Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson once said that the greatest manager has a knack for making ballplayers think they are better than they think they are, so by that definition, New York Knick coach, Mike Diantoni is the greatest thing to happen to the Knicks since they paired up Gus Johnson with Walt Clyde Frazier. The Knicks still don’t have a certifiable all-star yet this year the team is in contention for the eighth playoff seed and only three wins away from exceeding last year’s total, and Nate the Great hasn’t even laced up for the Slam Dunk contest yet. In less than a half a season, Diantoni has brought respectability, passion and actual joy back to the Garden, even the Knick owner James Dolan seems less dumpy. The Knicks are fun to watch again and the fans are fired up, yelling chants of defense; Isiah Thomas could hear the roar from Westchester County if he wasn't overdosing on Lunesta. The Knicks are learning how to win, yet all of that starts with the tone set by the coach, my new hero, the garden messiah, Mike Diantoni.
The tone for this season was set when he benched Stephen Marbury for the season opener without even consulting the new GM Donnie Walsh, now that takes balls, considering the fact that NBA coaches are about as dispensable as the New York City Dancers while players like Marbury can skip out on games and not get fined because of their celebrity status. But Diantoni was just getting warmed up, soon after we realize that his plan was to quarantine Marbury from the start and who can blame him, he lies to his teammates, scowls at the fans and bangs a Knick intern from St. John’s who makes Monica Lewinsky look good. Marbury represents what Pat Reilly calls the disease of me, so that’s the real reason he got froze out, Diantoni was smart enough to recognize him for the poison that he is, I mean look at what he did to Larry Brown’s reputation, in just one season, he put his legacy in jeopardy, dragged his name through the mud and rubbed the stench of loser all over his three thousand dollar designer suits. What I like most about Diantoni is the positive tone he establishes in the locker room that carries over to the basketball court, where players are chest bumping like Knicks of old. One of John Wooden’s favorite maxims is be slow to criticize and quick to commend, which ties into the Diantoni philosophy of accentuating the positive, it’s obviously working, I guess John Wooden was onto something, the man only won twelve national titles at UCLA., the most in NCAA history and not once did the man ever swear to his players or call Bill Walton a dirty hippie. I also get the sense that Diantoni genuinely cares about his players, in press conferences he talks about Nate Robinson like a prodigal son, which is a far cry from Larry Brown’s snide assessments, or Isiah Thomas’s hollow remarks. And on top of everything else, you get the feeling that this Knicks team wants to play hard for him because they respect the man and they’d hate to let him down.
When I was in college I got a couple of A’s but they were only in courses where the teacher took an interest in me, they cared about my success and that’s why Diantoni has been successful in New York, he cares about the players, and restoring a sense of pride that got buried under the garden during Isiah Thomas’s reign of sleaze. He’s teaching the team how to be winners and by that he means playing hard and playing with emotion which reminds them why they fell in love with the game in the first place. Oliver Wendell Holmes said that once your mind stretches to a new idea, it can never go back to its original dimensions and the revitalized Knicks are living proof of that. The Knicks are no longer sleepwalking through the season; they couldn’t go back to their tired ways if they tried. Maybe, that’s why Isiah has had such a hard time sleeping.
Written by,
Josh Kornbluth
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