I wish my boss was Madison Square Garden Chairman James Dolan. Just think– I could score a high-paid position as general manager of a basketball team in the Mecca of the said sport, all with a track record of incompetence and a general committal to poor performance at my job. I’m young, street smart and sort of good-looking. Hell, I’d do so much damage in New York that I would quickly lose my grip on reality and likely end up in a mental institute within two years.
Yet sadly for Knick fans, Isiah Thomas isn’t likely to end up in a psych ward anytime soon, and the only people who seemed to have lost their gripon reality are Dolan and his MSG bean counters. Dolan’s recent vote of confidence for Thomas’s wrecking ball-like antics make you wonder whether he’s insane or his organization just suffers from the sworn mantra of the Chicago Cubs and Toronto Maple Leafs known as "The Sheep." Fans will keep paying, so who cares what happens to the team?”
Looking at Thomas’s managerial career is like watching a Full House marathon. You are dumbfounded at how it’s lasted as long as it has. And to make it worse, with Isiah there’s no evidence that there will ever be a Bob Saget-like redemption as a deranged drug addict.
When your resume includes hiring quite possibly the worst coach in professional sports history – Darrell Walker – to coach the Toronto Raptors; single-handedly driving the Continental Basketball Association –a league which had been in business for 54 years – into bankruptcy; being at the helm of the Indiana Pacers during a mysteriously underachieving three-year stretch and hiring Lenny Wilkens when he had nine forks sticking out of his back, you are not going to be giving speeches to your local chamber of commerce.
Yet what makes his incompetence so truly breathtaking is the moves he’s made in the past 10 months. Think about it. He is running the New York Knicks, and looking down the road, knows he will have ample salary cap space in the summer of 2007. This is when, coincidentally, the best player of his generation,LeBron James, will be an unrestricted free agent. A superstar who by all accounts loves the spotlight and would gladly take up residence in the Mecca of Basketball at the Centre of the Universe. Is he patient? Did he plan accordingly, knowing that those two years can undo the salary cap carnage of a previously inept GM named Scott Layden?
Evidently, no.
Instead, he immediately traded away his first-round pick (and a future rookie contract) for an overweight guy with a potentially even more serious health problem. Then, at midseason, he traded for score-first point guard Steve Francis, whom he intended on teaming as a two-guard with score-first point guard Stephon Marbury, who is embroiled in a verbal sparring match with Brown on the back pages of the Post and the Daily News. The best part? He commits to Francis’s albatross salary until 2009, quite possibly edging the Knicks out of the LeBron sweepstakes. And, he adds Jalen Rose for good measure.
I don’t have anything personal against Zeke – if you look him up on Wikipedia, it even says he is a “self-proclaimed fan of popcorn” who has served as “Official Spokesperson for National Popcorn Poppin’ Month” through his ownership of a gourmet popcorn chain. However, his record speaks for itself – overplaying Jordan in the `03 All-Star Game (and making him look tired while Mariah Carey sung to him in a new millenium version of Marilyn Monroe’s ‘Happy Birthday Mr. President’ to JFK) seemed like a phony move considering it was Thomas who initiated the chain ofevents that had Jordan block him from the `92 Dream Team. And I’ve only met one guy in my life who loved Isiah as a player, although an unbalanced guy at that, one who during Thomas’s power struggle with Toronto ownership in 1998, bragged about wanting to spray paint the name ‘Zeke’ on the front lawn of the then-Raptors owner.
None of that matters though – Dolan likes him, and for now New Yorkers have to put up with him. It just proves a point learned at the school of cynicism – incompetence pays off.
Just how many balls does the Knicks backcourt need to give everyone enough shots? Let John know at john.chick@atomicsportsmedia.com
