It has been a while since the Knicks were last in the playoffs (2013) but despite the lack of recent success, they have something other teams do not that could possibly lure the top free agents to town.

David Fizdale.

The Knicks new head coach is highly respected around the league, so much so, that Heat guard Dwyane Wade said the perception about New York is changing.

"Players around the league want to play for Fiz," Wade said in an exclusive interview with the New York Daily News. "Now that doesn't mean it's going to happen right away because things happen - guys stay in certain places or they go team up with someone else. But if you ask every player around the league who is the coach they want to play for, Fiz's name would come up."

The Knicks have struggled to garner the attention of top free agents in recent years, failing to even get as much as a meeting with Kevin Durant in 2016.

Yet Durant and Celtics guard Kyrie Irving have both been speculated as targets for the Knicks next summer and the praise Fizdale is given by guys like Wade and LeBron James may make playing for him more attractive.

Fizdale, of course, was an assistant with the Miami Heat during the "Big Three" era and Wade credits the assistant for elevating his game.

"I allowed him to take my game to the place where I could still play now at 36 without having the same athleticism and everything I had when he first came here," Wade said. "It's tough. He came in and I'm a six-time All-Star already. So to sit there and show me a different way, to be able to explain it to me, to be able to give me the vision, it's a talent he has.

"And I know a lot of people in New York are seeing that. He knows how to get to people."

Fizdale so far is 1-3 this season with the Knicks and is without star forward Kristaps Porzingis for possibly the whole season.

Yet, he has the Knicks playing competitive basketball and that may be just part of the culture change that is needed at the Garden.

"It comes with what the players are doing on the court," Wade added. "It comes with what the organization is doing. And other things as well. So he's definitely going to try to change the culture but it's a lot of other things that goes with it."

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