James Dolan conducted his first sit-down interview in seven years this week, and the New York Knicks' owner discussed Mike Woodson's status as head coach amid a 3-8 start to the season.

"I have a lot of confidence in Woodson, and one thing I can say about Mike is he has the respect of all the players," Dolan said. "They all respect him. And he treats them fairly and relatively equally, and that’s part of where the respect emanates from. And those are hard things to get from a coach. When a coach loses a team … that’s when a coach is kind of done."

Dolan also made it clear that he would not do over the Knicks' long-term signing of Amar'e Stoudemire in the summer of 2010.

"We would not be where we are today without Amar’e," Dolan said. "That summer, the summer of “The Decision,” there were a whole bunch of free agents, and the guys put their thing together in Miami, and Amar’e agreed to come to the Knicks, gave us a launch pad by which we could convince the other guys like Tyson [Chandler] to come, and ultimately Carmelo to come play with us.

"Do I think Carmelo would have come if we didn’t have Amar’e? No, I don’t think he would’ve. These free agents, when you get to this level of player — the Carmelos, the LeBrons, the Durants — the first thing they want before the money or anything else is to be on a winning team. They’ve got to believe they have a shot."

Dolan is still hopeful that Stoudemire can have a resurgence.

"I still have hope," he said. "You cannot ask for a guy to be more dedicated, more disciplined, than Amar’e. He does his rehab, he does his workouts, he does everything, he’s on it every day, and that’s worth a lot, too. If there’s justice in this world, his knee will heal up to the point where he can play more minutes and make the contribution he wants to make."