Knicks owner James Dolan is expected to let team president Phil Jackson go on Wednesday morning, league sources confirmed.
General manager Steve Mills will guide the team through free agency, ESPN reported.
The parting of ways between Dolan and Jackson accelerated after the Knicks decided they would not buy out Carmelo Anthony. A source told The Post Jackson never flew to Orlando on Tuesday with the summer league team, coaches and rest of the team’s brass.
The team was planning to run the triangle when they started practicing Wednesday (games start Saturday), but now it is unclear what the team’s plan will be on the floor.
In February, Dolan said in an interview he was extending the final two years of Jackson’s five-year pact, explaining he never said the Zen Master had a timetable for winning. Jackson, 71, makes $12 million per year, so if Dolan relieves Jackson, it could cost the Knicks $24 million. Jackson took over for Mills in 2014.
Dolan also had told confidantes that Jackson’s best asset was the fact that Jackson took the heat off Dolan himself.
But since Dolan’s February vote of confidence, things have become a lot gloomier.
The Knicks are at a crossroads as they enter free agency, which begins at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, with no clear direction. Jackson has been feuding with both Anthony and Kristaps Porzingis. He has publicly sought to trade Anthony, and his cold war with the 7-foot-3 Latvian, who blew off his exit meeting, led to Jackson listening to trade offers in the days leading to the draft.
“Three years ago, I signed a contract with Phil Jackson,” Dolan said on Feb. 11. “The man who has more championship rings as far as I know than anybody else. He was the best guy we thought we could find to run the New York Knicks. And I made an agreement with him.
“The agreement didn’t say that you have to have this amount of wins by this time or anything of the sort like that. I literally turned over the entire basketball operations over to Phil and Steve [now the GM]. And that is where I am at. Whether I like the results or don’t like the results, I am going to honor that agreement, all the way to the end.”
Porzingis is destined to become a 2019 free agent — as would have Jackson, whose insistence on running the triangle has been met with league-wide resistance. Jackson has had three coaches in his three-plus years.
There was a recent report that Jackson, who may be on pain medication because of his hip and knee replacements, was dozing off during a recent pre-draft workout.
Dolan was not in the war room on draft night, instead playing a concert with his blues band in New York. Dolan said that night it was an indication that he is hands off.
In an interview with Fox to promote the show, Dolan was queried about the struggling Knicks’ fortunes. “Ask Phil,’’ he said.
The Knicks have become an even greater laughingstock since their regular season ended in mid-April. During the NBA awards show Monday night, Drake poked fun at them during his opening monologue, saying, “[New York] is the city that never sleeps, mostly because everyone that lives here is afraid of being traded.”
In his three full seasons, Jackson’s Knicks have posted records of 17-65, 32-50 and 31-51. He took over in March 2014, one season after the Knicks went 54-28 and months after Dolan told The Post he considered the team as having a title-contending roster. The Knicks rallied late in the 2013-14 season, but missed the playoffs by one game, before Jackson embarked on all his changes, including installing the triangle.