We were reminded again these past few days how little it takes to ignite the pilot lights of the Knicks’ most ardent fans. In a season that was a goner by Thanksgiving, one that has already seen the jettisoning of a coach, a president, and the team’s best player, there they were Sunday night in Atlanta, about to win a fifth straight game.
And there they were, suddenly, blowing that game.
And here, in quiet but sizeable numbers, came Knicks fans who, crazy as it may sound, ENJOYED that. Because they felt the part of their soul that fretted over terrible Knicks losses was dormant, maybe dead. And yet losing that game bothered them.
“Actually,” a Knicks fan named Clyde Schwartz emailed Monday morning, “it bothers me that I’m so bothered by it.”
Knicks fans want to believe. They want to have faith in Leon Rose. They want to invest in the kids, RJ Barrett and Kevin Knox. They are starting to admire how hard Julius Randle plays every night, even if he doesn’t always look pretty doing it. Hell, they want to believe that this is the time, finally, when James L. Dolan, reviled basketball owner, begins to emulate James L. Dolan, revered hockey owner.
So you can imagine what the reaction would be if Dolan allows Rose complete freedom in selecting the Knicks’ next coach. And if Rose honors that freedom by bringing Jeff Van Gundy back to the Knicks, back to Madison Square Garden, back to finish what he started — gulp! — almost 19 years ago.
Van Gundy is expected to be on Rose’s short list of coaching candidates. So is Tom Thibodeau, who used to work under Van Gundy with the Knicks before finding success in Chicago with the Bulls. Either one would be an excellent choice to establish a beachhead of credibility on the Knicks’ bench, and Rose has a closer relationship with Thibodeau, who last coached from 2016-19 with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
But it is Van Gundy who would truly energize the Knicks’ fan base, because Van Gundy is a genuine and eternal link to an era when the Knicks weren’t only successful, they were (along with the Yankees) an essential part of the sporting foundation in New York City.
From 59 games into the 1995-96 season until 19 games into the 2001-02 season, Van Gundy was a lunch-pail coach who demanded the Knicks play defense, demanded they share the ball, demanded they sweat and bleed and sacrifice for the cause. He was 248-172 as the Knicks’ head coach. That .590 winning percentage is higher than Red Holzman’s. It’s second, all-time, behind only Pat Riley (.680).
In memory, there was nothing easy about Van Gundy’s time here. He was presumed to be an interim after succeeding Don Nelson, except it was immediately evident how much better the Knicks began to play under him. He was nearly fired in the lockout-shortened season of 1998-99 before Dave Checketts decided to whack GM Ernie Grunfeld instead, then survived a shadow power struggle when Checketts flirted with Phil Jackson during that postseason while Van Gundy drove the Knicks to the Finals.
Several times in that spring of 1999, the Garden fans chanted Van Gundy’s name as he bashfully sipped from a can of Diet Coke and watched his Knicks vanquish the Hawks, Heat and Pacers. When was the last time you heard any fans of any sport around here chant a head coach’s name (without “MUST GO!” at the end)?
His teams weren’t always easy on the eyes. He was a brutal self-scouter. And with the Knicks off to a 10-9 start in 2001-02, he up and quit, which left a sour taste in some mouths, notably Dolan’s. Van Gundy had lost his college roommate, Farrell Lynch, in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and that affected him, but there were a lot of people who lost friends and loved ones that terrible day and went back to work. It took a while to forget that he walked, especially because he seemed to take the Knicks’ mojo with him when he left.
But that’s a long time ago. All you need to do is listen to him for five minutes on ESPN or ABC and you know he’s still as smart as ever, still as fiery as ever. He’s still only 58 years old, and it always seemed that as good as he was with those Knicks teams overloaded with veterans, he’d be even better coaching up kids — and he proved that the last couple of years, coaching a cast of G-leaguers in FIBA events which kept Team USA eligible for the World Cup and the Olympics.
The Knicks need building blocks of authority and gravitas, and he would bring both. It has always felt like an unfinished story, Van Gundy and the Knicks. Give him a few more chapters now. Start the real rebuilding with a set of expert hands and reliable eyes, and see if maybe he can’t rekindle a little of the old magic that used to be the Garden’s primary industry.