But if he had any serious reservations about the ways and means of former New York Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy–a control-freak obsessive who makes Carlesimo look teddy-bearish by comparison–Sprewell never revealed them publicly.
That is, of course, until his first home game Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden under the new laid-back, post-Van Gundy regime of Don Chaney. Chaney’s first order of business was to free up Sprewell from Van Gundy’s rigid strictures. Sprewell didn’t have to say a word about how he felt about that–not after a Jordan-esque performance in which he pumped in a career-high 49 points. But NBA fairy tales are few and far between. And Latrell bricked a free throw in the final seconds that gave the Boston Celtics the opening they needed to rally and beat the Knicks in overtime.
Even with Sprewell unleashed, the Knicks are only a scrappy team destined for the NBA scrapheap. It is a team that stuck too long with and paid too much for aging and middling talents, forcing it to try and rebuild with a patchwork quilt of those who are game, but not hugely gifted. They will hustle and mug you on defense, but, after years of Van Gundy holding the reins and calling all the shots, are hopelessly constipated on offense. While Sprewell and Alan Houston can be a formidable one-two scoring punch, the team has virtually no inside game to complement its shooters.
Van Gundy wisely had nothing to say about the Knicks’ prospects last week when he stunned the NBA community with his early-season resignation. He smartly chose to step down in the middle of a mini winning streak, enabling him to avert any accusations that he was a captain jumping off a sinking ship ahead of his men. Instead, he talked about loss of focus, which he insisted during an amiable, rambling hourlong session with the press was not simply millennium-speak for burnout.
There is plenty of reason to be sympathetic to Van Gundy, who, regardless of what you call it, has been suffering visibly. At 39, the coach looks so haggard that he might pull a Rip Van Winkle and still wake up way behind on his sleep. Certainly no one can blame a man for wanting to spend more time with his wife, to have an occasional lunch with his 6-year-old daughter or to go to baseball spring training with his dad. And nobody can assess the exact impact of September 11 on anyone else: Van Gundy, like so many New Yorkers, lost a couple of close friends, including his college roommate.
Still, there is something about this tale that just doesn’t quite add up. A man who had held only one other head-coaching post (that at a Rochester, N.Y., high school), a man who had immersed himself in the Knicks for a dozen years, a man who was in what had always seemed to be his dream job … well, suffice it to say most suspected it would take harsher measures to pry Van Gundy out of that position. Like so many bright coaches who make what appears to be a sudden and surprising career move, he was remarkably inarticulate, or at least unrevealing, when trying to explain it. “In my heart I knew what was right,” he said. “I just think it’s time to step back and let the team move on.”
History has taught us to be a wee bit skeptical of coaches pronouncements on the subject of themselves. Even if they are being completely honest, at the very best they are simply giving us a snapshot of a moment in time, often a very brief moment in time. There’s no coach I like or admire more than Dick Vermeil. But I can still remember him, after the Rams Super Bowl triumph two years ago, talking about how great it was to go out on top–even now as he’s back in the NFL fray and near its bottom coaching the Chiefs. NFL insiders say Bill Parcells, despite his vows of “never again,” is eventually headed to Tampa Bay. And didn’t Jimmy Johnson look tan and relaxed in his Florida Keys getup at halftime on “Monday Night Football”? Who doubts he’d chuck it all for one more shot?
I’m not suggesting that Van Gundy was deliberately dishonest. But what nags at me is a suspicion that there was some remarkable prescience, perhaps only on a subconscious level, in Van Gundy’s timing. He may have grasped that the long era of the NBA martinet is finally over, that Phil Jackson’s nuanced psycho-babble and New Ageism has now totally supplanted the Pat Riley school, where Van Gundy got his Ph.D. The Knicks might have proven to be a playoff team, or they might have gone in the crapper. But there’s also the possibility that, regardless of which, something far worse might have ensued. After seven seasons at the helm, Van Gundy–with his incessant carping, his frequent negativity and his clamor for absolute control–had to be grating on his troops. Despite Sprewell’s gracious words about how the team may miss Van Gundy’s discipline and intensity, the mixture seemed destined to prove combustible.
Walkaways are never quite as devastating as implosions can be to an NBA coaching career. Sprewell may have gotten the long suspension for that ugly spat four years ago, but it is Carlesimo who will never get another NBA head-coaching job. And Rick Pitino, off his Celtics fiasco, is now perceived as more charlatan than turnaround artist, and it’s hard to imagine him ever returning to the NBA. Van Gundy may have gotten out in the nick of time. Nothing likely to happen with the Knicks this season would have enhanced his resume. Now he will be mentioned as an A-list candidate for every NBA and major college opening. The rumor mill already has him heading to Miami as Riley’s successor. And if he’s really smart, after a little time with his wife and a few lunches with his daughter, he’ll return a new, improved Van Gundy. Bet on him returning somewhere. Just don’t bet on him making it to spring training with his dad.
