ST. FRANCIS, Wis. – Beautiful Lake Michigan is part of his everyday view now, not the magnificent New York skyline. After 18 years, Ernie Grunfeld has had to change his address, not his outlook.
To find a rainbow, he’s learned, you have to be looking up, not down.
It was last spring when Grunfeld was fired as president and general manager of the Knicks, bushwhacked by his good friend and Garden boss Dave Checketts. Now he is eagerly showing a visitor the Bucks’ state-of-the-art training facility, which is located just south of downtown Milwaukee. Grunfeld is talking about giving the place a sense of Bucks history as he is in the midst of trying to make the NBA’s sixth-smallest market a big-time team.
He says he’s too busy to think about what happened in New York; how his coach, Jeff Van Gundy, turned on him for acquiring too much talent and how his best friend fired him.
“He’s in New York and I’m here,” he says when asked if he keeps in touch with Checketts.
He has not talked to Van Gundy, either.
“We’re always going to miss New York because we had lot of great friends there,” the kid from Forest Hills says, “and we have some great memories as to what happened there. That stuff will never be taken away.”
Not like a job.
“I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished in New York,” Grunfeld adds, “but that’s behind me. It’s time to move on and take another challenge on and I’m really excited about this.”
His new challenge is as general manager of the Bucks, a team he once played for, and he hit the floor running. Teamed with George Karl, a coach he deeply respects, Grunfeld is certain the Bucks are back on the road to success. They have started the season 3-0 as they head into tonight’s game at the Garden, when Grunfeld returns as a member of the visiting team for the first time since 1982.
“I’m really looking forward to coming back,” he says. “I love the New York fans. I’m going to be nervous rooting for another team at the Garden but once the ball goes up, the butterflies will fly away.”
Grunfeld is enjoying his new life.
“It’s really a fun team,” he says of the Bucks and stars Ray Allen, Sam Cassell and Glenn Robinson. “What’s great is that they are starting to feel like they can be a good team.
“George, obviously, is a great coach,” Grunfeld says. “Players love playing for him. He’s a real motivator and innovator. He plays an exciting brand of ball that players enjoy playing. He likes different combinations, he’s not hung up on specific positions. He likes basketball players, players who can make plays and guys who can shoot. We have a lot of shooters on this team. That’s the kind of player I like, a player who can make plays.”
Ironically, after he was fired, Grunfeld’s image blossomed. He was given credit for putting together a team that went to the Finals even though he wasn’t allowed to go along for the ride. Three of his acquisitions – Latrell Sprewell, Allan Houston and Marcus Camby – form the Knick nucleus for years to come, or at least until Van Gundy gets his way and trades Sprewell. Of last year’s moves, Grunfeld says, “I had to make some tough decisions. And because of the lockout situation it didn’t come together as quickly as some people would have wanted it to, but in the end I was really happy for the players to see that they came together and it was a great run.”
It didn’t take long for Grunfeld to land on his feet with the Bucks, signing a five-year, $7.5 million deal this past summer. The Bucks are paying Grunfeld twice as much as he was making in New York.
“In the mid-’80s, when the teams were very good with Sidney Moncrief, Bob Lanier, Junior Bridgeman and Marques Johnson,” he says of recapturing the Milwaukee magic, “they were selling out every night.”
The Knicks have had over 300 straight sellouts, and Grunfeld knows that is not just a Broadway kind of thing. “In order to do that, you have to put a good product out on the floor,” he says. “You have to be entertaining and you have to win. If you win, it’s been shown that people will come out and support you.
“Making the playoffs last year was a good positive step for this organization and now we have to build on that and get some consistency. The interesting thing about the East this year is that a team can catch fire at the right time. There’s no real dominant, dominant team.”
Catch fire, as the Knicks did last season. Grunfeld does admit his old team is the team to beat in the East. “They have to be considered the favorites,” he says.
Karl is thrilled to work with Grunfeld, raving about him to the Milwaukee media. “Ernie’s a very talented man,” Karl says. “A very intelligent man. He has street basketball and he also has business basketball. I personally don’t have business basketball.”
You never heard Van Gundy toss such accolades Grunfeld’s way.
Yes, for Grunfeld, life is different in Milwaukee in many ways.
“I have a long ride to get home from here,” Grunfeld says with the glee of an ex-New York commuter. “It takes me almost 20 minutes. And that’s with traffic.”
A trip to Lambeau Field is on the agenda, his family caught a few Brewers games and he is getting used to living in another home after residing in their Franklin Lakes, N.J., home for 18 years. It was the first home Grunfeld ever owned.
“Eighteen years in the same place doesn’t happen too often,” he says. “I’m grateful I didn’t have to move my kids around.”
Until now. His second home, though, seems to fit more comfortably than his first.
“I played here for two years,” he says, “[and] my wife Nancy is from here. We have relatives here. It’s a great family place. New York was our home for 18 years. Anytime you have to get up and leave there is an adjustment period, but if there was someplace we had to go, this was the easiest and best move possible.”
Rainbows are where you look for them.