The consensus around the league is that it doesn’t matter who the coach of the Knicks is they are going to be horrible as long as James Dolan and Steve Mills are in charge.
It isn’t surprising that Mills is trying to make Fizdale out to be the fall guy.
Even before a startling news conference in the wake of a blowout loss to Cleveland on Sunday, New York Knicks president Steve Mills had started to lay the internal groundwork for the eventual dismissal of coach David Fizdale, league sources told ESPN.
Rival coaches and executives see a mismatched Knicks roster slow of foot, without legitimate NBA guard play, but Mills is selling Dolan on a poorly coached team that is underachieving at 2-8 to start the season, league sources said. Around Madison Square Garden and the league, the timing and tone of the news conference was met with considerable surprise and dismay — and it was considered to be a complete undermining of Fizdale.
“Everyone is moving to their positions now,” a league source close to management and the coaching staff told ESPN. “This is how they’ll make (Fizdale) the fall guy.”
After the Knicks’ 108-87 loss to Cleveland, Fizdale had been meeting with players in the postgame locker room when Mills led general manager Scott Perry into an impromptu news conference. It is customary for a head coach to be the first team official to talk to the media in a postgame setting, but Mills marched to the lectern to tells fans that the Knicks had fallen short of management’s expectations.
Flip the page for Mills wild post-game interviews.