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 Grunfeld fired as Knicks' president, GM
Posted: Wednesday April 21, 1999 09:24 PM
NEW YORK (AP) -- In a front office shakeup curious for its timing, Ernie Grunfeld took the fall Wednesday for the problems surrounding the New York Knicks as he was removed as president and general manager. Madison Square Garden president Dave Checketts, acknowledging a rift between Grunfeld and coach Jeff Van Gundy, will take over the day-to-day operations for the rest of the season. "The organization has not functioned well together," Checketts said. "With what we've spent on salaries and what we've done as an organization, to be a .500 club and in ninth place is unacceptable. "The organization was not on the same page in a lot of categories. I was not going to accept any more divisions, people on different pages, people looking like they had different agendas. We have one agenda -- to make the playoffs." The shakeup comes with just eight games left in the regular season and the Knicks, with an NBA-high $63 million payroll, on a season-high four-game losing streak. At 21-21, the Knicks are ninth in the Eastern Conference and in danger of missing the playoffs for the first time in more than a decade. The announcement of Grunfeld's reassignment came after the team held a 2 1/2-hour practice in Purchase, N.Y. Afterward, the players were spirited away to a meeting at which Checketts told them of the decision. "I thought stuff would happen after the season, but I'm not necessarily shocked," center Chris Dudley said. "In this business, you never know." "The timing of it is a little ironic," said Latrell Sprewell, who was fined $25,000 by Checketts for comments made by his agent, Robert Gist, that appeared Wednesday in the New York Post. The agent ripped Van Gundy and Grunfeld and said Sprewell would demand to be traded if the Knicks planned to bring him off the bench again next year. Asked if there would be any changes to the starting lineup Friday night against Charlotte, Van Gundy said: "I don't know. We'll see." The acquisition of Sprewell was one of several major moves made by Grunfeld that have not panned out. The team's GM and president since 1996 and a member of the front office since 1990, Grunfeld was one of the most aggressive executives in the league when it came to making trades. The past four seasons have been marked by substantial turnover on the roster. Yet each year, the club has been knocked out in the second round of the playoffs. Grunfeld's latest moves were the ones for which he has taken the most heat. He traded the team's most popular player and hardest worker, Charles Oakley, to Toronto for Marcus Camby. He also traded John Starks, Chris Mills and Terry Cummings to Golden State for Sprewell. Sprewell and Camby have not fit in with the Knicks, and both are unhappy coming off the bench. New York has played inconsistently all season, losing to teams it is supposed to beat and suffering numerous breakdowns in the fourth quarter. Speculation has been rampant about the futures of Grunfeld and Van Gundy, and Checketts' own job security has been brought into question, too. The Knicks, along with the New York Rangers of the NHL, are owned by Cablevision Systems. Checketts said the reassignment of Grunfeld does not mean Van Gundy's job is any more secure. The coach, who was not available for comment after Grunfeld's reassignment was announced, has one year remaining on his contract. "There are no winners in today's announcement, there's no power struggle won by anybody, and no, it's not a show of confidence in anybody," Checketts said. "The problem is that all of the steps that we have taken as an organization were not paying off. We're not getting the kind of results from those steps that we deserve. So I asked [Grunfeld] to accept a different role so that over the next eight games and playoffs I can get a good view of what's going wrong. "This move today was about allowing me to get the information I need to make judgments in the offseason." Grunfeld's new title will be special consultant. Checketts said a new team president would be named in the offseason.
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