The New York Knicks currently stand as far and away the hottest team in the NBA: Thursday's comeback victory over the Indiana Pacers was one of their most impressive yet, erasing a deficit that reached as high as 15 before Jalen Brunson's 40-point output proved to be enough to stifle an upset bid.
New York's modern success affords fans a chance to take a consequence-free trip down dark memory lane, back to the dark times of the David Fizdale era. Former New Yorker Elfird Payton was more than happy to steer the ship down that cruel path, documenting the final hours of Fizdale's cursed tenure.
“We come into practice, and we go in the film room, coach come in the film room, and this (guy) put on, like, Martin Luther King speeches, or something crazy like that,” Payton recalled on the Run Your Race podcast. “Before that, the assistant coach comes on talking about there’s thieves in the temple. What are you talking about, my (guy)? We got a game tomorrow. What coverage are we in? What is you talking about? Thieves in the temple."
"Then they come in and put on the MLK thing, get up there and is like ‘You don’t always get to see the foundation that you made’, or something crazy like that ... Next day, he’s fired. So I guess he knew that something was coming.”
Payton, currently repping the Indiana Mad Ants (the Pacers' G League affiliate), played two seasons with the Knicks (2019-21), which began with the final 22 games of FIzdale's cursed tenure.
A two-time champion as an assistant on Miami's staff, Fizdale failed to find any sort of momentum with a depleted Knicks roster: he won only 17 games in his debut season and had a 4-18 mark before he was fired and replaced on an interim basis by G League Westchester coach Mike Miller. Current boss Tom Thibodeau took over after the season ended prematurely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
To Payton's point, the Knicks dropped their final two games under his watch by a combined 79 points, including a 129-92 embarrassment at Madison Square Garden to close things out. Fizdale has not held a head coaching role since and is currently enrolled on the Phoenix Suns' staff as an assistant.
With Thibodeau leading the way, the Knicks currently sit in the third spot on the Eastern Conference playoff bracket. They'll return to action on Saturday night against the Los Angeles Lakers (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC).
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