New York Knicks: How will David Fizdale’s time as coach be remembered?

Jayson Kleinman

Though the perception of David Fizdale’s time with the team may change depending on if new coach Mike Miller is able to coax more winning out of the current squad, or if either Steve Mills or Scott Perry are let go as well, as it stands it will be hard to define Fizdale’s legacy as anything besides ineffective.

Coming from his less than successful stint with the Memphis Grizzlies, Fizdale championed the ideas of “positionless basketball” and a “keep what you kill” philosophy when it came to minutes. Two years later, the team is left with a logjam of forwards who largely can’t shoot and no true point guard who can facilitate for them. Though bad roster construction would fall more on the heads of Mills and Perry, the fact that there was not a consistent rotation or minutes policy falls squarely on Fizdale’s shoulders.

David Fizdale’s legacy as a Knick may ultimately be the perfect case study of a person being a great assistant coach, but a terrible head coach. Throughout his 2 seasons with the team, the players supported Fizdale through the ups and downs, even going so far as to put more pressure on themselves to win games in order to help Fizdale keep his job. Often times when a head coach gets fired it’s because they’ve lost the trust of their players, but that was never the case with Fizdale.

Fizdale will not go down as the worst coach in Knicks history, but he may go down as the exact wrong man for the wrong time when the Knicks and their fans were desperate for a team to rally around.