The Beginning of the end for the Knicks
Five years after the fact, it certainly seems so. That’s also the conclusion that the key players involved in the trade at the time — Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy, team president Dave Checketts, and Ewing’s agent David Falk — come to. And to be honest, they’re right. To an extent, that is.
The trade of Ewing to Seattle for a package that included two of the most overpaid and softest players in the NBA at that time, Glen Rice and Luc Longley, didn’t ruin the Knicks but the key assumption behind the trade did. Checketts and Scott Layden, the key decision makers for the Knicks on player personnel decisions at the time of the trade, swapped Ewing because they believed two things: That Ewing’s best days were behind him — they were — and that Allan Houston and Latrell Sprewell were the type of players you could build a team around. Well, it turns out they weren’t and that was a disastrous miscalculation.
If the Ewing trade can be considered a milestone it’s for the simple fact that it was the first of a slew of personnel decisions so staggeringly stupid, shortsighted, and foolish that the men mostly responsible for them, Scott Layden and Isiah Thomas, make hapless former FEMA Director Michael Brown seem competent.
While the trade of Ewing alone didn’t do the Knicks in, it certainly helped them along the path to irrelevance and wretchedness. The company line, so often mouthed by Thomas, is that, with Larry Brown as coach and the likes of Quentin Richardson and Nate Robinson manning the perimeter, the future doesn’t look so bad. Considering how far this once-mighty franchise has fallen, that just may have to suffice for the time being.
Of the Ewing trade, Shaq said: “Trade a legend, bad things happen to you.”
Indeed.
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on Feb 20th, 2006 at 7:46 pm
I had a hard time with the Ewing trade when it happened. Sure patrick was on the way out, but you so eloquently ssum up what they got in return. Ewing could have had a great farewell tour in that last season in NY, and the knicks would have had some cap room the following year. It seems that one bad decision followed by another has pushed my beloved knicks to where they are today. Think if they had given Ewing the 12 million [?] he wanted, regardless of performance he would have filled the garden everynight as a going away present. $106 million to resign Houston the next year, Fredric Weis instead of Ron Artest on draft day, and a slew of other mistakes make for a medocre show in the Mecca of basketball. Great insight in your commentary…all I really have to say is it’s a damn shame…
on Feb 22nd, 2006 at 12:11 pm
The Ewing trade heralds a new stage of moronic decisions made by the
Nicks. You’re analogy to the “hapless former FEMA Director Michael
Brown” is right on the money.
All I can end with is get the coffin ready to bury a once
great team!
I read you everyday & your take is better than
anyone else & is eloquently stated.
Off this subject:
Your gear from your web store is top of the line. The whole family weras it.