Anything good that is ever created inside Madison Square Garden will eventually be dragged down 34th Street and dumped into the Hudson River, where it will somehow catch on fire. Remember when the Knicks were feisty and it was fun to sit around talking about how great Kristaps Porzingis was? That feels like 100 years ago.
One thing for Knicks fans to feel good about heading into this season was the presence of head coach Jeff Hornacek. He got the job over Kurt Rambis, who really sucks, and was empowered to run his own offense, albeit one that was supposed to blend in some concepts from the triangle in a vague way. These developments gave Knicks fans hope that maybe team president Phil Jackson wasn’t in fact a total moron hellbent on destroying the Knicks by insisting that they adhere to his archaic basketball philosophies.
Well, you can toss Hornacek in the river now, too. While speaking to reporters yesterday, the coach, sounding something like a member of the Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyists confessing to deviationism, said that it was a mistake for him to try and mix a more up-tempo offense with the triangle at the beginning of this year, and that next season the Knicks will exclusively run the triangle offense. From ESPN:
“Obviously, if we go into it like we did this year — no,” Hornacek told reporters in Utah when asked if the Rose-Anthony-Porzingis trio can be playoff caliber. “If we turn around and have a different way we start, go right at however we’re going to run it next year, if it’s full triangle, it’s possible. You never know how these things will fit. Maybe a second year is helpful for us.”
What exactly this means—what a full triangle is—is as unclear as ever. Does he mean that the Knicks are going to, like, pass the ball more? Run the ball through a dominant low-post presence? Snag a pair of cinch Hall of Famers, one of them a dominant low-post presence, and have them try to create space for shooters to whom they’ll pass the ball? Have a guy in a Tex Winter mask heckle the team during practices? Who knows? Whatever the case, this is something Jackson started making noise about weeks ago, and now it appears that Hornacek is fully on board with his boss’ self-defeating plan to build a team around a system rather than a system around a team. Have a good offseason, Knicks fans.