COMMENTARY : The Knicks Should Apply Full Nelson

The whole thing had to begin with Chuck Daly, and did. Daly turned the New York Knicks down. I believe the Knicks are ready to turn to Don Nelson now. I don’t believe there is any real list of candidates beyond Nelson. For now, he is the list, which is the way it should be.

It does not mean he ends up coaching the Knicks next year. Daly was talking about assistant coaches and putting his house up for sale before he decided he didn’t want to begin a new coaching career at 65. Daly decided he didn’t need to get back into the game. Nelson needs to get back in. This idea that he needs to sit out another season after already sitting out a half-season is nonsense. So much of the criticism that has been leveled at Nelson is nonsense. He is 10 years younger than Daly, and jobs like the one that is open at Madison Square Garden do not come along every day.

This should happen, for Nelson and for the Knicks.

Ernie Grunfeld had a good interview with Chris Ford. Ford is a good man and a good coach and will get another job. I don’t believe it’s the Knick job unless something happens with Nelson. Ford did some excellent work with the Boston Celtics during his five seasons there. Some of his best work was saved until last, when the Celtics gave the Magic so much trouble in the first round of this year’s playoffs. But Nelson has 18 years of coaching in the NBA, and 817 victories. The only thing he does not have is a title.

So Nelson has one title less than Lenny Wilkens, one of three active coaches--Dick Motta and Bill Fitch are the others--who has more victories than Nelson. Wilkens also would have been a wonderful choice to coach the Knicks. He happens to be under contract for three more years with the Hawks. It is a great basketball idea, Wilkens out of Boys High in Brooklyn coming back to New York. It can’t happen.

Larry Brown also would be a great choice to coach the Knicks. Right now, Brown and Houston Rocket Coach Rudy Tomjanovich are doing the best work in the whole sport. Brown belongs to the Indiana Pacers. He isn’t coming either.

Neither is Phil Jackson, under contract to the Chicago Bulls. Mike Fratello, who would be perfect for a lot of New York action, has a job with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

You make a list of the top guys. Nelson is on that list, however things turned out in Golden State. He is on the list and available and the Knicks have looked around enough to know he is the best man for this job. He is not burned out. I am not particularly interested that some of those sparkling basketball citizens from what was loosely known as Dream Team II didn’t want to practice the way Nelson wanted them to practice. The idea that you throw out Nelson’s resume because of things that happened in the last year is not right, and is not fair.

“What people seem to be forgetting,” Doc Rivers said, “is that Nellie was always known as a players’ coach. Before all the stuff happened with [Chris] Webber, he was somebody you hoped you’d get a chance to play for. Now I’m even hearing that all he is is a run-and-gun coach. Excuse me? Did anybody see the way he used to walk the ball up in Milwaukee, year after year? He’s always adapted to his talent.”

Nelson isn’t the only man to coach the Knicks any more than Daly was. But he is the only one with his kind of resume available and not only should the Knicks go for him, they should go for him right away. You were never going to be able to bring in a college coach and have that coach tell Patrick Ewing what to do, or Charles Oakley, or Anthony Mason. And people around the Knicks tell me Ewing put in a vote for Nelson more than a week ago.

There was another reason why the Knicks weren’t going to turn the operation over to a college coach. Because no hotshot coach has ever come out of college and won big in the NBA. Maybe Rick Pitino could have done it if he had stayed around. He went to Kentucky. And so you can still look over the list of coaches who have won NBA championships, a list that goes all the way to Red Auerbach, and not find a college coach anywhere on it. Fitch won a title with the Celtics, but he was more than a decade out of the University of Minnesota, after a long stretch with the Cavaliers.

If there is somebody out there better than Nelson, right now, I would like to hear about it. Once again: He is better than a fight with Webber. When I hear that Nelson and Derrick Coleman didn’t get along when Coleman played for him on Dream Team II, that only comes out sounding like a character reference for Nelson, and a real good one.

Nelson had some fine teams in Milwaukee. There was a time not so long ago when it seemed he was building another one in Golden State. He made mistakes there. I don’t think he should be his own general manager. I think he should just coach the Knicks. People keep saying the Knicks are doomed, even after 55 victories, even after being one layup short of the Eastern Conference finals again. It doesn’t happen with Nelson coaching them. I believe it would be the best team he ever has had.

The Knicks could drag this out all summer. No need. They’re right there with the guy they should hire; all they need to do is make their move. Everybody knows the move: a full Nelson.