David Fizdale was the problem with the Knicks

By Brandon Beame

22 games into the NBA regular season, the New York Knicks were 4-18 and in the dungeon of the East. Led by Lebron endorsed David Fizdale, the Knicks were seeing regression from key softmore pieces like Kevin Knox, Mitchell Robinson and Allonzo Trier. Knox and Trier saw few and inconsistent minutes in favor of veteran rentals like Bobby Poris, Wayne Ellington and Taj Gibson. While Robinson often got himself into foul trouble early in games which limited his playing time and aggressiveness on the floor. This team was lathargic every night, losing big on their home floor and to teams without their best options. The Fizdale led Knicks lost by 44 to the Bucks then turned around to lose by 37 to the Nuggets at home the next game. While yes, these are some good clubs, the Knickerbockers couldn’t even get me to turn on the TV they were so bad. The fact that this team was 15/15th in the East with guys like Marcus Morris, Julius Randle, RJ Barrett, Dennis Smith Jr and more was truly baffling. A championship team? No. A playoff team? Not necessarily. But a team being competitive each and every night is what one should expect from this squad. And that’s what we got with the firing of head coach David Fizdale.

Ever since interim head coach Mike Miller has taken over, the Knicks look like a whole new team! A championship team? No. A playoff team? Probably not. But this is a team that is competitive each and every night and showing progression from the young cornerstone players. Pick and rolls and ball movement is more abundant on offense with actual plays being drawn up off the inbound and the final seconds of a game. Assist and scoring numbers are up and an actual defensive system has been brought to the table! Miller has the young guys devolving faster in a week than Fizdale did in a year!

After the Knicks fired Fizdale, many beat writers and current coaches around the league took to their twitter accounts and trashed the Knicks for making this decision. “I’m happy for Fizdale to be out of that terrible mess that he had nothing to do with.” Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle said. But in 22 games under David Fizdale, the Knicks won 4 of them. While under Mike Miller, the Knicks have won 3 games out of 6 games played. They said the roster was the problem, they said the front office was the problem, but in reality, it was Fizdale who was the problem…

After the Knicks put up a whopping 143 points against the Hawks on Tuesday, star rookie RJ Barrett said how the team has changed under Mike Miller, “The whole team as a unit… has been putting an emphasis on moving the ball and playing defense…”

Mike Miller worked his way up from the G-league to an assistant to the Head Coach and has shown so far he is capable of being the long term solution. If the Knicks continue to see improvement in their young players and continue to see fight in this team moving forward, I wouldn’t see why the Knicks can’t be a competitive team in the not so distant future.