We Can t Go Home Again Clarence Walker
Sometimes, it's not enough to only crave the fairytale ending. Sometimes, reality gets in the way, takes a Zippo lighter to the final few chapters, turns them to ash. Sometimes, it turns out Thomas Wolfe was right. Sometimes, you can't get abode once more.
That isn't the manner this leg of Kemba Walker's basketball journeying was supposed to go. Dorsum in August, when the Knicks first imported him via Oklahoma City, there were firsthand recollections of Walker the hoops phenom out of Rice Loftier, the latest in a long lineage of New York point-guard royalty that dates to Dick McGuire.
There were cherry-red flags, sure: his age, his recent injury history, the 25,000 NBA minutes' worth of tread already on his tires. The greeting he got from the Garden, opening night against the Celtics, was a welcome-home roar he'd waited his whole life to hear. And if just the closing credits could've rolled and then, maybe everyone would've walked abroad satisfied.
Just there was very piddling satisfaction from at that place.
"We knew in that location was adventure involved," motorbus Tom Thibodeau said Wed, subsequently Walker decided to shut himself downward for the residue of the flavour, effectively ending his tenure equally a Knick. "And we thought it was worth it."
Every bit it turns out, the warning flares had all been fair. Walker was a step slower than before. He shot barely xl per centum from the field. He couldn't guard anyone. Thibodeau was the offset to do something near this, gluing Walker to the bench 20 games into the season, a good for you scratch for nine straight in December.
There he may have stayed, permanently, if the Knicks hadn't gotten ransacked by COVID-19, if Derrick Rose hadn't gone down with an ankle injury. Walker came back. He had a few throwback nights, including a 44-point explosion against the Wizards on December. 23, and a triple-double confronting the Hawks on Christmas Day.
Simply that was a mirage. He got hurt again, and when he returned he truly was a shell of what he'd been. Across his final 13 games as a Knicks he averaged only 8.1 points, shot only 37 per centum. What happened Wednesday has felt inevitable for weeks; the question was really if it would happen this way or with a buyout. Now, Walker gets to try and get well enough to play again. It volition about certainly exist elsewhere; with an expiring contract next summertime, he is officially an asset for the Knicks.
More valuable as a line item than a basketball player. Yes. The Hollywood ending sure did wind up in flames.
"We fully back up Kemba'due south conclusion to shut information technology down for the remainder of the flavour and to utilise this time to prepare for next season," Knicks president Leon Rose said in a statement. "His long-term success on the court remains our priority."
That amounts to a concession voice communication from the Knicks' dominate, for whom Walker was (along with Evan Fournier) a prize pickup of the summer, in the hope the Knicks could build on last year's 41-31 success story.
Instead, Walker (and Fournier, to a lesser extent) become emblematic of what sure feels similar a troubling strand of dysfunction percolating between the two virtually important members of the Knicks' hierarchy. Neither player fits snugly into Thibodeau'south favored arrangement, and while the coach said the right things when they were acquired — and has continued to starting time Fournier — Walker's benching was clearly a cudgel the double-decker used to prove his displeasure.
Walker was probably going to be further minimized anyway. Rose is expected back, and though Alec Burks will probably offset at bespeak for at present, Rose will immediately gobble up Walker'south minutes. Thibodeau has said he is committed to turning the Knicks into a meritocracy over the rest of the season, and while Walker wouldn't have been lone, at that place'southward little question he would've fallen prey to that the way his game has rust-covered.
Either mode, the narrative had already been broken. What began in The Bronx, at the Sack Wern Houses in Soundview and moved on to the Gauchos and to Rice and to one unforgettable week at the Garden while he was at UConn was supposed to culminate in this g final deed, a No. 8 on his back and "New York" on his chest.
Except someone got their hands on that version of the story. And someone took a Zippo lighter to them.
Source: https://nypost.com/2022/02/23/this-wasnt-how-kemba-walkers-knicks-run-was-supposed-to-go/
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