Tag: Knicks

Donnie Walsh’s first move proves he is the anti-Isaiah. That doesn’t mean he’s going to build a winner, but at least he may return a smidgeon of class to the organization.

Consider the way he handled questions about Isaiah Thomas during yesterday’s news conference:

“He is a great basketball mind, and I’m not going to judge anything from afar,” Walsh said. “I’ve told him that we’re going to sit down and talk in the coming days, and then we’ll go from there. I think he’s got the skills to help this franchise.”

Some on sports radio — callers, mostly — speculated that Walsh might keep Thomas around, though I can’t see it. Walsh has a reputation for being a classy guy and it seems likely that he was treating Thomas with the respect that all of us deserve, the kind of respect that Thomas failed to show Don Chaney when he fired him as coach. (Thomas allowed Chaney to come into work with the whole world knowing what was about to happen, the whole world aside from Chaney, that is.)

Ian O’Connor, in The Record, offers this read:

He’s one of the good guys in the NBA, an executive who gets it, and he wasn’t about to make his first act as Knicks president the gangland-style execution of Isiah Thomas’ career.

Make no mistake: Thomas never again will have a chance to hurt the Knicks. Walsh is either going to fire him outright or marginalize him into oblivion.

Walsh didn’t take this near-impossible job just so he could sabotage his own administration by giving Thomas a role within a dozen area codes of meaningful. Walsh once gave Larry Bird permission to fire Isiah in Indiana, this after Thomas made three straight trips to the playoffs, and now the new president wants to let the old president die a dignified death on the bench of a 60-loss team.

Again, there is no way to know whether Walsh can repair the damage done to this franchise by Scott Layden, Isaiah Thomas and Jim Dolan, whether he can cleanse the stench and bring in players willing to play defense and work hard, whether he can get anyone in the league to take on the contracts of guys like Zack Randolph, Quentin Richardson and others (I like Q, but he offers very little to a mess like this) so that he can create some salary cap flexibility, which is essential to success in the NBA.

There is no way to know, but at least Walsh appears likely to move ahead with dignity and class that has long been missing from the Garden.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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I’m lying here with a severe pain in my upper jaw, the result of gum surgery. While it is uncomfortable, I know it’s temporary.

The pain, however, from being a Knick fan appears permanent, as this report from ESPN via the New York Daily News demonstrates.

The New York Daily News, citing an unnamed source, reported Thursday that owner James Dolan’s preference is to keep Thomas on the sidelines, even after he hires a successor to Thomas to run the organization.

“There isn’t a basketball executive alive who would keep Isiah as head coach, but Jim is telling whoever he interviews, ‘I would prefer to keep Isiah but you do what you have to do,'” the source close to Dolan told the Daily News. “If Isiah isn’t the coach, Jim still wants him to stay in the organization in some capacity.”

There also isn’t a Knick fan who wants Isaiah to stay in New York — and I don’t mean as coach or consultant or in some related basketball capacity. Knick fans want him to move from the city, the state, the region. In fact, Knick fans would be happy if the former Pistons star made his way back to the Midwest — perhaps as a distributor for used ink cartridges, or a screen-door salesman to submarine fleets.

Memo to Jimmy: Fire Isaiah and blow up the roster.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Isaiah Thomas maybe right about Stephon Marbury’s future — or lack thereof — with the Knicks. But Thomas probably should just stop talking — seems odd for him to speak about the future of a franchise he’s likely to have no future with.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Dave Anderson dreams about the Knicks — or, dreams of a way out of the mess that Isaiah Thomas has helped bury the team in. A hint: It involves the sale of the team, the erasure of Thomas from memory and some very wishful thinking.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Yes, I said the “Bad Boys,” though this team in no way resembles those great Piston teams on which Isaiah Thomas shined. This team has managed to not only be bad on the court — and by bad I mean utterly putrid — but dysfunctional off it. And yet, the team president and coach, the man who built created this debacle in the first place, has the confidence of a clueless owner and the temerity to pretend things are going in the right direction.

Does he think we Knick fans are idiots? Perhaps we are — we certainly seem all too willing to plunk down our credit cards for seats.

Maybe Mike Lupica can take over for Dolan.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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