Knicks fire coach Fisher; Rambis interim head coach

They had the look of a playoff team most of the season but are stumbling into the All-Star break. Last time, it was because Buss refused to give Jackson his old job as the Lakers head coach.

Furthermore, it seems Knicks management was upset with Fisher’s lack of commitment to the triangle offense.

Yet Fisher didn’t find any success in his first National Basketball Association season, guiding NY to the league’s second-worst record at 17-65.

“No one’s happy about how that happened and what came out of that”, Jackson said. The Wizards advanced to the Eastern Conference semifinals last season but have taken a big step back on the defensive end and are last in the conference with an average of 105.4 points allowed.

Jackson eventually turned to Fisher, who was just finishing a long and distinguished playing career by serving as a backup guard with the Oklahoma City Thunder. “That’s your opinion whether or not he’s an elite player”, he said. Rambis, like Fisher an ex-Laker player, went 56-145 in two seasons as Minnesota’s coach. Fisher was infamously involved in a situation with current Memphis Grizzles forward and former teammate Matt Barnes this past summer when Barners allegedly punched him in the face after Fisher was caught creeping with his estranged wife. However, Phil Jackson is most likely to pursue Bryan Shaw and Luke Walton – both of whom played for Jackson in LA – as the team’s long-term solution. On the day Jackson fired Derek Fisher as the team’s head coach, the team president said Carmelo Anthony and rookie Kristaps Porzingis are off the table in trade discussions.

One of the inevitable responses has been that NY should hire Tom Thibodeau as its next head coach. Chicago won 50 games in two other seasons under Thibodeau, and made the playoffs in each of the other two seasons he was at the helm-seasons during which Derrick Rose was sidelined by injuries. Thibodeau is likely to be the fans choice. “It isn’t paramount, but at some point I’m going to have a relationship with someone who’s coaching this team”. It is very interesting because I just wrote an article on Sunday talking about how little Fisher affects the game as a coach. There’s a chance the organization isn’t ready to make a definitive decision on the direction of the team right now, and the Fisher firing was simply an inevitability that they figured they would do sooner rather than later.