Rambis: 'Nobody's happy' with state of the Knicks
GREENBURGH, N.Y. — No one in the New York Knicks organization, including team president Phil Jackson, is pleased with the state of the team right now.
“We’re all frustrated,” interim head coach Kurt Rambis said after the Knicks held a light workout at their practice facility Monday. “If you’re a competitive athlete, I don’t know how you can lose games at any point in time and be OK with it. So nobody in this organization is OK with where we’re at.”
Rambis offered his thoughts in response to a question about how Jackson is handling all of the losing. Rambis communicates regularly with Jackson, who fired Derek Fisher amid a losing skid earlier this season.
Jackson’s decision to fire Fisher certainly hasn’t sparked New York. The club is 2-5 since the firing and has lost 14 of 17 overall.
So instead of making a playoff push, the Knicks are making plans for free agency this summer and deciding on which players to bring in on short-term contracts between now and the end of the regular season.
“There’s a lot of basketball talk and communication that’s going on, but nobody’s happy where we’re at. And we know we’ve got to be better,” Rambis said. “We’ve got to be a lot better in a lot of areas.”
Jackson and the Knicks project to have at least $19 million to spend in free agency and hope to upgrade the roster over the summer. Jackson also will have to choose a coach for next season, be it Rambis or an outside candidate.
Free agency figures to be the main team-building avenue for Jackson this summer; the club has to send its first-round pick in June’s draft to Toronto as part of the 2013 Andrea Bargnani trade.
Jackson will have to sell free agents on the possibility of a brighter future, because the Knicks’ present is not a strong selling point. New York’s record since the start of the 2014-15 season is just 42-101.
In a sign of how bad things are for the club right now, a loud contingent in the crowd at Madison Square Garden was chanting “Let’s go Heat” at the end of the Knicks’ loss to Miami on Sunday night.
“You’re home, you don’t want to hear that,” Carmelo Anthony said after the game. “I’m assuming they were all Miami Heat fans. I want to believe that. I want to think that. I don’t want to think it was New York Knicks fans. I was surprised. I was surprised, very surprised.”
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