NEW YORK — Jeff Hornacek has spent the majority of his NBA days playing and coaching in Phoenix and Salt Lake City, two low-key places where the pro basketball franchises and the media that cover them aren’t run anything like the one Hornacek is about to join in New York.
The corporate world of Madison Square Garden can be as friendly as a snake pit, as an outsider like Mike D’Antoni found out when he coached the team. Even Donnie Walsh, a Bronx native wise to the ways of New York, came home in 2009 to run the Knicks’ basketball operations and found a circus.
MORE: Ranking the 23 best available free agents
Known for his grit when he played for the Suns, 76ers and Jazz, Hornacek will need more than top-flight backcourt players to get the Knicks back on the road to respectability. He’ll have to show a different kind of toughness, starting with the moment he’s introduced as the new coach, probably early next week.
"Jeff has to be himself, immerse himself in his team and understand that he will be second-guessed," one former Knicks assistant told Sporting News.
The second-guesses will come from the newspapers, the radio, the TV, the stands. The size of the reporting mob at practices and games might remind Hornacek of an NBA Finals media contingent from when his Jazz played Michael Jordan’s Bulls in 1997 and 1998. He’ll have to choose his words wisely — for more reasons than the back pages of the city tabloids.
The Madison Square Garden Company that owns the Knicks has held a long practice of monitoring what is said and doesn’t want its coaches criticizing players through the media, as Hornacek was allowed to do and occasionally partook in when he coached the Suns for three seasons before being fired last Feb. 1.
Dealing with a nosy media group is one thing. There’s also a loyal fan base in New York that knows all too well that, since 2000, the Knicks have made it out of the first round of the playoffs only once.
MORE: Why did Phil entrust his Knicks legacy to a stranger?
Some fans are still thrilled that Jackson is running the team, even if he has little to show for his 26 months in charge other than drafting Kristaps Porzingis. But the more demanding fans and season ticket-holders are already starting to have serious doubts whether Jackson will last beyond next season, when he can opt out of his $60-million deal, and whether he has the work ethic and basketball acumen of Jerry Krause or Jerry West, the general managers who built his three threepeat runs with the Bulls and then Lakers. Jackson’s task seems even more daunting: build a team that has a chance to end the Knicks’ championship drought, dating to 1973.
D’Antoni was the last coach the Knicks hired off the Suns’ scrap heap, and he didn’t turn out to be the greatest fit for New York or the Garden.
“Jeff is a bright guy and he knows what he’s getting into,” said Dave Fredman, the Utah Jazz’s director of pro player personnel who goes back over 20 years with Hornacek, including seven seasons when he was an assistant under Jerry Sloan. “He’s a straight shooter. Now whether he says all the popular things or the right things…that remains to be seen. But he will be honest in his approach. I don’t think the New York market will overwhelm him. As you know, winning solves a lot of problems. And again, he knows what he’s getting into.”
Fredman paused, then laughed, “If anybody can really know what it’s like getting into that market.”
They might think they know, but they really don’t know until they live it on a daily basis. Even New York native and savvy Hall of Famer Larry Brown wasn’t totally prepared for how the Knicks operate.
Ten years after Brown ran afoul of Garden chairman James Dolan and lasted all of one season, it’s somewhat different now. Jackson has been mostly free to operate as he wants.
MORE: Knicks fans waiting on Mike Conley will be disappointed
But there are also several other Knicks executives who have been in the Garden longer than Jackson and are looking to have influence in the ownership suite. Did that have an impact on the surprising move to hire Hornacek? Quite possibly.
As of mid-April, Jackson was all set on hiring his guy, Kurt Rambis, telling the New York media in one of his rare press sessions, “Only people I know will probably be in the interview process.” He wanted his former Lakers assistant because he would run his beloved triangle offense. As Jackson put it, “That’s what I was brought here for: to install a system. It’s all part of the package.”
What’s more, Jackson and Rambis held a post-season, two-day Triangle mini-camp for players — virtually unheard of in NBA circles but a sure sign that they were committed to going forward with an offense that neither Carmelo Anthony nor Porzingis were thrilled about running.
Then over the last several weeks, we had a dramatic shift. Jackson ended up interviewing two coaches he has no past ties with and don’t run the Triangle — David Blatt and Frank Vogel — before settling on Hornacek. Jackson also did not know Hornacek, who did not run the Triangle when he went 101-112 with the Suns. (Contrary to reports, Jackson did not speak with Mark Jackson.)
It’s still a mystery as to why Jackson radically changed course from Rambis, although the all-out, anti-Rambis campaign in the media — social and traditional — might have forced Jackson to think outside the triangle ... er ... box. There have been reports that people in the Garden above Jackson made him look elsewhere. Hornacek likely got a big endorsement from one of Jackson’s few close basketball buddies, Steve Kerr, who reportedly was interested in hiring Hornacek to replace Luke Walton as his top assistant as Walton heads off to coach the Lakers.
“Jeff has a great knowledge of the game, great feel, and he’s a really top-notch human being,” said Kerr, who turned down the Knicks’ job in 2014 when Jackson took over. “I thought he was a great choice.”
MORE: 23 most hated players in NBA history
But was it Phil’s choice?
“However Phil arrived at bringing in Jeff, he’s getting a real good coach,” Fredman said. “Jeff knows how to run an offense, whether it’s really getting it up the court like they used to do in Phoenix, when they had Kevin Johnson and Tom Chambers. Or, playing in the halfcourt, like we did here in Utah, with John Stockton and Karl Malone. So he won’t have any problem getting the ball to where it needs to be. He’s knows the game. He really knows the game.”
As for New York, he’s about to find out.
