Donnie Walsh isn’t surprised by the Knicks’ early-season struggles. In fact, the team’s former president and general manager said the 3-6 start is understandable considering the loss of center Tyson Chandler, the team’s defensive anchor, to a non-displaced fracture of his right fibula that could sideline him another month.
“I’m not going to get into the Knicks, but when you lose Chandler, you take that kind of big man off any team, and they are going to have a problem,” Walsh, now serving as consultant to the Pacers , said Tuesday evening at his alma mater Fordham Prep, where the Catholic school’s new Donnie Walsh Court was dedicated in his honor. “That’s the problem.”
Signing Chandler was one of former general manager Glen Grunwald’s biggest moves while running the Knicks.
Grunwald’s abrupt ouster five days before the start of training camp sent shock waves through the NBA after the executive’s moves were instrumental to the Knicks 54-win season a year ago and caught Walsh, succeeded by Grunwald after three years in the same position, off guard.
“It surprised me,” the 72-year-old Walsh said. “I worked with Glen, he’s a good man. It happened quick. I thought he did a great job, getting [Tyson] Chandler and some of the players he got.”
One of Walsh’s final moves as a Knicks executive was his selection of guard Iman Shumpert with the 17th overall pick in the 2011 draft. After a sterling rookie year was cut short in the playoffs by a severe left knee injury, Shumpert emerged in the postseason last spring.
But he underwent arthroscopic left knee surgery last summer, an operation the Knicks kept under wraps until a published report revealed the surgery on Sunday. The Knicks reportedly have been shopping Shumpert, his name being linked to the Celtics, Rockets and Nuggets in possible trades.
“I think Iman is a good player, and I thought he did well last year and I think he’ll do well this year,” Walsh said.
Walsh was thrilled to be at his old school Tuesday night, and said having his name on the new court, was “probably the best honor I’ll ever get.”
Give him time. That was the sentiment of Walsh and former NBA executive Rod Thorn regarding the slow start to Jason Kidd’s career as a coach.
“I think he’ll be a great coach, but you can’t judge him on the first 10 games,” Walsh said.
The Nets’ 3-7 record, Walsh said, could be attributed more to injuries to Deron Williams, Andrei Kirilenko, Brook Lopez and Paul Pierce, than Kidd’s coaching and the new players meshing with the holdovers.
“A lot of guys are hurt,” Walsh said. “They haven’t had a long time to get together to develop a chemistry. There were a lot of first with the Nets right from the beginning of the season I think as it goes on, they’re going to get better.”
Thorn, the former Nets general manager who turned the moribund organization around when he landed the superstar point guard prior to the 2001-02 season, said Kidd never expressed an interest in coaching while he was with the Nets. But it didn’t surprise him when he heard Kidd was offered — and accepted — the Nets’ head-coaching position last June.
Thorn, at Fordham Prep in support of his longtime friend Walsh, said he expects Kidd to succeed given time to adjust to his new position.
“I’ve been to one of their games and he’s a young coach, so he’s got a lot of experienced coaches around him,” Thorn said. “I’m sure he’s doing a lot of things that we don’t see.
“They won that game [I went to] very easily. He’s involved. He knows basketball as well as anybody. I’m sure he’ll do well.”
Thorn read about the Nets starters’ failure to meet with reporters after Monday night’s loss to Portland, and said it doesn’t speak to any lack of respect for Kidd or a lack of accountability. Rather it was a case of those players just “not feeling like talking.”
“He gets instant respect from players because of who he is and what he’s done,” Thorn said.
Walsh was a star at Fordham Prep, still second on the school’s all-time scoring list with 1,260 points in three varsity seasons, before playing college basketball at North Carolina. Walsh met with players on the Fordham Prep and Archbishop Stepinac basketball teams, who scrimmaged after the ceremony.
“I don’t come back here a lot, I really thought this was a great place to go to school,” he said. “I loved it. I look back and most of the things I learned in high school, I carried with me to college, law school and my career.
“I owe this school a lot.”