Van Gundy is asking for a case of tune-out to kick in well before his own burn-out.THE gym rat from the Division III school who climbed the ladder with tireless work and relentless sincerity has never had the pedigree or physical stature to match his current glamorous position.
That’s fine. Jeff Van Gundy, a Napoleon spared the complex, coaches in a league where players know that they arethe show, and works in front of media as likely to pick out pretension as strategical errors.
So, if the Knick coach, beginning a fifth season, recently extended for three more, still doesn’t turn heads entering a room, it was interesting to see what kind of an impact Van Gundy can make leaving one. Friday morning in Auburn Hills, the coach who arrives at practice in a Civic left in a huff to protest a shortage of concentration players were bringing to that evening’s third game of the season.
Van Gundy walked out, opening the tunnel to reporters who came upon exactly the same end-of-practice scene as usual. Players were shooting free throws, some of them while joking. None had hair standing on end from the attempted shock treatment. We wouldn’t have known the coach had been mad as hell, refusing to take vacant stares from the millionaires anymore, until he mentioned his pique 15 minutes later.
The Knicks won impressively against the Pistons, so who is to say the drive-by stun-gun shooting didn’t achieve its intended effect. We only wonder if the walk-out-of-practice trick has been exhausted by Game 3, what’s still up Van Gundy’s sleeve for Game 38. Also, whether the coach’s whistle is rising to such frequencies that he risks turning a generally hard-working team into dogs.
One week following a harrowing 2-6 preseason, there already are more circles around Van Gundy’s eyes than on a basketball floor. He smiles only as often as Mirsad Turkcan gets off the bench, almost never sits down during a game, and rarely shuts up. Van Gundy is turning into John Calipari before our very eyes.
While we respect a coach’s need to be himself and can grasp the requirement of consistency in approach, Van Gundy is asking for a case of tune-out to kick in well before his own burn-out. That’s usually the chronology in the NBA, where inmates have the privilege of driving the asylyumkeepers mad.
Van Gundy, the coach without name and ego, was a necessary and refreshing change from Don Nelson’s coaching snobbery and probably from four years of Pat Riley’s rigorous mental manipulation, too. But it wasn’t just a honeymoon. The disciple had an egoless touch to which the millionaires had already warmed as an assistant, an approach Dave Checketts said figured to wear well.
Generally it has, too. Five seasons is a long shelf-life in that NBA. Save the 1997 series blown in the Miami brawl, it’s hard to argue the Knicks, who have undergone a steady transformation of players and styles while enduring the gradual breakdown of Patrick Ewing, have underachieved.
Last spring, with his job so far gone that Checketts’ interviewing process had begun, Van Gundy strapped on blinders and directed a superb run that earned him the luxury of removing them for an occasional, peripheral, look.
He should take it. Many loyal Knicks who owed him thanks for hours spent helping them become the players they are, have been replaced by new ones, two of whom, Marcus Camby and Latrell Sprewell, last year believed Van Gundy was holding back their careers.
The little liontamer has less friendly beasts to get up on the chairs now, and a growingly antagonistic media, too. Some of his critics have their own agendas, some do not, but overall the treatment of Van Gundy has been nicer than he seems to believe. The increasing edge he shows is unbecoming.
We don’t see Van Gundy as any more manipulative than most coaches who understand that players read newspapers, only as a guy who is becoming wrapped too tight for his own and his team’s good. His fear that players who overcame a mediocre regular season a year ago will see no reason to extend themselves this time is reasonable, but his team is too talented to slip too far, and the season too long for relentless negativism.
The coach was right to challenge a shorthanded team to rise above fatigue in Cleveland, but, with the exception of chastising the loss of discipline by Kurt Thomas and Marcus Camby, wrong to disparage the Knicks’ efforts afterwards. Against an opponent playing well, the Knicks made a run before losing for the first time in four games. One bright spot was John Wallace finally showing a pulse, but Van Gundy refused to pump the guy’s confidence with even a morsel of praise, afraid to send any reward after a loss.
He never lets up anymore, never takes a breath, type A behavior that has nothing to do with sending any message about refusing to be comfortable with his extension. It’s just plain, old, counterproductive obsession. The Knicks have some game and the coach’s face dangerously refuses to acknowledges the fact that’s what this is.