Getty Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant against Knicks
The New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets rivalry is a thing these days especially when Brooklyn got the players that the Knicks wanted in Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.
To add insult to injury, the Knicks are currently not a good team.
Sitting at 4-19, they’re in last place in the NBA’s Eastern Conference and in fact, the orange and blue have the worst record in basketball.
Yikes!
Last week, New York fired their coach, David Fizdale and the talk is that Mark Jackson, Jason Kidd or Becky Hammon are of interest to the team.
The state of the Knicks is a very delicate topic for many diehards.
Understandably so. The Knicks last had a winning season in 2013 when Carmelo Anthony, Jason Kidd and JR Smith were member of that team. Under former head coach, Mike Woodson, they made it to the NBA Playoffs and would lose to the Indiana Pacers.
That doesn’t sit well with one of the biggest Knicks fans out there: Michael Rapaport.
“I’m a Knicks fan,” Rapaport told me by phone on the Scoop B Radio Podcast.
“I’m on record saying that I thought that if everything fell into place, the Knicks would somehow find their way into the Playoffs and of course nothing has fallen into place. Nothing has fallen into place for the Knicks.It’s disappointing.”
The Knicks tried to salvage their offseason by signing names like Julius Randle, Taj Gibson and Marcus Morris. But missing on KD and Kyrie was a big deal and Rapaport is not happy. “Kevin Durant was never going to sign with the Knicks,” Michael Rapaport tells Scoop B Radio.
“I think his guy around him, Rich Kleiman was giving that impression for whatever reason I don’t know. Because he’s a New Yorker. He thought it would be cool if he signed with the Knicks. He didn’t sign with the Knicks. I don’t think he was really planning on signing with the Knicks and it was disappointing. You know this has been one disappointment after another, but I mean I would have loved to see him sign with the Knicks.”
Rapaport then breaks deep on the Brooklyn duo:
“You know but these dudes are on a different thing,” Rapaport told Scoop B Radio.
“I think those guys are going to be in for a rude awakening because I don’t think that that’s going to work with the two of them. They’re both obviously; I don’t have to talk about how good they are, but the intangibles–and I think they’re both differers, in some way. I think it’s going to wind up hurting them. You know, I think Kyrie clearly doesn’t make anyone around him better. As spectacular as he is and as fun as it is to watch, I think playing with him, he doesn’t make anyone around him better. Somebody said he didn’t have the cajones to sign with the Knicks. But he had the balls to shoot the ball in Game 7 in Steph Curry’s face. Yeah that’s hunky dory but he’s done nothing by himself. He’s a dribbling, museum quality artist. But Spencer Dinwiddie is out there getting the same quality of points as Kyrie. He’s got similar stats. I’m not saying he’s as good as Kyrie, he’s not the closer that Kyrie is,but you know…I don’t know what’s up with him. I don’t know what his deal is, what his situation is and all of that stuff, but you know the Nets are going to be fun with those two but they’re not going to win the Championship. I literally would bet that now. They’re never winning a Championship.”