Clueless
Ok, right in the middle of two exciting League Championship Series in Major League Baseball, and week 6 in the NFL, I am compelled to stop and talk about a sport that hasn’t started its season yet and won’t end until about June.
The New York F-ing Knicks and their totally inept front office, pulled off another bonehead player move by signing the aging and injury-prone Dikembe Mutombo to play center. Terms of the deal are unreported, but rumored to be around $4 million for two years.
Now you’ll recall a few years back they told another old and gimpy center who also happened to graduate from Georgetown, Patrick Ewing, that his services were no longer needed. They found out only after he was gone just how needed he still was, since Kurt Thomas isn’t a true center and other scrubs they tried didn’t work out either.
Interestingly, a couple of other ex-G’town centers are also in the NY/NJ area; Othella Harrington just went on the Knicks disabled list himself, out 4-8 weeks with a sprained ligament in his right knee. Across the river, Alonzo Mourning joins the Nets from Miami where he has hopefully recovered from a career and life-threatening kidney ailment. What, is there a sale on worn out Hoyas!
But the Mutombo signing smacks of more Knick desperation. Ever since the Pat Riley years, this franchise has tried to put together teams for short-term success. They try to win now, with no thought to creating a foundation for the future. They’ve had mediocre drafts, or picked good players and traded them away for veterans who didn’t pan out. In recent years, they have dismantled, reshuffled and remade the team so much the casual fan can’t tell from one year to the next who the players are. Since they’ve failed to make the playoffs the past two seasons, you know these players aren’t memorable anyway.
With last year’s savior, Antonio McDyess still on the mend from last year’s preseason season-ending injury, and the one bright spot Latrell Sprewell traded away, this is a team of no names, with no talent and no hope of winning. Allan Houston is pretty to look at, but he’s not the team leader they need.
I’ve always made the argument that corporate-owned teams don’t do very well. Their management is more interested in profits and losses than wins and losses, and the Knicks on paper make a lot of profits. They, along with the NHL’s Rangers, and WNBA’s Liberty are all subsidiaries of Madison Square Garden Corporation, which itself is owned by Cablevision Systems Corporation, a large cable system operator and cable programmer. They are a small cog in a very big wheel, with owners who really aren’t emotionally involved in how well they do or not. Certainly not on the level that say, George Steinbrenner handles his Yankees.
So they throw more money after bad and sign Mutombo. They hope he’ll help their shot blocking, which was some of the worst in the league last season. But with his physical condition, will he last a long season? Can he still body up against the young guys coming up in the game? I don’t think so.
This season will be over by all-star break.
Posted by bernie at October 10, 2003 12:21 AMTrackBack