Steve Kerr says he never agreed to be New York Knicks head coach
By Josh Hill
The New York Knicks are still searching for a head coach and that’s due in large part to getting burned bad by Steve Kerr, who decided to coach the Golden State Warriors instead of joining rank with his former head coach Phil Jackson in New York. The story apparently went deeper than that though, as the Knicks reportedly had a verbal agreement with Kerr to become head coach before he backed out and headed out west.
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Phil Jackson himself said that there was a verbal agreement in place for Kerr to coach the Knicks but it turns out that he may have been overstating things just a bit.
According to Mitch Lawrence of the Daily News, the verbal commitment that the Knicks supposedly had with Steve Kerr really wasn’t as concrete as it seemed.
"“We didn’t have a handshake agreement or anything like that,” said Kerr. “I think Phil and I both thought it was going to happen…But in the end, Phil knew I wasn’t quite comfortable and he didn’t hold me to any of our conversations.”"
This is really just a footnote story that will only come back around when the Knicks and Warriors play each other in 2014-15 but it’s still something that will stick in the craw of Phil Jackson moving forward. He’s a man who always get what he wants but Kerr burned him to go out West and is burning him again by basically saying he was lying about the verbal agreement.
Either way, the Knicks need a head coach and they’d better get more than a verbal agreement next time around.