When the Knicks hired Phil Jackson to be their team president back in March 2014, the first word that came to mind for many Knicks fans was "finally." As in, "Finally, we will have someone in the front office who knows what he’s doing and can restore this franchise back to glory."
But on Wednesday morning, many of those same fans are again saying "finally." As in, "Finally, James Dolan has come to his senses and decided to fire Jackson for continuing to run this franchise into the ground."
Over the course of the last few weeks, there has been a lot of speculation surrounding Jackson as trade rumors have swirled around Kristaps Porzingis. Jackson recently admitted that he was taking calls about potentially trading the team’s young rising star, and that didn’t sit well with many Knicks fans. Jackson didn’t seem to have any idea what he was doing when it came to Porzingis, just like he’s appeared to be clueless about so many other situations—including situations involving Carmelo Anthony—in the past. And some NBA analysts predicted Jackson would be out of a job sooner than later if he kept it up.
Very early Wednesday morning, those predictions came to fruition when Yahoo! Sports reporter Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Dolan, the owner of the Knicks, was considering firing Jackson:
Hours later, ESPN reporter Ramona Shelburne confirmed Wojnarowski’s initial report and eventually released her own report about how the Knicks and Jackson were going to part ways on Wednesday:
The Knicks made things official shortly before 10 a.m. when they released a statement about how Jackson and the Knicks had "mutually agreed" to a split:
And as you might imagine, there’s no one happier about it than Knicks fans.
Some of those Knicks fans are praising Dolan—who is most definitely not a popular figure in New York City—for pulling the plug on the Jackson experiment:
Others are already speculating about who the Knicks might get to replace Jackson:
But the vast majority of the Knicks fans out there are using just one word to encapsulate how they feel about Jackson’s unceremonious exit after three years: "Finally." They’re no doubt glad to see Jackson leave:
And even Spike Lee chimed in with this:
The bad news here is that, while Jackson is gone, Dolan remains, and as long as Dolan is still with the team, many people are skeptical about how much will really change once Jackson leaves town:
But Jackson’s departure should, at the very least, give Knicks fans some hope that things will change sooner than later for the team. And at this point, that’s pretty much all they can ask for.
