Report: Owner Dolan told Knicks no trades, no coaching changes coming

There are a lot of Knicks fans hoping this is the vote of confidence coaches seem to get just before they get canned.

But in what appears to be an attempt to get Knicks players to stop looking over their shoulder, owner James Dolan told his team Thursday no changes are coming, reports Marc Stein at ESPN:

New York Knicks chairman James Dolan told Knicks players in a meeting Thursday that there are no trades or changes to the coaching staff forthcoming, ESPN.com has learned.

Sources close to the situation told ESPN.com that Dolan gathered the team before the first practice in the wake of New York’s embarrassing 29-point home loss to Oklahoma City on Christmas Day largely in an attempt to hush the growing speculation about coach Mike Woodson’s job security in the wake of the Knicks’ 9-19 start.

To start, I would take this pronouncement with a grain of salt. James Dolan is a lot of things but he’s not an idiot — he doesn’t look at this roster right now and thing everything is just fine. This was likely more PR than reality.

Clearly the Knicks have had a lot of issues this season. At the top of that list is a fragile roster construction — this team won 54 games last season and got to the second round of the playoffs, but the offseason moves combined with the way the team was built from the start was likely to lead to struggles if nearly any piece was removed. Especially if those were key pieces. So when Tyson Chandler went down for a stretch with a fracture in his leg, the defense in particular fell apart. Without Raymond Felton there isn’t much depth of quality shot creation.

And when Carmelo Anthony was out Christmas Day, everything collapsed.

However on top of all that has been an effort issue that can be pinned to Woodson — did you see just across the Brooklyn Bridge on Christmas how a Bulls teams minus it’s two best scorers still fought for a win? You don’t see that with the Knicks.

It’s believed Dolan took the step in an attempt to convince Woodson’s players to band together and throw their full support behind the embattled coach to help dig New York out of the sizable hole it finds itself with essentially one-third of the regular season in the books, the sources said.

However, management also seems to get that even if the Knicks did pull it together the second half of this season and win the Atlantic Division, this team is a long way from contending. A long way. The Thunder, that is what a contending team looks like.

So the Knicks have a rebuilding plan that starts with Rajon Rondo… but that’s another tall tale for another day.