In April, Phil Jackson emerged briefly from his hermitage to commune with reporters. Asked about the Knicks’ miserable record and distance from an N.B.A. championship, he offered a Colonel Blimp huff. I am about playing the game in the correct fashion, he said, which is to say with rigid adherence to the triangle offense.
“I didn’t come here just to particularly win a championship,” he explained.
Well, mission accomplished.
In the tragic opera that has been the Knicks for the past two decades, Jackson will play as a confounding, comic intermezzo. Previously known as a visionary coach in possession of more championship rings than fingers, Jackson spent his return to Gotham reimagining himself as an aging grouch who waxed wistful for a more artful and earthbound game.