The happiest man in America is — or should be, at least — Steve Kerr. We don’t really know how close he actually came to accepting an offer from Phil Jackson in May 2014 to coach the New York Knicks — only that Kerr had understandable reservations about becoming the frontman, or fall guy, for the newly minted Team Triangle before an offer he couldn’t refuse from the Golden State Warriors made it a moot point.
You probably know the rest of Kerr’s fork-in-the road story, which fortuitously led to an NBA title.
Just recently — one week before Derek Fisher coached his final game for the Knicks on Sunday — Kerr visited Madison Square Garden with his irrepressible band of Warriors. Before the game came the predictable gotcha question of why Kerr, who played for Jackson in Chicago and is in his first head-coaching position, was not using the triangle offense.
His eyes rolled, and he said, well, the Warriors, like other teams, had incorporated some principles of the system. Like most teams, he added, they also had a system more tailored to their talent.
And Kerr, in turn, had wisely been given the creative freedom to cultivate his own persona as a coach.
The lack of the same surely contributed to the rapid downfall of Fisher, who was fired by the Knicks on Monday before he could reach the halfway point of a contract that, including incentives and a final-year team option, could have been worth $25 million over five seasons. By comparison, in 2013, Brad Stevens was given a six-year, $22 million deal by Boston.
Stevens, the leader of an overachieving Celtics team, now regarded as one of the bright young NBA minds, had an estimable coaching record at Butler. Fisher’s Oklahoma City Thunder uniform was still perspiration-soaked when Jackson hired and overpaid him because he had to. That’s what happens when you limit yourself to a rather short and unimpressive list of acolytes in the construction of a team that is intended — partly, at least — to enhance your own coaching legacy.
Once Kerr walked away, Jackson had scant options. But was Fisher really ready for a job so public and pressure-filled? Had he had enough time to make the emotional advancement to coaching from the role of generic player, who more often than not gets to blame the coach for all that goes wrong? Did he fully understand the accountability that accompanies a position that is an extension of management?
That became a debatable and contentious issue when Fisher left the team during training camp ostensibly to visit his children in Los Angeles, only to wind up embroiled in the domestic affairs of Matt Barnes, a former Los Angeles Lakers teammate now with Memphis, and Barnes’ estranged wife.
Of the fallout — which spilled into the season, with Barnes providing the verbal spice — Jackson said Monday, “It was embarrassing.” He also said that Fisher’s publicized scuffle with Barnes — for which Barnes was suspended for two games by the league — did not factor into his dismissal.
But who is Jackson kidding? How could it not?
For all the justifications that Fisher was a grown man and free to see whomever he liked, the episode diminished him, casting doubt on his capability of elevating himself above the players’ indulgences and conceit. Worse, he appeared to be guilty of using his own children as cover. In all likelihood, he had less credibility in his own locker room, and that is typically a kiss of death.
Few coaches are altar boys, mind you, but many will survive an embarrassing misstep or two given the forums they have, the daily opportunity to inform and entertain — if not actually befriend — reporters who cover their teams. Unfortunately for Fisher, he did not, or chose not to, have that option, and Jackson is as much at fault for that as Fisher.
Upon signing on as team president in March 2014, Jackson promised a more open organization than what preceded him. He tried to be more of a presence for a while but has retreated this season, surfacing Monday for the first time since training camp.
As for Fisher, he was routinely robotic at news conferences and unapproachable the minute they ended, always with Knicks public-relations officials leading him away.
Sure, coaches should be judged by wins and losses, X’s and O’s, but public perception often contributes to the definition of acceptable performance, and it is often influenced by personality, by creating the image of a self-assured man in control.
In a dreadful stretch of nine defeats in 10 games, during which the Knicks’ playoff hopes slipped onto life support, Fisher seemed increasingly defensive and detached. He didn’t come to New York with that reputation. We never found out who he really was.
His record was 40-96 when Jackson replaced him, for now, with the assistant Kurt Rambis, another member of his coaching tree. Now Jackson has another hire to make as what seemed a delightfully resurgent season turns into another dance with dysfunction.
Carmelo Anthony’s surgically repaired knee is a looming problem. The last thing Kristaps Porzingis needed was instability.
Can Jackson’s No. 1 priority in hiring a coach still be finding a triangle devotee? He said that he would prefer one but that it wouldn’t necessarily be a deal breaker. He said pretty much the same thing before hiring Fisher.
Tom Thibodeau is available and a proven commodity, a defensive stalwart and a former Knicks assistant. But the obvious target becomes Luke Walton, the Golden State assistant who presided over the Warriors’ astonishing start to the season while Kerr was recovering from back surgery.
With Kerr, Walton has witnessed the benefits of being a first-time coach with real clout and few preconditions. He has also seen what happened in New York with Fisher and may wonder if Jackson has learned his lesson.
Has he? On Monday, Jackson said that his next coach would again have to “match the style of the way we do things.” If that’s the case, if the triangle remains his most acute angle, you could fill a telephone booth with the candidates.
