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holfresh
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Joined: 1/14/2006
Member: #1081
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For True Evaluation of Thomas, Look Past the Man
By HARVEY ARATON
Can 13 victories in 31 games be evidence enough that the Knicks chose the wrong coach last season and have the right one now?
To even partly answer that question, you can dwell on Isiah Thomas’s administrative missteps and character flaws or take a hard look at the recent performance of the Knicks’ core players.
You can ridicule the playoff race in the fetid Atlantic Division, or try to determine whether Thomas is meeting his loosely defined mandate for significant progress this season with your own basketball-watching eyes.
“I see progress,” Chuck Daly said yesterday in a telephone interview from the middle of a South Florida traffic jam. “Very definitely, progress.”
That’s not exactly an endorsement from the most impartial observer, considering that Daly is a Hall of Fame coach largely because of Thomas and his band of erstwhile Bad Boys from suburban Detroit. But let’s argue that an opinion suffused with loyalty is necessary to balance the vitriolic partisanship that grew out of the demise of the brief Thomas-Larry Brown era and infects an honest evaluation process.
Out on a social call Wednesday night, Daly missed the Knicks’ latest dizzying adventure that somehow concluded as an unlikely achievement. It took three overtimes and a fair amount of assistance from the Pistons before the Knicks packed away a 151-145 victory to take on their western swing that begins tonight in Phoenix. In the midst of it all, there was one eye-opening statistic on which Thomas could hang his survival hopes.
Across 63 minutes, the Knicks made 56.3 percent of their shots against a Detroit team that, even in its post-Ben Wallace incarnation, is among the N.B.A.’s more defensively able. But at various times Wednesday night, the Pistons had no single or collective solution for Stephon Marbury, Eddy Curry, Channing Frye and finally Jamal Crawford.
Daly’s point yesterday was that he was shocked by nothing he read in the morning box score.
“I like Curry, I like Frye, I like David Lee, and this might surprise you, but I also like Marbury,” he said. “I always thought he had great ability and I think he can do well with these young guys around him. Of course, now they’re on the road where you lose two or three straight and it’s hard to hold onto the positive. But I’ve watched them enough on the league ticket lately to know I’ve seen a team that has spirit and talent and looks to be starting to get it.”
At too slow a pace to save Isiah?
“Listen, I said a long time ago, back to the end of the Dave Checketts years, that the Knicks were headed toward trouble, just like Boston, just like Philly,” Daly said. “When you’re in a situation like the one Isiah stepped into, and you’re a competitive guy like he is, you try things. This guy, that guy. This coach, that coach. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t. You keep trying until they don’t let you anymore. But what you’re seeing now are a few young guys who are starting to work out. Are they playoff caliber? Remains to be seen. But they’re moving forward, that’s what we know.”
For now, first place is a lot closer than a .500 record. The Knicks could lose all five games out West and be 10 under by the time they come home. Again, as much as progress can be calculated, it can also be seen.
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Look at the body language of the young players Thomas drafted and Brown mystifyingly refused to find consistent minutes for last season when he was under no pressure to win. Go down the line. Is Curry better? Did Frye look like a soon-to-be 20-a-night scorer down the stretch Wednesday night? Has Lee become one of the more intriguing multipurpose players in the league? Is the rookie Renaldo Balkman contributing? Is even Marbury playing smart and cracking a smile?
Whereas Brown was the ornery stepfather, Thomas has been the nurturing daddy. Brown called the now-useful (in Orlando) Trevor Ariza delusional and made the bench his dunce corner. Answering boos after stinging home-court defeats, Thomas has stood on the court and shook his beleaguered players’ hands.
Maybe he had to because employment hinges on the success of the players he has brought here — precisely why James L. Dolan, the Madison Square Garden president, got it right when he cut the Brown experiment short and ordered Thomas onto the hot seat.
Across the past 25 years, Thomas has made enemies here, there and everywhere, and no one knows this more than I do. We went years without speaking after I co-authored a book a decade ago that detailed gambling activities during Thomas’s playing days. Then again, Michael Jordan’s high-stakes wagering was co-featured in the project. Nobody ever wanted him fired for not being a Cub Scout.
Daly, a regular reader of the New York newspapers, said he had a good laugh when the axes were sharpened for Thomas after he helped set off the Denver brawl that resulted in multiple player suspensions. Daly couldn’t help but recall a season in New Jersey that fell short of expectation after his point guard, Kenny Anderson, was bludgeoned to the floor by the Knicks’ John Starks.
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So Thomas’s attempts — however distasteful — at making men of his Knicks should have been the last straw, but let’s continue to commemorate the trademark brutality of the Riley years, why don’t we?
“I think the situation up there needs to calm down and people should just relax and let the process work itself out,” Daly said.
Until Thomas and the Knicks come home, maybe we can preoccupy ourselves with Lawrence Frank, ask what he’s done lately to resuscitate the Nets. Nothing personal, of course.
[Edited by - holfresh on 12-29-2006 12:26 AM]
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