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The most stunning part about the Knicks snapping their 27-year NBA finals drought isn’t the 22½-point average margin of victory they posted over an 11-game playoff winning streak, or New Yorkers somehow resisting the urge to tear the city apart in celebration, or even the fact that neither the iPhone nor Facebook existed back in 1999.
No, the most surprising aspect when they sealed the Eastern Conference finals on the Cleveland Cavaliers’ home court was the Knicks’ star guard, Jalen Brunson, talking about his pride in a winning culture that “starts with Mr Dolan”.
It’s one thing to shout out the boss when cornered in public, but placing Knicks owner James Dolan at the very top of the list of people responsible for the team’s dramatic turnaround feels like thanking the iceberg for the movie Titanic. The Knicks’ redemption arc doesn’t hit as hard, or quite deliver the same catharsis, without Dolan’s special blend of chaos and dysfunction.
This may come as a shock to fans boarding the Knicks bandwagon, but before Kylie Jenner and the influencer set started turning up courtside, Dolan had spent decades in a race with Dan Snyder (formerly of the NFL’s Washington Commanders) and Bob Nutting (of MLB’s Pittsburgh Pirates) for the title of worst owner in US sports.
In 2018, Bleacher Report described him as “masterful at destroying two beloved franchises”, the second being the NHL’s Rangers, who haven’t won the Stanley Cup since 1994. In a lengthy interview with ESPN’s Ian O’Connor in 2018, Dolan said Knicks fans who spotted him around town would “shout something horrible and run away. It’s not fun.” In another digression about selling the team, an idea he has long insisted is well off the table, Dolan spoke more urgently about his responsibility to shareholders than to fans.
At the turn of the century, Dolan was a New York nepo baby poster boy – a recovering addict who inherited a multibillion-dollar cable TV and sports empire and ran it with a rumpled authority that carried through even to his personal presentation: he painted himself as the Long Island boy who owns Madison Square Garden and once had his blues-rock band, JD & The Straight Shot, open for the Eagles. For Knicks fans, he was a byword for chronic mismanagement more commonly known as “Jim Fucking Dolan”. He traded away franchise cornerstone Patrick Ewing in 2000 and signed Allan Houston to a $100m extension that prompted a league exemption for teams buried under bad contracts. Under Dolan’s ownership, the Knicks found themselves in salary-cap purgatory time and again, something that left them too constrained to pursue top free agents and too mediocre to rebuild through the draft.
There’s more. Under Dolan, the Knicks traded for middling center Eddy Curry despite his documented heart condition, hired Phil Jackson a decade too late for the wrong job, and reportedly benched the cheerleading squad during a grim loss to Charlotte (a team source later denied the story was true). Rather than attend the 2017 draft, which took place in New York, Dolan chose to play a JD & The Straight Shot gig across town. While we’re on the subject of his music endeavors, in 2018 he wrote a song about not knowing his former friend Harvey Weinstein was a sexual predator.
Then there’s the treatment of the fans themselves. Knicks fans who voice frustration with Dolan – whether on picket lines outside Madison Square Garden or during in-game “sell the team” chants – risk permanent banishment. Famously, MSG security denied Spike Lee entry to the Garden on a whim in 2020 when he arrived through a gate reserved for Garden employees and media – as had been his custom for nearly 30 years.
Beat writers are careful not to be too critical of Dolan or the team, as MSG staff hawkishly manage access. In a recent interview with investigative reporter Pablo Torre, one Knicks beat reporter, speaking on the condition of anonymity, suggested the team’s media workroom may be bugged. Even former players tread lightly: Charles Oakley has been a ghost at MSG since he was hauled out of the arena for heckling Dolan at a 2017 game.
Dolan’s abiding loyalty to Detroit Pistons great Isiah Thomas was another staggering low point. In 2007, Dolan’s Madison Square Garden company was ordered to pay $11.6m to settle a lawsuit brought by a female team executive who had alleged sexual harassment by Thomas; Dolan, who had reportedly fired the woman, personally contributed $3.5m to the settlement. In 2015, Dolan brought Thomas on to the New York Liberty – his WNBA franchise. Former NBA commissioner David Stern, noting both the controversy and the Knicks’ lack of success during Dolan’s tenure, described him as “not a model of intelligent management”. (Dolan sold the Liberty to billionaires Joe and Clara Wu Tsai in 2019).
Only the tools Dolan uses to indulge his worst instincts have become more intelligent. Last month, a damning report in Wired revealed the extent to which Dolan has transformed his vast entertainment empire into a surveillance state, one that uses biometric surveillance technology to track perceived enemies in real time – from Oakley to a graphic designer who sold “Ban Dolan” T-shirts years ago to a fan whom Dolan personally deemed a security risk, monitoring her movements down to drink orders and bathroom trips before banning her from the Garden. MSG dismissed the Wired report, which stemmed from a lawsuit brought by a former member of the company’s security team, as “reckless”.
It is hard to look at Dolan’s digitally driven paranoia without being reminded of another New York nepo baby poster boy. Sure enough, it was only a matter of time before Donald Trump climbed back aboard the Knicks bandwagon, confirming reports that he plans to attend the finals at the Garden next week – another instance of a major sporting event being conscripted for his presidential stagecraft. Of course Trump made sure to add that the Knicks “have really suffered for years”, and that he was “invited by numerous people” including Dolan. Incidentally, Dolan, who married his second wife at Mar-a-Lago, remains a fierce Trump supporter despite the president undercutting his grand plans to redevelop Madison Square Garden.
So how does one of the worst owners in sports wind up not only riding herd on the NBA’s hottest team, but drawing credit for the turnaround? Well, Dolan may have his faults, but cheapskating the Knicks is not one of them. After burning through one basketball executive after another – from Thomas to Jackson to Indiana Pacers architect Donnie Walsh – Dolan turned to Leon Rose, a former agent who had closed a number of client-favorable deals with the Knicks, Curry’s albatross contract among them. Dolan then largely stayed out of the way as Rose reshaped the roster: trading for Josh Hart, OG Anunoby and Karl-Anthony Towns, drafting the rangy center Mitchell Robinson, and ponying up to bring in Brunson from the Dallas Mavericks in an above-market deal that, in retrospect, looks like one of the NBA’s biggest bargains. Broken clock and all that.
It’s to the point now where any fantasy about this Knicks team winning the NBA title has to reconcile with the jarring reality of the Larry O’Brien trophy being handed to Dolan – a truly strange image to consider. And while some fans now politely applaud Dolan for finally getting the Knicks on the right track and may even endure a JD & The Straight Shot performance to mark the occasion, most are not inclined to excuse the years of emotional punishment it took to get here. After the Knicks came back to beat the Cavaliers in Game 1 of the East finals, Dolan gave away an Anunoby-signed game ball to a young fan waiting for him outside MSG afterward. Lucky kid can hardly fathom the Knicks’ misery Trump speaks of so authoritatively.
In the 2018 ESPN interview, Dolan said he didn’t think he would take part in a parade if the Knicks ever won a championship. Some free advice: stick with that plan. It’s one thing to thank the boss after a game in Cleveland – which, to be fair, coach Mike Brown (another brilliant Rose addition) did as well. But in New York, celebration and grievance can’t help but ride the same subway car. True blue Knicks fans can forgive, but they shouldn’t soon forget.
