. It was never going to work.
Now, the Knicks will search for their next victim, another guy to plop into their web of incompetence until he ultimately fails and they fire him. Rinse and repeat.
Until New York actually overhauls its philosophy and understands the basics of building a winner, no head coach will ever succeed there.
It may be the Big Apple, but I don't see why anyone would want to be tasked with coaching the Knicks.
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