Steve Mills, president of basketball operations of the NBA's New York Knicks reacts before the preseason game against the Brooklyn Nets at the Barclays Center in the Brooklyn, New York, October 3, 2018.
James Dolan, owner of the NBA's New York Knicks, finally made his move. On Tuesday, he fired Steve Mills, president of basketball operations of the team. General manager Scott Perry will take over.
Mills became the GM and vice president of basketball operations of the Knicks in 2013. When Phil Jackson stepped down in 2017, Mills took over to become the president. Last December, the team sacked head coach David Fizdale and since then, there have been rumors about Mills possibly losing his job very soon.
It's really hard to defend any of the above three. First let's look at New York's record since 2013. The 2012-13 was the last season they made the playoffs with 54-28. The following records were: 37-45 (2013-14), 17-65 (2014-15), 32-50 (2015-16), 31-51 (2016-17), 29-53 (2017-18), 17-65 (2018-19).
Currently, they are 15-36 in the 2019-20 season.
Joakim Noah of the New York Knicks reacts in the game against the Indiana Pacers at the Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana, December 4, 2017.
According ESPN, since Mills joined the Knicks' front office, the team won 178 games and lost 365 others, the worst record of all 30 teams. Fairly speaking, Mills tried to improve the franchise. He signed Joakim Noah a four-year 74-million-U.S.-dollar-contract and added Derrick Rose to the squad. Considering that the Knicks back then still had Carmelo Anthony who averaged 22. 4 points in the following season, the team was expected to achieve something.
What happened then?
Rose left in the next summer as a free agent. Anthony requested the team to trade him and they had to send him to the Oklahoma City Thunder. As for Noah, he played in total 53 games for the Knicks in the following two seasons before he was waived. Noah's stats in these two seasons were 5.0 points +8.8 rebounds and 1.7 points + 2.0 rebounds and the Knicks will have to pay him 6.4 million U.S. dollars until the 2021-22 season.
In the summer of 2017, Mills acted again by giving Tim Hardaway Jr. a four-year 71-million-dollar deal. After two years, he was traded to the Dallas Mavericks with the team's only successful draft selection, Kristaps Porzingis.
In the summer of 2019, Mills again drew the league's attention by spending 80 million U.S. dollars, the precious space they collected so hard, signing six players including four power forwards. Why? Because not even one big name ever considered joining the Knicks.
New York Knicks' high draft pick selections in recent years: Kristaps Porzingis #6, Frank Ntilikina#11, Kevin Knox #20 and R.J. Barrett #9.
Like other tanking teams, New York received multiple high draft picks in return for their disappointing records. Nonetheless, here are the names they selected: Porzingis who is now dropping 17.8 points per game in the Mavericks, Frank Ntilikina who finally reached six in average scoring after over two years, Kevin Knox who saw his points per game drop from 12.8 to 7.1 and R.J. Barrett who could score 14.1 points at a field goal rate of 39.3 percent (league average is 43.7 percent).
According ESPN, the Knicks' owner Dolan already started looking for a new president and he wants Masai Ujiri, the ace manager of the league. However, if Dolan sticks to his habit of interfering with everything in team management, no one will be able to save the Madison Square Garden.