Posted by holfresh:Larry wants control of this organization...Larry wants to call the shots.
At some point I hope to do this topic justice, but time does just not permit right now. So for now let me recycle a prior post on why I think isiah should have to coach us now:
Dude, my negativity doesn't come from nothing. I saw Chaney led out of the Garden in shackles. I saw Fratello led to expect he was next in only to be dumped at the last minute. I saw Lenny brought in and in his press conference say "This isn't my team it's Steph's." I saw Lenny allowed only 1 assistant who was later fired. I heard isiah pronounce "The two most important people in our organization are Jim Dolan and Stephon Marbury." I saw lenny let Steph massage his way thru practice and too afraid to discipline him when he shat on him. I saw Herb "being groomed" apparently for naught. I saw Larry brought in and heard Isiah assure us that players would have to adapt to the coach, the coach would not change, and he would get the coach the kind of players he needs. Now I hear that's not true, and even if the coach isn't bought out the handling of this process has totally undermined his authority.
I see Isiah do nothing to empower his coaches. isiah himselfs helps lenny run practices and he balls out the players after losses. He looks over the coaches shoulder from the sidelines, he choses their assistants. When his HOF "effort and defense" driven coach asks for his type of players he's given guys like Rose and Francis. and if there is any disagreement with his coaches he fires them, has them resign with pay, or he buys them out.
He is not a GM any coach should want to work for. He's a wannabe coach in GMs clothing. He sets all his coaches up to fail, and I don't think he should be allowed to repeat the process ad infinitum.
He obviously thinks he knows better than all his coaches, HOFers not withstanding, so let him do it already. At least he wont be stabbing himself in the back all the while. Or will he?....-----
Now let me add this from Marbury:
"I'm still here," Marbury said during a gathering of reporters at Basketball City in Manhattan. "They want me to go on a bad team so they can continue to drag me," said Marbury, who was presiding over his basketball camp at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan. "But it's cool, though....I ain't going nowhere, and I'm still going to play the same way I play. You know, they want me to get traded now because things are getting good. Same things that happened at every other team I was on. As soon as everybody started being players, then I get the boot. But I got somebody that's on my side now. And I think people, they can't deal with that, knowing that Isiah and I are close." ------
And this:
"Steph is going to say all the right things about playing for Coach Brown, because Steph will tell you anything you want to hear if it benefits Steph," a former Marbury teammate told me yesterday. "But if anyone thinks that marriage is going to work, well, they've never played with Steph, or coached him."
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And this:
Still, Marbury was the key player in Isiah Thomas' first major transaction at the Garden, and the Knicks' president wasted no time in handing the keys to the franchise to his new point guard. Whenever Marbury was unhappy, he went straight upstairs to complain to Thomas. It was an arrangement that created division in the locker room. Many of Marbury's teammates felt he hadn't earned the right to be treated like Tim Duncan, Shaquille O'Neal or Kobe Bryant.
Some of Marbury's teammates also were outraged by what they saw as the guard's double standard. At a team meeting last season, as rumors swirled that Wilkens was on the verge of being fired, the coach spoke to his team, telling them to concentrate on playing basketball and not worry about outside distractions.
When Wilkens was finished speaking, Marbury repeated most of the coach's message to the team, using profanity to puncuate his words and get his point across. When he was finished, the Knicks took the floor for practice with one exception: Marbury remained in the locker room for a massage.-------
And let us recall that isiah actually cursed out the press corps for even suggesting marbury might be traded.
The point being that Isiah and his treatment and entitlements toward his protege, Starbury, combined with his treatment and disentitlements toward his hired coaches, had larry coming in expecting to have to fight hard for the kind of power that in other situations would come easily to a coach of his caliber, but would be hard fought for here.
So when people suggest that Larry wanted isiah's job, I don't buy it, but when they tell me he was involved in a bitter struggle for power with marbury and isiah I say "hell yeah", as would any other. Even Herb, BTW. Remember in '05 under Herb there was a game where he sat steph in the 4th quarter and Jamal and co. blew out the opponent and herb said we'd be seeing a lot more of that. Two days later, after a meeting with isiah, herb issued a clarification that Steph was still our PG and still our guy.
So long as isiah is going to bring in malcontents and reclamation projects and then force them upon his coaches, there will be power struggles, and rightly so.
[Edited by - BlueSeats on 05-24-2006 4:09 PM]
