Knicks a real horror show
Dolan & Isiah making this team impossible to watch
Mike Lupica


The real "Mission Impossible" movie doesn't have Tom Cruise and Philip Seymour Hoffman and exotic locales all over the world and all kinds of cool special effects. It has James Dolan and Isiah Thomas as its stars, and is being shot right here and right now, at what used to be the World's Most Famous Arena. The movie opens with one of the most amazing special effects of all time: The people doing the talking for Dolan and Thomas creating the illusion that writing a $40 million check to get rid of Larry Brown is a sign of fiscal genius.

That really is the grand illusion these people are trying to sell, that it makes all the sense in the world to hold onto this overpaid collection of loser players and get rid of this particular coach and that the Knicks will live happily ever after. Boy, only in the movies.

But signing this kind of check to get rid of a coach, the biggest check that any coach or manager in any sport will ever have gotten to disappear (another special effect!), is now what passes for a prudent business plan with Dolan and Thomas. That is the spin from the Garden, anyway, spinning being the only sport they have right now.

The Knicks had a payroll of roughly $125 million this season for a 23-59 team. Thomas traded away the Knicks' lottery pick in this year's draft and next year's first-round pick for Eddy Curry, who often seems to be playing basketball underwater. They are about $60 million over the NBA's luxury-tax threshold, which means they pay out even more to other teams than they are going to pay Brown.

They also owe Steve Francis and Stephon Marbury approximately $110 million over the lives of their contracts.

Now the Knicks decide the solution to all their problems is to get rid of the coach they have, no matter what that costs them, and install Isiah Thomas, a man who has convinced himself and Marbury that it was Brown who held these Knicks back and kept them from being the Phoenix Suns of the East.

You know what the real impossible mission is here, right? Thomas fixing this and Dolan ever seeing the Garden restored to its former luster under his watch.

Dolan has now had five years as the big boss. Neither the Knicks nor Rangers have won a playoff game in that time. And since the day Thomas retired, he hasn't won a single playoff series.

He's been busy, of course. He alienated Pistons owner Bill Davidson, who once treated him like a son, managed to do that even bigger and better than Brown did in Detroit. He spent about 20 minutes running the Toronto Raptors. He sunk the Continental Basketball Association (think of that as another kind of movie, a real disaster movie, "The Poseidon Adventure" with minor-league basketball players). He got fired as coach of the Pacers. Now he has managed to hijack the Knicks.

That is some resume. Maybe he can come out a winner in the sexual harassment suit filed against him by former Knicks employee Anucha Browne Sanders, start turning things around right there.

No matter. Dolan has now decided Thomas is the one man in all of basketball who can turn the Knicks around. Maybe this is the only way Dolan can bring himself to part with Thomas: Make him coach this particular team and have Thomas fire himself.

This is an owner, by the way, who kept signing Don Chaney to contract extensions. But now he is prepared to pay Larry Brown a record amount of money not to coach Isiah Thomas' players. Dolan won't spend the money to have enough ushers at the Garden, but he spends this way to get rid of another coach. And wonders why his team is the laughingstock of sports these days.

It would be like Steinbrenner spending the way he does on baseball players and getting Stump Merrill's Yankees instead of Joe Torre's. We hear all the time about what a loyal guy Dolan is. Knick fans probably wonder when he starts being loyal to them.

All those who wanted Larry Brown gone, starting with Thomas and Marbury, get their wish now, he goes. Nobody knows when he goes, but he goes. And when Dolan has to write a check, nobody will consider Brown a victim, not after the soap opera that this past season became.

The past couple of days we read about a "buyout," the Knicks apparently under the impression that Brown is maybe prepared to give them some kind of hometown discount. Maybe in Isiah Thomas' dreams. The Knicks are eventually going to have to escort Brown out of the building the way they did with Chaney the night he finally got it from loyal Jim Dolan.

This really is some crazy, bad movie, fascinating in the way that big overpriced bad movies can be sometimes. Here is the latest surprise: The guy - Thomas - who has done the most to blow the building up is now supposed to save it.

There are no heroes.

well, not much we can do about it.