The New York Knicks basketball team and the English football side are both sporting disasters. New York has one of the highest payrolls in the league and finds themselves last in the weakest division in basketball. England is full of superstar players and personalities, but just paid their ex-coach 2.5 million pounds to bugger off.
The Knicks – a team I’ve supported since 84, when I got a Knicks hat as a kid, to 99 when Toronto was given an NBA franchise – really stink. So does England. Both teams are struggling having implemented the same strategy. Load up on big name stars and talent will win. What both need is to build a consistent, cohesive, supporting team.
Isiah Thomas has gone out and signed or traded for every big name he could sign for and he’s got a team that on paper could beat a lot of other teams on a position by position basis. The England squad have the same strong line up in comparison to other nations. And yet both teams lose, badly, to teams they supposedly should beat.
The problem is neither of these teams is actually a team. They’re both a bunch of individual players. Not a team. Both teams are full of guys who play one way and can’t adjust to playing with the other players they’re on the court/pitch with. And so both lose, badly, to teams they should beat.
Here’s my solution. Blow them both up. Starting from the Head of the FA and the President of the Knicks. Get rid of both managers – at least England has already done this, I give Zeke till the end of the year. And then figure out what kind of teams you want to model the squads after and get players who fit the mold, play that style and want to win. Look at teams like San Antonio, Detroit, Dallas in the NBA and squads like Italy, France (when they were winning everything) and figure out systems that work. Then go out and stick to a playing strategy and play that strategy.
The problem is it’s easier to say this is what you should do and it’s harder to actually do it and finding the right guys to do it is almost impossible. England is talking about a bunch of guys who have never managed an international side! NYK is looking at peple like Chris Mullin, who haven’t won jack!
This is especially difficult when there’s so much money involved and most of the decision makers are more focused on the bottom line then they are on winning. The only people who seem to really care are paying for their seats to watch these sad states of teams play. And that’s a real shame.
All of this makes me wonder if the guys behind myfootballclub.com, where supporters get together and buy a team, had the right idea. The fans and their community probably would do a much better job then the guys with the suits!
