The James Dolan Paradox

0:04Congratulations! You made the varsity, the podcast. My name is John Arenda and I'm Puck's sports correspondent and the host of this pod. And today we're going to do something a little bit different. In honor of the Knicks winning their first NBA title since 1973, we're going to do a deep dive to see just how they got there. First, I asked Brian Windhorst to join us. Brian, of course, is a senior NBA writer at ESPN and knows so much about the business. And I just want to ask Brian about the culture change that occurred at the Knicks. Because the Knicks really are the type of franchise that you thought would never climb the mountain or reach the peak.

0:47And somehow they figured out what was going wrong and how to fix it. And then the voice of the Knicks, the voice of the NBA. we're going to have Mike Breen show up and he's going to really get into what it was like to call the Knicks championship game, the final seconds ticking down and what he sees moving forward. So we're not going to do what I'm looking for today. We're going to get right into these interviews and I think you're going to like them. Brian Wynhorse, always great to have you on the pod. Thank you very much for joining us. But I really wanted to get you on this week, right after the NBA finals because the Knicks, as everybody knows, won their first NBA finals since 1973.

1:28And if I'm being honest, I really thought that it would be a good decade or more before they actually won because I'm a big believer in culture. And I think that the culture comes from the owner. And here in D.C., we saw Dan Snyder, the Redskins slash commanders were never close to being a consistent winning team. I think you're seeing that with the Cowboys, Jerry Jones. They win, but they don't win enough. Jim Dolan, in my mind, really kind of fell into that bucket. What happened? I mean, I'm looking for more than like, yeah, he decided to step away and let Leon Rose make the decisions. What caused him to make that decision?

2:18Because most owners that I know, they still believe, despite all the evidence, that they can make the decisions to win.

2:26Brian Windhorst:Yeah, so maybe a Knicks fan would disagree with this statement. But I think in 2019, the Knicks pretty much hit rock bottom because they thought that they were going to get Kevin Durant in free agency. um everybody can write their own books later on about what may have been winked winked and promised or whatever but let's just say they thought they were getting him and not only did they clear out a whole bunch of cap space to try to sign him and and and kairi irving um but then um they also got unlucky in the lottery that year as well and so um they had this sort of situation where they thought they were getting going to get him and instead they chose i actually think he thought he was going to get kairi they just had enough room for uh durant but being so that he went with kairi over to brooklyn and at some point he gave an interview where he basically said the knicks were uncool and you know not that the knicks ever had a cool mentality but the idea that it would be more fashionable to be a net than a nick was like i said probably rock bottom and so uh during that season he replaced his uh his you know i don't know who the titles are all loose and whatever but he replaced um steve mills as his franchise leader of basketball operations and he looked for i mean i wouldn't say he was trying to find somebody cool but he obviously was trying to find somebody who could deliver players that the nick flag was not going to get it done and so he settled on the duo of leon rose and wes wesley wes wesley was this is this for decades has been this behind the scenes operative who's very close to players known as a relationship guy and his business partner at CAA at the time was Leon Rose.

4:17Brian Windhorst:They essentially built CAA basketball together. And so he hired them together and he basically said, fix this problem that nobody wants to be a Nick. And what Leon Rose did was basically start to recruit his clients and at first it looked like favoritism but what it now has become clear is that it wasn't favoritism it was intelligence because you know leon rose was from south jersey philadelphia area he has recruited players for decades but he had a front row seat to villanova's um uh championships that they won with jalen brunson he recruited a number of those players. He was able to get Jalen, who was his godfather.

4:59Brian Windhorst:I hope he would get him. And he got some other Villanova players. But basically, he had a knowledge of who these guys were. And he valued them more than the rest of the league, quite frankly. I mean, nobody valued Jalen Brunson at$100 million when they signed him. There's this Nick fans play this video of all these people dissing Jalen when he signed. I'm in the video because i thought it was an overpay um but it wasn't just him like um carl towns who was his client when he was an agent a lot of people thought carl towns was overpaid the the wolves in fact i think felt they they had overpaid carl towns and traded him og and anobi in toronto the raptors weren't crazy about giving him the contract that he was going and demand.

5:48Brian Windhorst:He's represented, in part at least, by Leon Rose's son. So he had all of this inside information. It wasn't cronyism. I mean, it was partially that, but he had all this information. So he started collecting players that other people undervalued a little bit or thought, or more appropriately, thought were overvalued. And he put this team together. They never tanked John. They never drafted, the highest pick Leon Rose has ever made was 25. Now, he did have some higher picks that he traded, but he traded those picks in an effort to, like he, they had a lottery pick one year that they traded, and the purpose of them making that trade was to clear out cap space to sign Brunson.

6:32Brian Windhorst:So they've had higher picks, but the pick that they had right before he got there was rj bear the number three pick and after that they have not really picked high so they did this without tanking without doing a you know a teardown and he did it with attracting and knowing the players these players who would fit together and here we are so what i'm particularly interested in is is the top did post 2019 when uh when uh they didn't get durant by the way i think the wizards also thought well durant was going to come to a back to the dmv as well that made the same mistake did jim dolan change did he change his approach or did he just happen to to hire the right people to do it yes he definitely has been more hands-off because you know one of the things that the knicks would do is they would create a plan and then they would throw the plan away three months, six months, nine months in.

7:32Brian Windhorst:That happened repeatedly for decades. And I mean, if we had all day long, I could go chapter and verse, just know what happened. So the other thing that they did, they hired Tom Thibodeau to be the coach, which was also a favoritism slash cronyism thought process. But actually, they knew that the players that they were requiring were perfect Tom Thibodeau players. and it ended up turning the team around. They obviously made a couple of playoff runs under Thibodeau. But Dolan had been meddling a lot more. And then Dolan did two things this last offseason that were risky but turned out to be really smart.

8:13Brian Windhorst:One, he basically was the impetus for firing Thibodeau, who was Leon Rose's longtime friend, and I'm sure was very painful. Leon won't speak to the media, will barely speak privately to media. as well. And so we'll never know exactly how he felt, but that had to be difficult. But Jim Dolan has pretty much admitted that he forced the issue. And so that was one thing. And then the second thing is they didn't trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo. Now again, everybody's going to have their own story here, and they can all write their books and do their podcasts later. But at one point last summer, the Bucs and the Knicks had a discussion about trading for Giannis.

8:52Brian Windhorst:And the Knicks have been chasing superstar players for a long time and Giannis had interest in becoming a Knick and they passed on it. And Dolan has talked about, he didn't specifically mention Giannis, but he talked about how he's been in the past, he'd made terrible mistakes by getting distracted and chasing the shiny object, I think he said, which could have been a number of different people, could have been Durant, could have been Carmelo for all we know he was talking about. But he said, no, we believe in this team. We think we needed to change the coach, but we don't think we need to change their roster.

9:24Brian Windhorst:Those are two decisions that Jim Dolan basically highly influenced that I don't know if he's older and smarter and wiser or if he just worked out this time. You make 20 decisions where you're meddling and 18 of them are wrong and the last two end up being right. I don't know. But whatever it was, those choices have all aligned and worked. And he's on a hot streak right now, John, because I read from you and others that the sphere is, you know, his decision to buy the rights of the Wizard of Oz has completely turned the sphere around. The sphere was, you know, as I know from reading you, was losing tens of millions of dollars by the month.

10:03Brian Windhorst:And now that's doing well. That stock has exploded. His MSG stock has exploded. And he's maneuvering his holdings around to potentially take advantage of the high value of them right now. I don't know. Maybe he's just on a generational winning streak. All right. So what I'm hearing from your answer, Brian, is that the idea that Jim Dolan has all of a sudden become a handoff owner is not true. Kind of. But he's more willing to almost – he's more willing to stay the course. He sort of had a strategy change in his mind. Yeah, and he also took himself – he's been fighting with Adam Silver in the league.

10:43Brian Windhorst:He's still fighting with Adam Silver in the league. I think we have a battle royale coming soon when the NBA handles its RSN situation and how that all goes without MSG. I'll read you and you can cover all of that. But I thought it was interesting. He got basically so angry at the league and how they were doing business, and he felt hurting the Knicks with some of their decisions, that he resigned from the board of governors and had one of his top assistants, Jamal Lusane, come in and become the governor. Technically, Jim Dolan is not the governor of, not even technically, officially, he's not the governor of the Knicks.

11:20Brian Windhorst:He still owns the team, and I'm sure Jamal is voting with his intent. He resigned from the board of governors, basically like, you know, pox on both your houses, you know, basically, you know, whatever. But yet, I went to Abu Dhabi last fall and there was Jim Dolan sitting next to Adam Silver at the exhibition games between the Sixers and the Knicks. I couldn't believe I actually took a photo of it to send to people. I was like, look at this, Adam and Jim sitting next to each other. So I don't think he's materially changed. However, like I said, he is on a decision-making hot streak. Is that simply fortune or is it him getting to a point where he has learned his lessons?

12:04Brian Windhorst:Stay tuned because I'm not ready to say which it is yet. My favorite part of game five was waiting to see Adam Silver hand the trophy over to Jim Dolan. I was looking for any kind of imperceptible, you know, that there's a divisiveness among the two. And it was a very quick one. I don't think you could draw anything into it. Were you as interested in that as I was? Not as much because I'd seen them interact in Abu Dhabi and I knew that the ice had been broken there to a certain extent and there was some level of detente. However, I'm sure it's fragile. And I'm sure that the NBA, I shouldn't say I'm sure, I suspect that the NBA wasn't real thrilled that in the middle of the finals, Dolan was picking a fight with the mayor and the police commissioner in New York City and going on the radio.

12:56Brian Windhorst:And the MSG issued like five or six statements about various things during the NBA finals. So it's a wobbly, it's a fragile truce, but I was aware that Adam and Jim had sort of laid down arms, so to speak, because I saw them together. And to be honest with you, I was more interested in that in the entire first quarter of that exhibition game, John. I was simply watching Adam and Jim Dolan talk to each other, sit next to each other, and be very cordial in Abu Dhabi last fall. And I wrote about it. When I covered the, when I wrote about my time in Abu Dhabi and all the business at the end, by the way, Dolan is doing business in Abu Dhabi too.

13:38Brian Windhorst:He's attempting to build a sphere in Abu Dhabi, which I guess depends on how much, how many drones the UAE has to start buying. But then Adam Silver is also doing a lot of business in the UAE, but they, you know, the UAE brought Dolan and Silver together and they were very, very cordial. So for the moment, I think that they are in a relatively good place.

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14:44And the best part? Bob's furniture ships fast so I can enjoy my new styles all summer long. So when you're ready to ditch the furniture you're not excited about for the latest trends in small space styling, stop in or shop online at Bob's Discount Furniture, where America shops for furniture. So we have rock bottom was 2019. I think. The mountaintop is 2026. In your mind, what are the next couple of years look like? Not necessarily in terms of winning on the court, but just in terms of Jim Dolan's management in the franchise.

15:22Brian Windhorst:Well, so the Knicks have had some very creative management. Leon Rose hired this young executive named Brock Aller, who helped the Cavs do a lot of smoke and mirrors strategy to build their championship team around LeBron. LeBron. Now, you don't win in Cleveland without LeBron, very clearly, or in Kyrie. I mean, the players come first. But to put that team together, there was some machinations that were pretty impressive. And Leon's first hire was to hire Brock Aller to come to, I can't remember his title, it's vice president or something or whatever. And Brock has done some strategic wizardry to keep the Knicks out of the second apron.

16:08Brian Windhorst:They've literally danced to within like a dollar or a relative dollar or two of it several different times. To keep this team together, they are not going to be able to do that. I think they will go into the second apron. But what they have done is they have gotten their players to take less than the market value, starting with Jalen Brunson, who very famously took$113 million less than he could have on a max deal. Now, he will be able to make up big chunks of that as he opts out of option years and stuff later on. but still was an unprecedented contract. I mean, essentially, Jalen Brunson is partially funding his teammates' salaries.

16:46He's inter-roster revenue sharing.

16:49Brian Windhorst:And it's not because Jim Dolan is frugal. It's because team building in the air. And basically, to go to 30 ,000 feet, um when the nba had its lockout in um in 2011 it was about the split the players got 57 percent and the but the owners got 43 that lockout happened and they ended up getting it to 51 49 it's been a multi-billion dollar maneuver for the owners in the cba since then the owners have been meticulously making ground up on creating a de facto hard cap. There is not a hard cap in the NBA, but what we have now, which is the second apron, is as close as you can get. It's almost like a legislative hard cap.

17:39Brian Windhorst:And teams have to stay under it because it's not just about spending, it's about being handcuffed. And the Knicks have done so. And part of it is because of Brunson's willingness to do intra-roster revenue sharing. And Mikael Bridges, when he signed his contract extension last year, took a little bit less than he could have gotten. And OG Ananobi, Ananobi's case is a little bit tough, but he can look you in the eye and say he took a little bit less. So this summer, both Carl Towns and Josh Hart are now up. And Mitch Robinson is a straight free agent but carl towns and josh hart are now up on the extension uh spot and carl towns could ask for a four-year 280 million dollar extension like that is what his market value probably is to the knicks uh let's say it's 70 million dollars a year um he could ask for it he's got one year left on his deal but will carl towns again his former agent being the guy negotiating on the side of the table be willing to do something not maybe like brunson did but do something to create a little bit of wiggle room and will josh hart also represented by caa do something where he might take less than his market value to do this and will these players all come together and do their contracts in such a way this is not unheard of in a hard cap system you know tom brady took less than his max i'm not as a as adept in um in nfl stuff but he took you know less than in his market value was there's no maxes in the nfl obviously he took less than his market value was to help the patriots you know construct teams and how did their window stay open so long at least in part because tom brady was willing to not make every last dollar the knicks can keep this window open um if the if their players are willing to do that now the players union probably would have something to say because it's not a great precedent but it is a reality right now let me i have one more question for you and again it revolves around around jim dolan though i just find to be among the most fascinating characters when it comes to this team if you look at at the entire nba jim dolan as a hands-on owner is it unusual is it normal is it where would you put that's in terms of other ownership in the NBA?

20:06Brian Windhorst:I mean, Mark Cuban essentially sat in the basketball operations chair for the Mavericks. He would, you know, make trade calls, you know, when he was at the peak of his power and the peak of everything, you know. Joe Lacob of the Warriors, even though he's had excellent executives uh bob myers and and etc he has been very involved in things like that dan gilbert in cleveland so it's not unusual for an mba owner to be highly involved i don't think dolan's level of involvement uh is you know is in the top you know one percent or five percent or whatever the problem is is that dolan's judgment has often been horrendous some of the things that he has encouraged the team to do or that he has overseen or that, you know, where he's changed executives at various times.

21:04Brian Windhorst:You know, all those other guys I mentioned, like, you know, yeah, they didn't bat a thousand, but they all got rings, you know. You know, Vivek Ranadive is sort of infamous for, you know, being involved in Sacramento and that team has failed spectacularly. I think the VEX record is probably worse, at least in the last 10 years, than Dolan's is. But Dolan's, you know, first off, he tends to make, you know, he's in the biggest media market, so it's more public. He's certainly not the quote-unquote worst, but his decisions at times have been very, very impactful. So it is fascinating. And the other thing is that, you know, he controls the garden.

21:50Brian Windhorst:He controls MSG. These are gigantic power brokers beyond just controlling the New York Knicks. And all of these things, there have been things that have happened that have complicated matters. But I will say this, his big overarching decisions were a cornerstone of this Knicks getting this championship. He absolutely deserves credit for making three or four or five very, very, very vital decisions that he could have massively screwed up, that he got right. And his particular judgment on this team in this season was pristine. And actually his leadership on how he wanted this season to go was excellent and a strong contributing factor that the way that it did.

22:38Brian Windhorst:Obviously, you need Jalen Brunson to be this kind of player. I don't want to take this away, But for anything that you can say about Jim Dolan in the past, it could all be true. He'll always have the 2025-26 season. Brian Windhorst, can't thank you enough. Thank you so much for stopping by. Thanks, John. Be well.

23:01Mike Breen, the pride of Fordham University joining the pod. Thank you very much for joining us. I was desperate to get you on this week. We just had to talk about the Knicks championship run. We just had Brian Wenthorst on, and he was talking about 2019. And I probably wrote a story about how, wow, the Nets are really kind of overtaking the Knicks in New York. And the free agents wanted to go to Brooklyn instead of Madison Square Garden. And Brian described that as sort of the bottom. and all of a sudden the culture of the team started to change from there to where we uh we were in the past um you know that just this past week as somebody that that covers the game uh that covers the team the calls of games for for the team how have you noticed the culture change or have you know when did you notice the culture change when when did this team become a team in your eyes that that was gonna not only win the championship but win the championship in the way that it did well you know john it's interesting the culture that certainly cultures vary from from organizations and team to team but so much of it revolves around are you winning if you could have great culture if you're winning if you're not winning it doesn't really mean a heck of a lot uh and they went through just a lot of losing seasons and you know there were some teams that that they were one of the worst in the NBA, but they had good chemistry.

24:34They just didn't have the talent. And it changed really when Leon Rose came in and his first hire was Tom Thibodeau. And Tom Thibodeau is a great coach and he changed the culture to start. And he had a couple of very good players, Julius Randle amongst them. So they win the championship without those two and the changes that they moved on from clearly proved to be the right changes. But Tom Thibodeau deserves a tremendous amount of credit for changing the quote-unquote culture because then it became, this is a team that is prepared. This is a team that will play hard. And that's what you have to start because you have to change not only the direction in terms of going from losing to winning, but the perception of the organization.

25:22And when Leon Rose came in, he changed that immediately by hiring Tom Thibodeau. Would you agree with Windhorse that the Nader was 2019? Well, I think he said that because that was when you opened the doors for Durant to come in and he went elsewhere. And, you know, the Nets were a formidable crosstown rival. Nobody would say that now. Right. You know, again, these top players didn't want to come to a losing organization, and they were for a number of years a losing organization. Even though the Knicks had all this cap room on several different occasions and there were some big-time superstars available, players don't want to go there.

26:05And there are some that did, and despite that, I always give great credit to Amari Stoudemire. He was not afraid to come and start the turnaround. Now, it clearly didn't work out, and his knee injury was a part of that. But that's, again, the whole thing is what the perception is, and the perception is that this team didn't have a chance to do any damage in terms of beating teams around a league and advancing in the playoffs, and that's what the big problem was. And it's a shame because a lot of those players might, if they think back, oh, maybe I should have come and joined them when they saw what was going to happen after that.

26:44you mentioned Thibodeau you mentioned Leon Rose uh is there a point that you can look back to where you're like wow this team really could be special yeah well everything changed everything when Jalen Brunson came aboard uh even though he wasn't greeted as the savior even though he said when he was signed at his introductory press conference he said I am not a savior in any shape or form. But that's what he is. And he'll never say it. But I think the organization will say it. The fans will certainly say it. Because you had this lead guard who is not only extremely talented, but despised losing, had a work ethic that showed that he was just going to get better and better.

27:34And when he finally got his chance to be the lead guy on the team after playing behind And Dachish for several years in Dallas, that changed everything. And that filters down, John. When your best player has that kind of work ethic, when your best player is willing to sacrifice, when your best player is coachable, and that's an underrated part of it. When the coach can go after the best player and push the best player, that all filters down throughout the roster and makes a difference. The NBA is littered with teams that had a lot of talent, but they just didn't mesh for one reason or another.

28:06and sometimes it's because they weren't all on the same page. But Jalen Brunson is the type of player who has got that leadership qualities, and it's not this rah-rah leadership qualities of what he does day in and day out, that if you're on his team, not only do you want to follow his lead, but you don't want to disappoint him. And that makes a huge difference in terms of roster building. Okay, for me, the comeback against Cleveland in the conference finals, and it actually wasn't the comeback against Cleveland. It was a game after where, you know, they didn't just give that game away because they stole one, you know.

28:44I was like, wow, this team really could actually do something. They could actually win. When did you first get that inkling, this team could be special? I have a feeling it was a lot earlier than me because it just kind of like, you know, came upon me. You know what it was, John? It was the clinching games, for example, in Atlanta. So they start off, they lose two of the first three. It's Armageddon in New York. People are like, oh, they got to fire Mike Brown. They got to blow up the roster. And then they go on this magical run. But it was the game six. So they win games four and five, and they're up three games to two.

29:22And it's their first chance to clinch a series on the road and move to the second round. And they came out, and that was the game they were up, I think it was 61 at one point. And that showed like, wow, like they're not, they have no interest in going to a game seven at home. They are so focused, they're going to take care of business. And the same thing happened again in the Philadelphia series. They're up 3-0. They could easily kind of mail one in or just not come with that desperation and win game five at home and move on to the next round. But they destroyed the 76ers in that game four on the road.

29:56and that those two wins really showed me that all right they're not they're not messing around they're not taking any games off now they were aided on both of those in fact they were aided on all four clinching games they they clinch all four series on the road starting with Atlanta then Philadelphia then Cleveland and obviously San Antonio but they clinched them with in many cases half the crowd Knick fans and that made an enormous difference the players have talked about that to go on the road in a tough hostile atmosphere well it wasn't so hostile because the nick fans not only were there in in numbers but they were there in presence and that really made a difference i saw a clip on social of wimby getting booed pre-game in san antonio before game five as he's running i've never seen that not a star player on the road where you could hear the the boo the booze were vociferous like that and chance of let's go nicks before the opening tip on the road in a big playoff game.