Phil Jackson talking out of his behind to gain headlines shouldn't be anything new to you. But as a multi-millionaire curator/unpaid intern at a Purdue blog in the corner of the internet, it is my duty to tell you when anyone calls out Purdue's two most successful basketball stars in school history in one sentence. From Part 5 of Charley Rosen's "The Phil Files" on ESPN: (emphasis mine)

"It's tricky. The question is who to offer the big money to? A guy who's an established player or someone who has sky-high potential?

Also, there are, and always have been, really good players who are not winners -- guys like Joe Barry Carroll, Glenn Robinson and many more whom I don't care to name. And then there's someone like Marc Gasol, who's certainly a winner and would have to be paid somewhere around $18 million, a number that would severely limit what we could offer other players. We'd wind up with starters only getting about $5 million. So there are endless ramifications to the salary cap situation, and rules within rules. Most of the details are not new to me since I've been dealing with them for about 10 years. However, some tweaks were made in the system when I was out of the NBA in 2011."

Phil's gonna be Phil, I guess. Criticism of Joe Barry is a little bit expected, as 'lackluster performance' largely defined his legacy (and his nickname, "Joe Barely Cares"). It's always been super interesting to me that a dude nicknamed "Barely Cares" put up 20 points, 8 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 block and 1 steal per game in 7 years with the Warriors. The 2015 Knicks would love to pay that guy $400M over 5 years! But whatever, that's a different argument for a different day.

Big Dog, though? I understand that his contract negotiations as a rookie gave NBA suits and reporters a bad taste for Robinson right off the bat, signing a 10 year $68M contract which is still the biggest first contract in league history. But it's pretty well-established that Big Dog was a beast, one of the first dominant stretch big men in the league, and alongside Ray Allen and Sam Cassell helped lead the Bucks to the 2001 Eastern Conference Finals. The 2001-2002 season did feature a huge collapse that caused the Bucks to miss the playoffs, but nobody is pinning that "can't win" label on Allen or Cassell. Big Dog would also go on to be a role player on the 2005 Spurs championship team, which (if I read my history correctly) was exactly what Phil's role was on the 1973 championship Knicks team. 21 points, 6 rebounds, 3 assists, and 1 steal in 8 years with the Bucks ain't too shabby.

But hey, who am I to question the President of a team that won 17 games last year? Especially as the leader of one of the worst Knicks teams of all time, which is quite the extraordinary feat. Keep pretending like it was you that didn't want Gasol, and not Gasol that didn't want you.

(Someone tell JMoney, clearly a Knick die-hard, that I'm sorry.)