From Sunday's Daily News

by Mike Lupica


To Dolan, grudge is the ticket

He sits on a bench outside a Starbucks near 49th and Park, maybe 45 minutes after his new team, the St. Louis Blues, has blown a two-goal lead in the third period against the Rangers and finally loses, 3-2, in a shootout, handing the Rangers a huge and dramatic win. Dave Checketts, who owns the Blues now, still considers the day a partial victory. He has managed to get through an entire afternoon at the Garden, which he ran once, ran in much better times than these, without being thrown out of the place.

His team is struggling the way the Rangers are, just with about half the payroll. Still: You take points where you get them, even if you had to buy seats for your people off the Internet because the Garden refused to sell them any.

Checketts is here at the Starbucks with his wife and his son Andrew, his son in a Blues jersey. Checketts had been asked where his partner, Mike McCarthy, who worked 23 years at the Garden and finally ran the network there, sat for yesterday's game.

"Right behind the glass," Checketts said, then brightened and said, "StubHub.com!"

The Blues were not just in for a hockey game yesterday. It was more of an event than that, because the Garden did find it in its corporate heart to honor another former Cablevision employee, John Davidson. They brought J.D. out on the ice yesterday and he was cheered by the crowd, even if there was no speech. Maybe they were afraid he was going to say something nice about Checketts, who hired him to run the Blues.

See, here is what James Dolan told a representative of Checketts' not long ago, when the Blues were trying to get tickets for yesterday's game, and the ceremony honoring Davidson.

Dolan told the guy: "I may have (Checketts) escorted out of the building."

Dolan doesn't talk to Checketts anymore. But Dolan said what he said and he knows he did. Maybe he will try to say it was a joke now, but that would involve something resembling a sense of humor, about himself or anything else.

You want to know the difference between the Garden that Checketts ran and the one Dolan runs? It is this. It is silliness and pettiness like this.

The people running the place now are as small as the puck on the ice, worried as much about the media and settling scores as they are about real scores.

"I suppose it would be easier for (Dolan) to be gracious," Checketts said, "if he were having more success."

Believe me: You don't have to think Checketts was the best sports executive in history, and you can talk about the salary cap problems for the Knicks he left behind when Dolan got rid of him, thinking it was ordained by family and the stars that it was his time to run the Garden. You bet Checketts is the one who hired Glen Sather and traded Patrick Ewing at the end.

But in the 11 years that he ran the Knicks, during years when a Knicks ticket once again became as hot a ticket as there was in town, they played 135 playoff games and won 72 of them and went to the NBA Finals twice and had 460 straight sellouts. And I can assure you that no Knicks season-ticket holder in those years got the kind of E-mail that some got this past week, telling them that there were $10 tickets available for select games coming up in March. Checketts had an understanding of the place, why it is supposed to matter, more than Dolan has or will ever have, and a waiting list for Knicks season tickets with 10,000 names on it.

Even when the Rangers started to fade on Checketts' watch, they could do something that the team has not done since Dolan became the official big boss of the place: That means win a single playoff game. Despite having the largest payroll in the sport over the past six seasons. You think Dolan isn't rooting for his man Isiah Thomas to get the Knicks into the playoffs and at least get him on the board? Or for the Rangers to build on the kind of win they got off Checketts' team yesterday?

Dolan needs some points on the board. If he doesn't get any, this continues to be an almost epic period of postseason failure at Madison Square Garden, six seasons, two famous teams, not a single playoff victory between them. That we are even talking this way shows you how low the bar is set there now.

So, anyway, Checketts' people went to StubHub to get tickets yesterday and to the Rangers' own Web site, and got more help from Anheuser-Busch, which is of course a St. Louis company, the company in a company town. Checketts' family sat in those seats. He got no help from the Garden, where they are sure that Checketts was the source of so many mean things said about Dolan in a recent Sports Illustrated profile done by S.L. Price.

So the cost of doing business with Dolan now is StubHub.com.

Dolan runs the place the way he does and then there is the way it was run in the '90s. After Checketts became president of the Garden, he wasn't just running the Knicks. The Rangers' playoff record was 18-18 and that doesn't seem like much, unless you measure it against what Rangers fans have seen lately, which is one four-game sweep by the Devils in the first round of the playoffs last year. "(Dolan) insists on keeping the bad blood alive," Checketts said.

The place runs on it now.

This is the kind of paranoid, petty and pathetic person the owner of the Knicks is. Does anybody honestly believe that a person like this will make the decisions necessary to bring a winner to NY?

I know I always kill Isiah but Dolan is as much a problem if not more than Isiah. I direct most of my animosity, from the Knicks current state, on Isiah because he can be replaced. But now I have lost all hope that Charles' son will be competent enough to hire a capable replacement. Knowing how Dolan treats people, what legitimate executive would come here to clean up this mess? The only ones who would come are the types that would be more concerned about kissing Dolan's ass and cashing paychecks than in making the sometimes difficult decisions.

Until Dolan and Isiah are gone there's no reason to believe that the Knicks will ever become contenders. I used to be such a huge fan. Lived and died with every win or loss and loved every second of it. You could have mistaken me for nixluva. Now it's just not worth my time or energy, knowing the types of people I'd have to root for.

No more. I've had enough.

I'm done. I'm no longer a Knicks fan as long as these a-holes are involved. Nothing good can come from rooting for bad people. I cannot in good conscience continue to hope that good things happen to people that have destroyed this franchise.

This is the SI article about Dolan Lupica mentions. I'd cut and paste it, but it's seven pages long.

[Edited by - supremecommander on 03-06-2007 12:59 AM]

Posted by islesfan:

This is the kind of paranoid, petty and pathetic person the owner of the Knicks is. Does anybody honestly believe that a person like this will make the decisions necessary to bring a winner to NY?

I know I always kill Isiah but Dolan is as much a problem if not more than Isiah. I direct most of my animosity, from the Knicks current state, on Isiah because he can be replaced. But now I have lost all hope that Charles' son will be competent enough to hire a capable replacement. Knowing how Dolan treats people, what legitimate executive would come here to clean up this mess? The only ones who would come are the types that would be more concerned about kissing Dolan's ass and cashing paychecks than in making the sometimes difficult decisions.

Until Dolan and Isiah are gone there's no reason to believe that the Knicks will ever become contenders. I used to be such a huge fan. Lived and died with every win or loss and loved every second of it. You could have mistaken me for nixluva. Now it's just not worth my time or energy, knowing the types of people I'd have to root for.

No more. I've had enough.

I'm done. I'm no longer a Knicks fan as long as these a-holes are involved. Nothing good can come from rooting for bad people. I cannot in good conscience continue to hope that good things happen to people that have destroyed this franchise.

Take it back and we'll just chalk it up to you having a bad night, or don't come back. No room for fans like this.

Dolan's pretty much much a sad old man.


But hey, it's his money, he'll get his in the end...

Posted by misterearl:

What stuff on Dolan?

I'm not attempting to make excuses for him, but What is the real problem here. That he is a jerk?

That he lets the fact he's a jerk have negative effects on MSG, the Knicks and the Rangers.

its both, lets be honest, dolan is a classless loser that doesn't know how to do anything, very small man

dolan was born on 3rd and thought he hit a triple. what a freaking loser. the next concert he throws should be the next ultimate knicks event, all of us should buy tickets and go boo his fat ass

Posted by bobs3304:

Dolan's pretty much much a sad old man.


But hey, it's his money, he'll get his in the end...

Its his money fur sure, but its "our" team.

Dolan is Phuched in the head. All he need really do is hire a competent person to delegate what he sucks at.

I'd rather have him than a penny pincher, but if we can throw money at good ideas then we might actually be on to somthing!

Hey, they don't call me "Nalod" for nuthing!

Posted by K22:

Posted by Pharzeone:

For years I hated everything George did but I didn't stop going to Yankee games and rooting for them.

Yeah but Dolan isn't even on the level below George. George actually knows baseball and, lack of salary cap aside, he's brought (bought?) NYC many championships.

[Edited by - K22 on 03-06-2007 10:30 AM]

Listen, I like George and he spends the money. But so does Dolan. But we are describing the type of person Dolan is and I compared it to Steinberger. Lets not repaint history here. One man is a jerk and the other is a jerk who was banned for life from running his team, a the center of a federal indictment investigation which had him being blackmailed by a guy he hired to get dirt on a former player and received a pardon from the president as means to get him back into the sport. Lets just say I wouldn't classify any of those guys as decent people.