Jeff Hornacek has had a roller coaster of a season in his first go-around as the New York Knicks head coach.

Jeff Hornacek was hired as the New York Knicks head coach on the second of June, 2016. He is the third coach that the franchise has had in the last two seasons. The eight months since his hiring has been a complete roller coaster ride.

The season started off with such excitement and promise. A revamp of the roster saw the addition of veterans like Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, Courtney Lee and Brandon Jennings. Despite dealing with legal issues and injuries, the Knicks were able to jump out to a 14-10 record and we’re in third place in the Eastern Conference.

Since then, they have completely gone off of the rails with a record of 7-19. Their 22-29 record is now good for eleventh in the conference.

Not only has the team been up and down all year, but so has the coach. Hornacek’s coaching style has been equal to that of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde this season.

Fans and media alike are waiting for the real Jeff Hornacek to please stand up. We begin with the stranger side of Horny:

Dr. Jekyll

Hornacek was brought in to implement his more up-tempo offense. He has managed to do just that, of course with a sprinkle of the triangle for good measure. New York is currently 15th in the league in three-point shots attempted (1307) and 17th in makes (465). Last season they only attempted 1,762 three pointers the entire year.

Injuries have been a major part of the Knicks season. It seems that everyone in the starting lineup has missed time at one point or another. When Kristaps Porzingis went on the shelf with a sore Achilles, Hornacek made probably his best decision as the Knicks head coach. He started Carmelo Anthony at the power forward position. Hornacek at one point even moved Lee to try and provide a spark with the second unit.

The former Phoenix Sun’s coach has even sometimes held players accountable for unsatisfactory effort. During a game in January, Hornacek benched Rose for the fourth quarter because of his careless play. That did not end up going over very well.

Mr. Hyde

Hornacek has definitely resembled the lead character of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde novel. As good as he has been at times, he has turned around and has been equally as bad.

After he benched Rose in that game, the point guard went missing in action for the next game. Rose insisted that he flew back to Chicago for a family issue. There were reports that he and Hornacek got into an argument after the benching and that he was unhappy about it. To this day, it seems that Hornacek has not held another player accountable for their actions.

Another thing that has been night and day with the coach is his rotations. Anthony at the power forward position was working. Once Noah and Porzingis returned from injury they were both inserted right back into the starting lineup. Jeff Hornacek’s rotations have fallen off across the board lately.

At this point in the season, rotations should be cut down to eight or nine players. Hornacek is still playing around eleven guys a night. One area that has a lot of people confused is his use of Willy Hernangomez. There has been no consistency to his playing time. One game Hernangomez will play more than twenty minutes and get a double-double. That would then be followed up with a did not play coach’s decision.

In the last 10 games, he has two DNPs and four games where he played over twenty minutes. Four of the last ten games he tallied a double-double. That includes a 16 point and 16 rebound performance Wednesday night against the Brooklyn Nets.

In the end …

Hornacek’s 22-29 record is almost identical to the 23-31 record that Derek Fisher had before he was fired a year ago.

The difference is that Fisher also had off the court issues that were surfacing in the media. The Knicks should not fire Hornacek at this point in the season.

A new coach would be their fourth coach in four seasons and, more importantly, it would be Porzingis’ fourth coach. That is not a good situation for any rising star to be in so the organization needs the real Jeff Hornacek to stand up before it becomes too late.