Should anyone question the intelligence of a man who has so many NBA championship rings that he can’t even fit them all on two hands?
Apparently, Phil Jackson has strong feelings about the Knicks.
In a recent interview with HBO Real Sports, Jackson said the Knicks are “clumsy” and admitted that he was never going to take the Knicks job, even if the team gave him a call about the head coaching gig.
The 11-time NBA champion coach slammed the Knicks roster while also acknowledging that “there might be” an NBA team that would get his competitive juices flowing again and push him out of retirement—just not the Knicks.
Jackson confirmed that James Dolan’s Knicks never reached out to him. But what if they did?
“I wasn’t going to take the job, that’s for sure,” he said.
His scouting report of the Knicks goes like this: The roster is “clumsy” and doesn’t “fit well together.”
Amare Stoudemire is a good player but needs to play in a certain system, Jackson noted, and Carmelo Anthony needs to become a better passer.
“The ball can’t stop every time it hits his hands,” the retired coach said, referring to Anthony.
Some believe that Jackson, one of the best coaches of all-time, would be the perfect person to blend the roster together and mold it into a contender.
“Yeah. Well, it didn’t happen,” he said of coming close to getting the Knicks job.
Jackson also told Real Sports that he’s not interested in coaching in Orlando because it’s too far from his Montana home.
The Knicks never gave Jackson a call after the Miami Heat ousted them in the first-round of the playoffs.
The organization dropped the interim tag from coach Mike Woodson’s title shortly after the Knicks were shredded by the Heat.
-With Associated Press