After Knicks opt to fire Derek Fisher, we await Phil Jackson's next move

GREENBURGH, N.Y. -- Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his bunker on Monday, witnessed the driving snow and heard the whipping wind, and concluded -- you guessed it -- six more weeks of winter for the Knicks.

At least.

A day earlier, Phil Jackson and general manager Steve Mills had concluded that it was time to fire head coach Derek Fisher in the wake of the team's fifth straight loss and ninth in 10 games. But the longer Jackson spoke with reporters on Monday -- his first such sparring session since before the season began -- the more it was clear that this decision was about more than wins and losses.

They usually are.

One thing Jackson never tolerated during his 11 championship seasons as coach of the Bulls and Lakers was discord, and discord had been brewing within Fisher's coaching staff. Jackson cited a staff meeting that he called in mid-January, after the Knicks had beaten the Celtics at home and lost at Brooklyn.

"There was film I didn’t like in one of those ballgames and I asked the coaching staff to come in and sit down," Jackson said. "It was an off day, and some of the coaches weren’t notified."

Later, Jackson expounded, asserting that he'd surrounded Fisher with experienced assistants -- namely, Jackson confidants Kurt Rambis and Jim Cleamons -- and that Fisher had not embraced their input as much as he could have.

"If he didn’t take advantage of that, maybe that’s part of it," Jackson said. "... Derek hired some young guys who came in and have helped him and have a really good work ethic and really met the standard that he likes. There wasn’t really a consensus in our staff and we decided we needed to have a real good consensus in the working of the staff – interchanging of ideas, good communication."

Jackson noted the dynamic and let it slide when the Knicks were playing well and winning. Once the season started turning south about two weeks ago, Fisher was on an island. In announcing that he'd decided to relieve Fisher of his duties, Jackson acknowledged the presence of a double entendre.

"I know it's a relief for him," Jackson said, "taking away some of that stress of the job."

Lesson learned for Jackson, who must have thought he was hiring a Phil Jackson guy when he plucked Fisher straight out of retirement and sat him in the first seat on the Knicks' bench. To the contrary, he was hiring someone who wanted and needed to have his own way of doing things. To know that, Jackson needed only to have studied Fisher's leadership history as president of the National Basketball Players Association, and his subsequent toppling of Billy Hunter's corrupt regime.

Fisher was no Gregg Popovich on the Knicks' sideline; that much had become painfully clear. But he was never going to be Jackson's yes man.

And unlike with Hunter, Fisher was never going to win a power struggle with the Zen Master.

Which leads us to the next steps in the never-ending rebuilding of the Knicks, which Jackson said was his sworn duty when he came out of retirement himself to run the franchise he won two championships with as a player a long time ago.

Rambis, a trusted Jackson assistant with the Lakers, will be the interim coach for the rest of the season. Beyond that, Jackson offered a few clues as to who and what he's looking for to lead this team down the road.

Does he need to come from your coaching tree, I asked?

"It’s always good to have a relationship," Jackson said. "It’s not paramount, but at some point I’m going to have to have a relationship with somebody who’s going to coach this team. I mean, that’s just the way it works. Communication has to be there in a job like that."

Does he have to run the triangle, someone else asked?

"The system of basketball is what’s important," Jackson said. "We’re talking about a system here, and we’re talking about a system that we’re familiar with, so it’s not paramount, but it’s important."

When the question was posed, "Can his name be Tom Thibodeau?" Jackson responded with a long stare.

"Did you want me to respond to that?" he said. "I respect Tom as a coach. He’s a really good coach. I’m not out soliciting. Did I say I’m out soliciting coaches right now? No."

So while Thibodeau's name is near and dear to the hearts of longtime Knicks fans -- his rise began as an assistant here under the beloved Jeff Van Gundy -- it's hard to envision how he and Jackson could fit together. If Jackson couldn't even get his own point guard to fall in line, can you imagine him trying to corral the talented and hardworking, but headstrong Thibodeau? Discord was woven into the very fabric of the Bulls dynamic that led to his firing last summer.

It was somewhat stunning, given the depth of their relationship, when Jackson relayed Monday that much of his recent conversation with Fisher amounted to little more than short emails.

"He usually a lot of times sent me back a short note: ‘Got it,' or, 'We’ll get on it,’ or whatever," Jackson said.

Ask the Bulls' Gar Forman or John Paxson how that would go with Thibodeau.

But honestly, whether Jackson reaches beyond the branches of his coaching tree or stays in his comfort zone with Luke Walton or Brian Shaw, he admitted that the problems with the team as currently constructed go beyond the powers of any coach. In a meeting with the players on Monday, Jackson made it clear that some of the onus was on them.

(He also noted that Jackson himself will, in no way, shape or form return to coaching. "The instinct was still there," he said, "but it's not in my physical capabilities to do that.")

But by far, Jackson's most curious comments in this rare public appearance came when he was asked about the player around whom the team was built: Carmelo Anthony.

It was purely coincidence that Jackson fired Fisher after a loss to the Denver Nuggets, from whence Anthony came in a 2011 trade that changed the trajectory of both franchises. An interesting coincidence, nonetheless.

The Nuggets, of course, are in no better shape than the Knicks five years after that colossal trade. As Rasheed Wallace might say of the deal, "Both teams played hard ... and both teams lost."

Here is what Jackson had to say when asked how Anthony's game has evolved under Fisher:

"Yeah, Carmelo’s been a major focus. He’s a guy that has carried the load a lot with this team. We played very well without Carmelo in numbers of games this year, which is obvious that we have a team that’s pretty well balanced. ... I think the seven games he’s been out, I think four of them we played extremely well, had the lead going into the final minutes. So it’s important in a certain situation. We exaggerate it in terms of salaries in this game and of course by whose team is it and all that kind of stuff. But Carmelo’s a leader. We understand that. He’s on board. He’s going to move forward with this basketball club."

It wasn't just a Freudian slip. Unprovoked, Jackson mentioned again later in his news conference how well the Knicks played when Anthony was out with his recurring knee injury.

"I saw glimpses," Jackson said. "Particularly a couple of games Carmelo was out, I thought there was good ball movement, good player movement. ... We’re looking for our players to play together in a way which brings out their best attributes, not a lot of what I consider standing around, one-on-one, situational stuff in the game. We want to see ball movement and player movement that brings out the best in the team."

While Jackson said his posture at the trade deadline would be aggressive -- "We're looking to improve the team, no doubt," he said -- he also admitted that he has limited trade assets to get that done. He also mentioned that he has "a couple of players" who are "probably off the table for discussion."

One, of course, is rookie Kristaps Porzingis. "There's not too many people that ever would say that I would trade Kris," Jackson said.

"Is Carmelo one of those players?" I asked, not knowing whether I'd see Jackson again before the start of the 2016-17 season.

"Yeah, I think it is a known fact that Carmelo has a no-trade [clause]," Jackson said. "And we like Kris; everybody likes Kris."

Soon, the Knicks' head groundhog would return to his natural habitat, saying, "OK, guys, I think that's good." And it was; it's always good with Phil Jackson.

Good quotes and clear ones are two different things, though. And Jackson left just enough loose ends to make it worth wondering whether firing Derek Fisher isn't the biggest change he wants to make.

As the 6-foot-8 Jackson rose from his chair and squeezed through a half-open doorway, escaping the media room for the back offices of the Knicks' training center, he was smiling. Jackson had seen his shadow, all right. And we'll just have to wait and see what, exactly, that means.