David Fizdale Breaks Silence on Coaching Tanking Knicks Team

Donating his record meant exactly what it sounds like. The Knicks finished 17-65 that 2018-19 season, the worst record in the NBA, hoping to land the first pick in the draft lottery.

David Fizdale on What the Knicks Tank Era Really Cost Him

It did not work out. The New Orleans Pelicans won the lottery and took Zion Williamson first overall. New York dropped to third and selected RJ Barrett out of Duke.

Barrett spent four and a half seasons as a Knick, averaging 18.1 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 2.8 assists per game, before being traded to the Toronto Raptors in December 2023 as part of the OG Anunoby deal. He's currently averaging 18.1 points per game for Toronto this season.

The losing season came with a promise attached to it. The Knicks fully expected Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving to sign in New York that summer and make it all worth it.

"Our people seemed to have thought KD and Kyrie for sure was coming to us, that s*** didn't work out," he said.

Left without a star to build around, the roster Fizdale went into 2019-20 with had talent scattered across every position but no real identity.

Veterans like Julius Randle, Marcus Morris, and Taj Gibson shared the floor with young players like RJ Barrett, Mitchell Robinson, and Kevin Knox, while three different point guards competed for minutes.

"When you look at that roster in totality, solid players throughout but when you put them on the floor together, the pieces for me just wasn't working," he said.

Fizdale was fired 22 games into that season at 4-18. Assistant Mike Miller finished the year as interim, going 17-27 with the same group. Tom Thibodeau was hired the following summer and eventually took the Knicks to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2025, the franchise's deepest run in over two decades. Looking back, Fizdale said the whole experience came down to one hard truth.

"If I was doing it over again, I would have fought more to build a team early on and not cash in my record. That's the hard part for coaches when you agree to the, you know, I'm just gonna say it, tanking. When you tank, you're supposed to tank to build something bigger. It's not supposed to be a tank to whatever happens," he said.

He said coming out the other side made him a far better coach. The Knicks built their contender eventually, just through a completely different path than anyone expected when Fizdale first took the job.