Posted by nixluva:

Posted by nyk4ever:

I hope Larry gets every cent owed to him. The Knicks screwed up by hiring him, knowing exactly how he does things and they didn't do their homework, as usual. Dolan needs to be hit hard in the pocket so he gets the point that simply throwing money at people won't work.

What are you talking about? Why should they have expected LB to do what he did this year? He's never acted this unprofessionally in his 1st year with a team. They said they expected things might go sour a few years from now, but not in the 1st few months of him being on the job.

LB has a good reputation for dealing with bad teams and improving them, so why should they have expected anything less than that? I think you're bias towards Dolan and Isiah has clouded your judgement in this case. Dolan wasn't just throwing money at the problem. He was trying to bring in a Coach who is supposed to be a teacher and was considered one of the best coaches in the NBA. LB describes himself as a teacher and someone who above all respects the game and yet he acted like a fool, who could care less about the dignity of the game. How is that Dolan's fault?

Posted by nyk4ever:

Posted by nixluva:

Posted by nyk4ever:

I hope Larry gets every cent owed to him. The Knicks screwed up by hiring him, knowing exactly how he does things and they didn't do their homework, as usual. Dolan needs to be hit hard in the pocket so he gets the point that simply throwing money at people won't work.

What are you talking about? Why should they have expected LB to do what he did this year? He's never acted this unprofessionally in his 1st year with a team. They said they expected things might go sour a few years from now, but not in the 1st few months of him being on the job.

LB has a good reputation for dealing with bad teams and improving them, so why should they have expected anything less than that? I think you're bias towards Dolan and Isiah has clouded your judgement in this case. Dolan wasn't just throwing money at the problem. He was trying to bring in a Coach who is supposed to be a teacher and was considered one of the best coaches in the NBA. LB describes himself as a teacher and someone who above all respects the game and yet he acted like a fool, who could care less about the dignity of the game. How is that Dolan's fault?

Maybe you don't understand. Dolan threw money at Brown without doing his homework. If he did his homework he would know that Brown would want whole-sale changes becuase thats the way he always does things. Instead of doing his homework and realizing this, Dolan decided to make a splash with a coach and had no clue what he was getting himself into. You don't give Larry Brown 1 year to turn a franchise THIS messed up to turn things around, especially when Larry Brown is as meticulous a coach as he is and does things only his way, just like he has many years before. I think you love for Dolan/Isiah has clouded your judgement. Dolan threw his money at Brown without thought of what could happen just like he threw his money at Isiah Thomas.

Could you really argue it? I mean most of this stuff is likely well documented. Unless LB wants to just flatout lie and say that they never met and never discussed such things. Its common knowledge that on some level these discussions did take place. LB has never denied that, not even during the season, when it was already reported that he was asked not to keep making negative comments about players in the media.

We've known about this stuff all year, so how can he deny that he INTENTIONALLY disregarded direct orders and broke company policy that he agreed to abide by? If he knew the policy and still broke it and upon being reminded of that policy continued to break it, then its clear that he meant to do it. He could lie and say that he never met with Isiah, then Mills and then Dolan on the same subject, but i'd venture a guess that they have some evidence to back up the fact that they did meet and discuss these issues. At the very least they have Brown's stupid side of the road press conferences with reporters even after he was PUBLICLY told not to do so. He even said to reporters that he wasn't supposed to be talking to them. So its clear that Brown was fully aware that he was breaking company policy all along.

That may not be worth $40mil, but it should be worth some reduction in pay, due to the harm it did the organization. Just because some of you HATE this organization, it doesn't mean that they have to be wrong about this. There's no precedence in the Knicks favor, but they do have a small chance to have some success, even if its a small amount.

Posted by nixluva:
You're entire argument is flawed in that you don't know exactly what the Knicks position will be. You're making the case that Brown was promised this and that, but that's not the issue. The issue is what do the Knicks feel LB failed to live up to in terms of his contract with them. I've never seen his contract and don't know what's in it. I doubt that the Knicks will say he was fired cuz he didn't win.

Q: Why did you fire Larry?
James Dolan: I don’t want to get overly specific about it. It is at least my contention that Larry never intended to coach this team beyond this season. We had issues throughout the season with our coach. We had issues with our press policy. Let me start off by saying something about that. When I went to Larry Brown’s house, I think [media] were outside. We had a very specific discussion before we hired Larry about the press policy. The press policy basically is that we never communicate to our employees through the press. We don’t use the press as the medium by which we talk to each other. I’m sure all of you remember the days of Jeff Van Gundy and Ernie Grunfeld, and the circus that that was, and that’s how we came to that decision about that policy. I think it’s a well founded policy. Larry absolutely agreed to that policy and said he completely understood it and thought it was the right thing and understood that we had a press department and division headed by Mr. Watkins here, and that he and his team would be with Larry whenever he had press availability, and that was no problem with Larry and he completely understood that. To go into the season and so quickly start having our players be talked to through the press was a surprise.

Q: How do you know his intent?
James Dolan: I think that there is a stack of evidence that high. On top of which after a month of this where Isiah went down and talked to him, Steve went down and talked to him and finally I went down and talked to him. We went through what the press policy is and how to prepare and answer questions so you don’t say something that you don’t intend to say. I have to reiterate my contention that it was intentional. Second, it may be one of the more disturbing things here, is that we couldn’t get Larry to focus on his job. Larry wanted to focus on Isiah’s job and in fact we had several instances where Larry goes and talks to a GM of a team or an assistant GM of a team, and starts to negotiate a trade. We actually had two instances where Isiah was negotiating with a team and the GM said, ‘That’s great, but I got a better offer from your coach.’ We brought this to Larry, we talked to him. I talked to him about it and said it can’t be - you have to focus on coaching. Tell us what you want in the team and Isiah will do his job and go out and get the players that you want. We actually went through a series of meetings on this, discussing what the makeup of the team would be.

I attended the first couple of them to make sure that everything was on track with it and continuing to reiterate to both Isiah and Larry, but particularly to Larry, to do your job, not the other guy’s job.

We continued to have these problems. In fact we continued to have these problems going up past the end of the season. I have this piece of paper in front of me and I’ll tell you why in a minute. Larry obviously lost the team. I think you guys who are the beat writers probably know that as well as anybody else. It is no surprise that he lost the team because when you talk to your players through the press rather than talking to them directly, it creates animosity and a lack of respect and I was also faced finally with the situation where towards the end where Larry was no longer talking to his boss and literally refused to talk to his boss. He did things like have his secretary return his phone call or his agent. The reason that I have this paper in front of you is because we went into that meeting on Thursday, and I’m telling you, that I went into that meeting hoping, thinking that we were going to have Larry Brown as our coach next year, that there was a way that this could work and I literally wrote down how we can make it work, how we can get past the problems. To be honest with you, if we could get past the problems, and we could get back the guy who is supposed to be the Hall of Fame coach that was going to nurture our team, do the things he said he was going to do when he came on - that we had every reason to expect that he was going to do and to be honest, why anybody would pay someone $10 million to do this job was to expect that he was going to help build this team. We were rebuilding. We still are rebuilding, and that Larry Brown had a reputation of being able to build, and Larry Brown agreed that that was what he was going to do. So my thought was that going into this meeting was to if we can get back to that person, if we can get that person into coaching the team and get that person to cooperate with the rest of the organization and be part of the organization that it would be a great thing. And no, I did not want to have to pay him $40 million. But I have to tell you what happened in that meeting. I couldn’t get Larry to acknowledge one of these things. Not one of them. I had a plan if he was willing to acknowledge them, how he would correct them, how he would go forward, how he would stay coach and I actually told him at the meeting, ‘I’m here to figure out how to go forward together. I need you to acknowledge these things.’ They are not in our head, they are not fictional, these things happen and they can’t continue to happen and have us go forward. He would not acknowledge that they happened. He would not acknowledge that there was a problem, and in fact said that we had to change out essentially all but five or six players of the team and proposed that we take on another $180 million of salary. We’re talking over $200 million. He wanted those five or six players waived.

Q: Is that why you knew he didn’t had any intention of wanting to come back?
James Dolan: He knew that wasn’t possible. Essentially that’s what happened, after the season ended, and we met with you guys, and we brought in Larry afterwards - he told us this afterwards - I think this is how this rumor started. He essentially told us that if you don’t do this stuff, if you don’t use the midlevel exception, and trade away your expiring contracts to take on more dough, then we must not really want to improve the team and we must not really want him as a coach.

Isiah Thomas: He said that at the end of the season. If we weren’t willing to change the players and trade the contracts what we had this year, then what we had this year is what you are going to see next year.

James Dolan: At the Thursday meeting when we told him that we didn’t know we could make all of those trades, he said then, ‘Well, if you are telling me that you are going to make me play all these players, I am going to cut and waive five to six players, equaling almost $180 million straight dollars.’ Look at it this way, he can’t because he is not in my shoes. He is saying, ‘I am going to make you fire me.’

There are some other interesting points they brought up as well:

Q: You knew what kind of players Larry wanted before you hired him.
Isiah Thomas: We were moving towards that. When Larry got here, we had Tim Thomas, Sweetney, the guys that we were taking into the camp and then we had a chance to trade for Eddy Curry and Larry was heavily involved in that trade. Then we brought in Qyntel Woods. He liked all three rookies that we drafted. He likes Jackie Butler and he was on and off about Quentin Richardson, Malik Rose and we go and we make the trade for Francis, Jalen Rose. He and Marbury: one day they were together and then the next day, they weren’t. Some days Marbury could play for him, some days he couldn’t. So when you talk about the scope of the roster…

Q: You thought Steve Francis was a Larry Brown-type player?
James Dolan: Larry Brown thought Steve Francis was a Larry Brown type of player.

Isiah Thomas: At that point in time, we were chasing Earl Watson.

James Dolan: When you sign a contract with a guy like we signed with Larry, you are really - we were invested in him, significantly invested in him. And in fact we made both the Steve Francis and Jalen Rose trades based on him. It should have been a real re-affirmation to Larry Brown that this team was willing to do the things necessary in order to get him the team that he wants.

There's more that they said as well. I think that in the end Stern will split the baby a bit and pay LB, but not 100% of what he's owed.

Posted by nixluva:

Blueseats, I really think you need to slow down and read the statements again. I really can't grasp how you spent so much time going over this stuff and still missed the actual point that was being expressed.

For one thing Dolan said he wouldn't get into all of the specifics of the case, so its understandable that they didn't include every instance where LB actually used the media to communicate his thought's to a player.

Clearly when he was arguing with Steph he was speaking to him thru the media. It's also clear that LB had not spoken directly with certain players when there were issues that came up. The thinly veiled insults were his attempt to get around the policy on a technicality. Since this isn't a court of law, but an Arbitration I would assume that Stern would interpret exactly what LB was trying to do and he won't be shackled by the techincal, black and white rules of law that a judge would be bound to.

A coach being given a "say" in personnel matters isn't the same as giving him the authority to make deals and especially without communicating what he's doing to his BOSS! LB could've chosen to work with Isiah and say "Hey Isiah, I have a good relationship with so and so and I know you have issues with them, how about I call him and offer this deal". It would be up to Isiah to decide, as it should be. This way Isiah isn't embarrassed when he calls and has no knowledge that LB even spoke to this other team.

When Dolan said he didn't want to pay him the $40mil, that was in reference to just firing Larry and paying him for nothing.

It was Dolan's intention to get Larry to do what he as his BOSS, was asking him to do. He wanted LB to accept what he did wrong and promise not to do it anymore and just focus on what he was being paid to do. My contention is the same as Dolan's. LB refused to go along with what Dolan was saying, cuz he did NOT want to coach this team anymore. LB had his say and laid out those impossible demands for Dolan to waive a bunch of players and just eat the salary, while adding more to get the players LB wanted. Now he knows that Dolan wouldn't do that and that Dolan would have no choice but to fire him. LB can try to spin that, but just like in Detroit, he didn't want to be there and he didn't want to be here either. Its true they let LB twist in the wind, but in the end, it was up to LB and he begged off. He wouldn't comply. If he wanted to continue to coach this team he could have.

I don't even care of Brown wanted Jalen or Francis. By then the season was pretty much shot.

He had already ran this team into the ground. I'd suggest you go back and look at the starting lineups for this team from last year and tell me how LB was really trying to win games. Malik Rose actually started 35 games last year. That should've been 0 games. Compare that with Frye who started only 14 games or Lee who also started only 14 games. QRich who was AWFUL, avg'ing only 8.2ppg, started 43 games. Compare that to Jamal who was far better and only started 27 games. Now I happen to agree that Jamal is a good 6th man, but when the team is losing and getting killed at the start of games and 3rd qtrs, you have to adjust. How about the games where our young bench players had gotten us back in the game and LB inexplicably would take them out? There are just tons of things that can't be explained any other way. SABOTAGE!

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Posted by oohah:
Joe, isn't it team policy too that the coach should coach to win games not to make an example or whatever LB was doing? To use an extreme example, maybe he decides that everyone on the team should play wearing the left shoe on their right foot and vice-versa. That way nobody can drive. They have to shoot spot-up, but they aren't good at that!! Now they have been "exposed".

Posted by BlueSeats:

Posted by oohah:
Joe, isn't it team policy too that the coach should coach to win games not to make an example or whatever LB was doing? To use an extreme example, maybe he decides that everyone on the team should play wearing the left shoe on their right foot and vice-versa. That way nobody can drive. They have to shoot spot-up, but they aren't good at that!! Now they have been "exposed".

In 1996 the wrong coach was hired (Don Nelson) who ran the wrong system for our team. He had clunky, old, halfcourt oriented, defense-first players - who got to the finals two years prior by playing the two-man game - running around playing no defense with a headcase PF (Mason) running the offense.

He also humiliated the players thru the media telling us Ewing at 22.5/10.6 should be our third option. He also said that Hubert Davis was CLEARLY the better player than Starks.

Wrong guy, wrong system, bashed players thru the press, the team hated him. Was he accused of breaching his contract and sabotaging the team? No, he was fired and paid his money by a President and GM who knew they made a mistake. NElly was just being Nelly, and the mistake was theirs in picking him.

Oh, and amidst all that turmoil and dissent the players were still able to muster a 47 win pace in spite of him. That team couldn't lose 59 games if their lives depended on it.

If you don't know, now you know.

[Edited by - blueSeats on 09-18-2006 10:47 AM]

Posted by oohah:

Posted by BlueSeats:

Posted by oohah:
Joe, isn't it team policy too that the coach should coach to win games not to make an example or whatever LB was doing? To use an extreme example, maybe he decides that everyone on the team should play wearing the left shoe on their right foot and vice-versa. That way nobody can drive. They have to shoot spot-up, but they aren't good at that!! Now they have been "exposed".

In 1996 the wrong coach was hired (Don Nelson) who ran the wrong system for our team. He had clunky, old, halfcourt oriented, defense-first players - who got to the finals two years prior by playing the two-man game - running around playing no defense with a headcase PF (Mason) running the offense.

He also humiliated the players thru the media telling us Ewing at 22.5/10.6 should be our third option. He also said that Hubert Davis was CLEARLY the better player than Starks.

Wrong guy, wrong system, bashed players thru the press, the team hated him. Was he accused of breaching his contract and sabotaging the team? No, he was fired and paid his money by a President and GM who knew they made a mistake. NElly was just being Nelly, and the mistake was theirs in picking him.

Oh, and amidst all that turmoil and dissent the players were still able to muster a 47 win pace in spite of him. That team couldn't lose 59 games if their lives depended on it.

If you don't know, now you know.

I fail to see the parallel. How is it the wrong system when he won 47 games before the season was even over? Nellie wasn't fired for basketball reasons he was fired because of a superstar. LB was fired for destroying a season.

I have to believe you are joking when you compare Nellie's comments on Ewing/Davis/Starks to LB's public conduct.

Furthermore, I don't remember that Nellie said Ewing should be the third option. (Maybe he did, I just don't remember.) I do remember him saying the Ewing was at the stage where he should no longer be the best player on the team. (This was after he was fired by the way, and I agreed with his summation.)

The big difference was the Nellie was WINNING GAMES, so there really was/is no leg to stand on to trash Nellie's performance.

The truth is I don't really care about coaches comments. That's just the icing. You'll notice that at least 90% of what I have always referred to about LB pertains to his unbelieveably crappy coaching job.

About the if "you don't known now you know", that part actually was in reference to LB's mouth. It is very telling that he shut up only after he entered into a legal battle for his money. It shows you clearly what his principles are.

Can that really be disputed?

Posted by nixluva:

Posted by joec32033:

Ok...I'll stick to team policy. The only team policy he broke was talking to the press the way he did. If they are going to focus on that they may have a case (how great I don't know-I doubt the NBA would let a team gag every member when they fine people for missing press conferences).

On the flipside-There is no standard NBA wide code of conduct when talking to the press(I don't think anyway), so LB would have had to agree to this in his contract if the team is to be able to hold him to a policy like they sre saying he broke. My opinion is that LB would NEVER have signed off on anything where someone else can silence him in the press. He did his thing in the press for 30 years and I see no way he would agree to all of a sudden stop. At the time of his hiring, The Knicks needed LB alot more than LB needed the Knicks. I seriously doubt the Knicks where in ANY position to demand ANYTHING from LB.

I know we tend to think that Dolan is stupid, but actually, he has lawyers who aren't stupid. I'm sure that they put something in the language of the contract that protected the organization in some way. That is what the bulk of most contracts are anyway. A series of protections for the employer. You see the employer is the one taking the risk. It's their money on the line and for the most part since its guaranteed, they have to put certain language in there that covers them and their corporate interests against malicious acts or insubordinate acts.

I'm sure that even if the exact language of the team policy wasn't in there that there's a clause that states LB would abide by all team policy's as written in some handbook or whatever. Heck even for my jobs we had Code of Conduct type agreements to sign. Certainly for a contract worth $50 mil there had to be some protection. Especially since they knew LB's history and that he was eventually gonna act up. I don't think they expected it to happen so soon, but they knew that it would happen one day.

I also believe that Dolan spoke with his representatives who advised him on how to proceed once they started having problems with LB. Things like this are very calculated when you get into big corporate deals like this. MSG is a huge entity and they have to answer to others for just about everything they do. Public embarrassment is not one of the things they'd tend to ignore or fail to prepare for.

Yet, its all out there.

They still are an embarrassing organization that is phuching up from top to bottom.

Stop making excuses for them!

All we care is about the product on the floor and how it will work.

I dispise the organizational decisions the last few years and what they have done to OUR team!

so inside two weeks they will be in arbitration with Stern about larry and in court about ANucha.

This is a great team of business profesisonals!

Dolan has cast off the best talent over the years and is left with a joke.