New York sports fans have a long history of jumping the gun in calling for their teams to fire a coach or trade a player. Heck, some of the very same people who begged New York Knicks team president Phil Jackson to cast interim coach Kurt Rambis aside no doubt lobbied the New York Giants to fire then-head coach Tom Coughlin after the team’s “disastrous” 0–2 start to the 2007 NFL season.

Reminder: The Giants won the Super Bowl that season.

Thankfully, general manager and owner typically let their cooler heads prevail. (And yes, Knicks owner James Dolan has never been described as rational, but bear with me here.) After all, franchises can’t win consistently when coaches — along with their strategy and preferred personnel — are endlessly revolving.

For the Knicks, that was not the case with Kurt Rambis. His ineptitude and utter lack of competence displayed during a 32–132 run at the helm of the Minnesota Timberwolves shined even brighter while holding the interim tag for the Knicks in the final 28 games of 2016 after replacing Derek Fisher.

It’s time for change.

When David Blatt was controversially let go from Cleveland and Frank Vogel was unloaded by Indiana, the two names immediately caught the eye of Knicks fans. After all, the duo has a combined .601 career win percentage, a mark that New York has eclipsed in just one season since the turn of the millennium.

In the 2012–2013 season in which the Knicks posted a 54–28 record, head coach Mike Woodson wasn’t afraid to experiment. That year’s Knicks team set an NBA record for 3s taken in a season and shifted perennial superstar Carmelo Anthony from small forward to power forward, where he led the league in points per game and set a career-best with a 24.8 player efficiency rating.

Since Jackson fired Woodson in one of his first moves as team president, the once exciting Knicks that allowed Carmelo Anthony to reach his true potential and featured a free-wheeling style of play has sputtered. The Knicks’ offensive rating (according to basketball-reference.com) under Fisher and Rambis finished 29th and 24th in the league the past two years.

Jackson has insisted that the Knicks use the outdated “triangle” offense that utilizes long, mid-range jump shots, and the Knicks have finished 12th and 14th in two-point shot attempts the past two years, but 28th in two-point field goal percentage in each year.

Woodson wasn’t perfect, his defensive schemes were as wonky as they come, but he was innovative.

When the Knicks introduced their new head coach, it wasn’t the one fans expected. It wasn’t Rambis, who Jackson could puppet from anywhere in the country and it wasn’t Vogel, a defensive-minded coach.

It was Jeff Hornacek, a coach who never ran the triangle in his tenure with the Phoenix Suns.

Taking the helm of the Suns in 2013, Hornacek was dealt one of the more odd rosters in the league that featured three starting caliber point guards in Eric Bledsoe, Goran Dragic and Leandro Barbosa. The frontcourt was a mess, featuring a very raw Alex Len, Miles Plumlee and the Morris twins. Only four players on the team — Dragic, Bledsoe, Markieff Morris and Gerald Green — had a PER above the league average of 15 and yet the Suns still managed to go 48–34.

The Suns’ pace was 95.8, good for eighth in the league. They were seventh in the league in points per game, first in fast break points, fourth in 3-point attempts and eighth in 3-point percentage.

Not only was it really, really fun to watch, but it was efficient.

Hornacek’s overachieving Suns placed 25th in the league in two-point field goal attempts, but converted such attempts at a rate that was seventh best in the NBA. The Suns fell outside the final playoff spot, but would’ve been tied for the third seed in the Eastern Conference, resulting in Hornacek being named runner-up to Gregg Poppovich for the NBA’s coach of the year award.

His second year running the show, Hornacek’s roster began to catch up with him. It’s not easy to win with the Morris twins and Len as your top rim protectors. Injuries plagued the Suns as University of Washington product Isaiah Thomas (19.7 PER), Brandan Wright (17.8 PER) and Dragic (16.7 PER) mustered only 135 combined games played. The trio held three of the top four player efficiency ratings on the team, forcing Bledsoe (18.4 PER) to often take on the entire load on offense along with the rest of a rag tag offense. The Suns’ win total and offensive rating dropped, but their pace was still third in the league.

Hornacek lasted only 49 games into his third season with the team, going 14–35 before his firing, and his replacement didn’t fare much better. The roster was a trainwreck, featuring a pissed off Markieff Morris and the top two players in minutes played being P.J. Tucker and 19-year-old Devin Booker. Brandon Knight was third despite only playing 52 games.

So why can Hornacek be successful in New York? He has two things Derek Fisher (and sure as hell Kurt Rambis) didn’t have: freedom and creativity. Hornacek had an out of sorts roster that often forced him to play four guards on the floor at a time, and he made it work. Getting rid of a true point guard was a huge success for the 2012–2013 Knicks that often ran a combination of Jason Kidd, Raymond Felton and Pablo Prigioni together on the floor at the same time.

There’s players that don’t fit his style (I refuse to say system, because Hornacek adapts), like Jose Calderon and Robin Lopez, but having forwards that thrive in pick-and-roll and isolation offenses like Anthony and Kristaps Porzingis should have fans salivating at the mouth.

It wouldn’t be odd to still be skeptical, after all, it’s still the Knicks and Hornacek’s teams haven’t shined on the defensive end. But at least he won’t suggest playing Porzingis at small forward, play Robin Lopez 45 minutes in a game that doesn’t matter or date his players’ girlfriends.

Maybe he’s too nice of a guy for as large a market like New York, but he’s the change this city needs.