The tenure of Phil Jackson as president of the New York Knicks was marred by many things. One was the team’s inability to attract big name free agents.
Speaking on his Woj Pod podcast with ESPN’s Ian Begley, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski offered some insight as to why New York couldn’t bring in the big names.
“I heard some horror stories about Phil in presentation situations with players – unprepared, just disorganized,” Wojnarowski said on the podcast, as transcribed by Dan Feldman of NBC Sports. “And sometimes, he’d have Steve Mills in there, who’d try to re-direct him. But I know of a couple players who walked out of meetings in a couple different free-agent scenarios and, ‘Wow, that was Phil Jackson? That’s now how I imagined he’d be.’”
That’s unacceptable for a team president. If you’re going to take part in the team meetings, you have to be prepared and organized. That’s a minimum requirement.
It’s hard to say whether this is worse than Jackson reportedly falling asleep during the workouts of draft picks. But frankly, the fact that it’s even a conversation that we can have speaks to how bad this tenure was.
Jackson has been praised or at least defended by the likes of Joakim Noah and Tyson Chandler. But by and large, it’s easy to see why most people associated with the Knicks were happy to see him go.