Getty Knicks owner Jim Dolan in 2012
The Knicks’ 90s glory days are long-gone. New York is looking to bring them back.
Many believe that the New York Knicks are going to dive head first into acquiring free-agent to be Kevin Durant in this summer’s NBA free agency sweepstakes.
Will he come to NYC???
“The Knicks are quietly, I believe, becoming attractive,” FS1’s Jason McIntyre told me on the Scoop B Radio Podcast earlier this year.
Remember this name: Royal Ivey.
A Knicks assistant coach under head coach, David Fizdale, Ivey, a Harlem native is quite close to Durant. The two were Texas Longhorns teammates and teammates with the Oklahoma City Thunder for three years.
KD is the godfather of Ivey’s daughter, Lyric Ella and a league source shared with me that Durant will be in Ivey’s wedding this summer.
On Thursday, the Knicks will have Patrick Ewing represent them at the NBA Draft Lottery on Thursday.
Ewing played 17 years in the NBA, 15 of those as a Knick before he was traded to the Seattle Supersonics for Vin Baker. Ewing finished his career averaging 21 points and a shade under 10 rebounds per game. Ewing and the Knicks had some memorable moment. Lets see, there was the time in 1990 when the Hoya Destroya scored 51 points on Kevin McHale, Kevin McHale and Larry Bird at The Garden.
Ewing isn’t the only Knicks fixture pulling for NYC. Knicks legend, Earl “The Pearl” Monroe wants to see the Knicks get back to their glory days.
“You know more than likely when you look back on the history of the Knicks, in the last ten to fifteen years it’s just constant change,” Monroe told Scoop B Radio.
“And you come in to having four or five guys playing together and then you are trading. Stick with what you’ve got and let it mature into a winning team.”
A four time NBA All Star, NBA Champion and one of the NBA’s 50 Greatest Players, Monroe also talked about a battery of other topics on the Scoop B Radio podcast like his view on AAU basketball, which is significant.
Retired NBA player, Kobe Bryant, who entered the NBA straight out of high school expressed his displeasure with AAU basketball stating: “I hate it because it doesn’t teach our players how to play the right way, how to think the game, how to play in combinations of threes.”
Monroe’s sentiments were similar: “We have seen a change in what basketball is and what it means to people,” Monroe told Scoop B Radio.
“I think that in a nut shell makes a big difference in terms of just basketball in general.”
“You know I always thought American basketball was strong. I felt as the game started here and I never really felt as though we should have pros play at the Olympics but be that as it may AAU you know takes guys and they really use the talent of the guys as opposed to teaching the guys. Its interesting that you find today that you see a team like the Knicks and [last season] Coach Fisher talks about teaching guys things at the pro level. So that leads you to believe that as guys come up from junior high or high school or what not they are not getting the same type of teaching as we got coming up and I know Kobe might be a little right in what he says but the same time the game has changed. It has gotten faster you don’t have centers the way you used to you got everybody that is basically a forward or a guard today so you know the scope of basketball is a lot different and obviously everything has to change.”