All along, the dream script was similar to the one Joe DiMaggio authored back in the summer of 1949. For weeks, for months, pain in his heel kept DiMaggio in his bed at the Edison Hotel, unable to walk, unable to stand, let alone play center field for the Yankees.
Then, one morning, according to myth (and also, quite possibly, truth), DiMaggio hopped out of bed and … nothing. He took a taxi to Yankee Stadium to take batting practice and … no pain! He had lunch at Toots Shor’s. He took another cab to the airport. He arrived at Fenway Park, gave Casey Stengel the thumbs-up, then hit four homers in a three-game sweep against the Sox.
All these years later, inside every Knicks fan (and, probably, the owner), there was this small fantasy that maybe the warm weather would kick in, or an old, unscratchable itch would, and the old coaching jones would hit, and Phil Jackson would make like his old wing man, Michael Jordan, did back in the day and issue a two-word press release — “I’m back” — that would change everything.
That wasn’t happening. That isn’t happening. And so maybe it is best to see the hiring of Derek Fisher this way: as the next best thing. Fisher will make the Kidd Leap straight from playing to coaching, and he will be the man on the bench, and only time will tell how much of a puppeteer Jackson really is, pulling strings from above.
But you have to believe this:
You have to believe Jackson didn’t hire Derek Fisher because he wanted to hire an independent basketball thinker. From the start, Jackson has been perfectly frank about that.
At his opening press conference in March, Jackson started with a self-deprecating joke about “the vaunted triangle” but quickly added: “I believe in system basketball. … I came out of a system that we ran here in which team ball was an important aspect and we believe that’s what we want to get accomplished as we move forward.”
And then: “It’s not an insistence,” he said, “but I do like to have a system.”
It may not have been an insistence, but it was certainly a preference. At the start of the search there were plenty of available coaches with hundreds and hundreds of NBA victories whom Jackson was clearly never going to consider. He lasered in on Steve Kerr, another novice, before Kerr picked the Warriors for a dozen good reasons.
And now Fisher, who won five championships as a player under Jackson, whose leadership qualities were apparent even then, and who will almost certainly be a wholly moldable clump of coaching clay that Jackson can work with, which means Jackson can dabble in what he knows best without actually having to work practices and games across the grueling NBA season. It’s vicarious, and it’s as close as we’ll ever see to Jackson coaching the games himself.
In the end, given the parameters Jackson brought to this search, Fisher was, in many ways, the perfect candidate: He has a personal and professional relationship with Jackson that goes back 13 years. He saw up close the wonders of the triangle when it works at its best. He’s actually been a leader of men (if not a coacher of players) in his role as the Players Association president.
And at five years and $25 million, the figure reported by Yahoo! Sports, it’s clear Fisher will be beholden to his personal rainmaker. Assuming that means Jackson will be a close associate, that might not be such a bad thing; when Jason Kidd tried to make the same move this year, he was hurt by not having a close coaching rabbi to consult, and in fact distanced himself from the one man (Lawrence Frank) with real experience on his staff.
There is no way to know for sure if this is headed for acclamation or calamity, same as there wouldn’t have been with Kerr. This is what we know: Jackson thinks enough of him to hire him. Finally, there is a real mark on Jackson’s scorecard. We know he knows how to make a bundle for himself, and now for one of his star pupils.
Now we get to see if any of it makes basketball sense.