Shaun Powell – NBA.com
It’s a modern miracle how anything moves so quickly in New York. The clogged streets, the thickness of humanity, the enormity of it all. There are so many barriers, yet somehow the pace moves faster than a nervous pedestrian at night. Even the subway rats engage in their own spirited rat race in their scramble for crumbs that fall from the platform.
There’s the understandable feeling in New York that if you fail to hustle, you’ll get left behind or worse, swallowed up. It’s a great mindset to have … unless you’re building a basketball team.
The rush to find a superstar and chase a championship is what doomed the New York Knicks for much of the last few decades. Now you wonder if their bungling ever appeared in the newspapers or on TV in Russia. That’s because Mikhail Prokhorov, a smart and well-read man, had to know how not to proceed in New York before buying the Nets and moving them from New Jersey to Brooklyn.
Maybe he panicked, as the Knicks once did, and fell for the misguided theory that New Yorkers are too impatient to wait for a winner to develop. Why else did Prokhorov immediately predict the Nets would win a title in five years, and then orchestrate a blueprint that would speed them along that path, common sense be damned?
Six years later, the shortcuts endorsed by Prokhorov only managed to torpedo the team and strip away its assets.
Today, the Nets are in tatters, much more than the 4-36 Philadelphia 76ers or the 8-31 Los Angeles Lakers (who are being held hostage by Kobe Bryant). After the rubble caused by the reckless Deron Williams trade in 2011 and the series of decisions that followed, the Nets have little if anything to trade on the roster and don’t control their No. 1 pick until 2019.
In a cruel twist, with the salary cap set to rise, all they have is money. Brooklyn has already spent ? wasted? ? upwards of $400 million in salary since Prokhorov bought the team and have one playoff series win to show for it.
At this sloppy rate, the running joke says the billionaire Prokhorov — by far the richest owner in the NBA — is in danger of becoming a millionaire.
He sounded humbled Monday in a rare public New York appearance. Although Prokhorov spends much of his time in Moscow, he promised that will change going forward.
Prokhorov said “I take full responsibility” and that the Nets “need a fresh look” in the wake of the front-office bloodbath that saw coach Lionel Hollins get fired and stripped the GM title from the overmatched Billy King.
Prokhorov also said he’s open to developing a new strategy and that the last one, while bold, maybe wasn’t the best approach. Surely, Knicks fans heard this, nodded their head and then winced. The Knick faithful have been there and seen that, and so they can relate to what Brooklyn hopes to do.
With the exception of the Golden State Warriors in the pre-Stephen Curry days, who went nearly two decades locked in a hopeless funk, no NBA team suffered more self-inflicted wounds in recent years than the Knicks.
Since reaching The Finals in 1999, The Knicks have won three playoff series in 17 seasons. And it was all because team officials felt, without proof, that the city would reject a traditional rebuild. According to the Knicks, New York demanded stars and a winner. Nothing else would be tolerated. In turn, they made a number of crippling, hasty mistakes, which only extended their misery.
First of all, they underestimated the intelligence of New York fans, who would support a rebuild if it made sense. Haven’t you noticed how this season’s Knicks team is being embraced? That’s because fans see hope.
The Knicks always held a basketball monopoly on the metropolitan area. Of course New York would settle for a rebuild, what was the alternative? Besides, New York is loaded with wealth, which means Madison Square Garden was never in danger of going empty — even in the lean years.
But in 2000, the Knicks started this trail of woe. They traded a prehistoric Patrick Ewing to the Seattle Sonics for several mediocre players with bad contracts instead of keeping him and allowing the final year of his deal melt off the payroll. They stumbled through the rest of the decade. Along the way they begged Isiah Thomas and Larry Brown, two head-strong people without an ounce of patience, to bail them out as coaches.
Here’s what Thomas said on his first day on the job, when asked if he planned to break it down and push the restart button:
“You can do that in some places, but not New York,” said Thomas, who had been in New York for all of five minutes. A few weeks later he traded for Stephon Marbury, the “star” that New York deserved. There’s no need to rehash how that nightmare turned out.
Just when you thought the Knicks learned their lesson, owner James Dolan overruled the next GM, Donnie Walsh, and swung a deal for Carmelo Anthony in 2011. Had the Knicks simply waited until that summer, as Walsh strongly suggested, they could have gotten Anthony on the free-agent market rather than surrender assets in a trade (yes, Brooklyn was competing for ‘Melo, but he wasn’t going there).
With the exception of their 54-win season in 2012-13, Anthony and the Knicks haven’t done anything special. Only now, with the team in gradual rebuild mode ? finally ? are the Knicks intriguing. They have a potential star in 20-year-old Kristaps Porzingis and tons of cap room.
What’s odd is the Nets, after moving from Jersey, were under no urgency to win now. Brooklyn was just happy to have a team to call its own, and there was a built-in honeymoon. Prokhorov should’ve taken advantage of that free pass. Instead, he and the Nets tried to appease Williams, who was approaching free agency that summer. Most likely Williams was in no danger of fleeing; the Nets could pay more than any other team and Williams at that point hadn’t made big NBA money.
Yes, the Nets had some bad luck: Williams got hurt and Dwight Howard, who wanted to play in Brooklyn, never arrived. But had they taken their time and gone a different route, here’s who the Nets could’ve had: Derrick Favors, the No. 3 pick in the 2011 Draft (it became Enes Kanter), the No. 6 pick in the 2012 Draft (Damian Lillard), Brook Lopez and all of their No. 1 picks. Today, only Lopez is around.
So now, the Nets go forward. It would be a waste of money to hire John Calipari to be coach and GM, since Calipari squandered that chance years ago. Plus, he’s someone you hire when you’re ready to win. The Nets should take their lumps in the immediate future while making smart decisions with their money (no quick-fix free agents) and pray for better luck, especially with second-round picks.
“We have a lot to do,” said Prokhorov. As for the present state of the team, he added: “Maybe it’s a lesson from the last six years.”
He also made a curious prediction:
“I’m sure for the next season, we’ll be, I hope, a championship contender.”
He was just making light of the situation and joking. Wasn’t he?
Veteran NBA writer Shaun Powell has worked for newspapers and other publications for more than 25 years. You can e-mail him here or follow him on Twitter.
The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting.
