data-mm-id=”_vq96tuuop”>Life as a fan of the New York Knicks is a constant struggle. The dawn of each day brings some kind of public disaster or meltdown for the franchise. It's been this way for so long I doubt any Knicks fans even remembers what it's like to be happy about the state of their team. The most recent issue to have popped up was the extraordinarily weak statement put out by James Dolan yesterday, which was a day late and a dollar short anyway. Max Kellerman ripped Dolan and the Knicks, saying a grade-school kid could have written that in five minutes. Brian Windhorst went on First Take today and told the crew that the fallout has extended far beyond public bashing in the media. "The Knicks … approval rating amongst players is so low right now, it's devastating for their hopes to appeal to [free agents] going forward."—@WindhorstESPN on the statement released by the Knicks on racial injustice. pic.twitter.com/ISRBwAjw1J— First Take (@FirstTake) June 10, 2020Say it ain't so, Windy! The Knicks haven't been good since the early part of the decade and have rarely been a desirable free agent destination under Dolan. But it's always been hard to count them out because, well, they're the Knicks and they play at Madison Square Garden. It's basketball mecca, even if it's been a long time since the hometown team has played like that. The generation of players who came in after Michael Jordan saw his reverence for MSG and felt the same way. We live in a new world now, though. One where Dolan's mistakes have piled up to a nearly-insurmountable level. One where players care quite a lot about screw-ups like feeling it "isn't his place" to put out a statement on the killing of George Floyd, then putting out one weeks later that couldn't have felt more disingenuous. All it takes is one star player to voluntarily join the Knicks to make them cool again. But as time goes on, it feels more and more likely the stain of James Dolan might be too much for what used to be one of the NBA's proudest franchises.
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