Jackson stumbles through Knicks' high point

For the Knicks, this should have been the best of times. Returning to Madison Square Garden as conquering heroes with four straight wins and a record that is a high point of the Phil Jackson regime. Across from them awaited the test of LeBron James and the defending champion Cavaliers.

But nothing ever seems that easy for the Knicks. Instead of riding high they came in under the cloud of more self-induced controversy courtesy of Jackson, and the troubling news that Derrick Rose was not playing, instead headed to the hospital to undergo an MRI to assure that there was no structural damage to his back.

In finally providing a kind of, sort of, apology to James for a comment he made last month, Jackson left open the still dangling inability to push aside his ego and just say that he made a mistake. And to add to the mix, he went on in his latest interview to tweak his own star, Carmelo Anthony - the same player who had already sided with his friend, James, over Jackson in the first issue.

James and Jackson have said that they won’t cross paths. James, the NBA’s most celebrated player and the newly minted Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, still is feeling bitterness toward Jackson. And Jackson, once among the greatest coaches in the NBA, still is keeping his ego above common sense.

Jackson, who has become a nearly mute leader of the Knicks organization, even as the team has finally begun to present a watchable show on the court, raised the ire of James when he conducted a rare interview with ESPN last month. He veered in odd directions, tweaking not just LeBron James, but Pat Riley, Gregg Popovich and Mike Conley Jr., too. On James, he disclosed an odd second-hand tale of the Heat being forced to provide special treatment to the star - and in describing it, he referred to James’ business associate, Maverick Carter, as his “posse.”

Carter immediately tweeted out his displeasure with what he saw as a disrespectful comment. And for weeks Jackson was silent before finally appearing on CBS Sports Network’s “We Need To Talk” Tuesday. Given the opportunity to apologize, to put this all aside, Jackson opted to, well, sort of apologize but not really, depicting the comment as something he, “could regret,” but mostly saying that he couldn’t talk about other teams' players, which is what he always does and gets himself in trouble for more often than he should.

"That's a topic I'm not going to discuss because, one, we're not supposed to discuss other teams' players in this position that I have here," Jackson said. "So I violated one of the tenets of our thing. And the obvious thing is, the word itself carries connotation. And I just don't understand that part of it, the word. So I guess word choice could be something I could regret. But yeah, talking about other teams' players, that's out of the box.”

Jackson then was asked if he would seek out James to clear the air, decided that no one was hurt by the comment - even if James has made it clear that he was.

“No, it's water under the bridge," Jackson said. "I don't think there was anybody hurt or harmed in this situation. I think LeBron's friend obviously had an issue with it. So we just let it go. It's not enough to talk about it.”

Jackson has never been thought of as a racist and the outcry that the comment was meant in that way was, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, just an odd word choice by a 70-year-old white man. It would have been easy enough to apologize, explain that no offense was meant, the next day. Jackson instead retweeted his friend and Knicks’ scout, Clarence Gaines Jr., speaking of the “Posse Foundation.”

No one was bailing him out on his comments about Anthony

“Carmelo a lot of times, wants to hold the ball longer than [the Knicks want],” Jackson said. “We have a rule, if you hold a pass two seconds you benefit the defense. So he has a little bit of a tendency to hold it for three, four, five seconds, and then everybody comes to a stop and that is one of the things we work with.”

Asked about the comment, Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek, who has seen Anthony hit game-winning shots twice in the last 11 days and carried the team to a win in Miami on Tuesday with 35 points, wasn’t biting.

“Yeah, I think there’s probably times that happens,” Hornacek said. “But then there’s other times when he does what he did [Tuesday] night and just carries us. It’s a fine balance. He’s a star player who can really create his own shot from that midrange area. Sometimes we talk about maybe moving the ball and holding it, maybe it’s a second or two too long for a normal guy, but for Carmelo it’s fine because he can make that play.

“We just have to make sure the other guys understand they still should cut and Carmelo, when we keep going to him at those spots he’ll make passes out of there. That’s when we’ll become really good. … Teams force 4-on-3 opportunities with pick and rolls. We just do it with Carmelo.”

The Knicks may rely on Anthony even more if Rose is sidelined for any significant time. Hornacek said that the plan was for Rose to be on the plane to Sacramento with the team Thursday morning, but the pain was enough that he was forced to head for an MRI. Rose has been a solid starter for the Knicks, but he has a history of 228 games missed over the last five seasons.

“Right now he went off to get an MRI just to make sure there is nothing structurally wrong and then he’ll start to continue working with the trainers and try to get him back for the next game,” he said. “He didn’t know how he was going to feel. So he got his sleep and then came in early, saw the doctors and did a lot of testing on him. He was still pretty sore so they decided sort of precautionary to make sure before they get going with their other treatments.”

Email: popper@northjersey.com