http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/knicks/story/423360p-357303c.html

Here are the New York Knicks, who seven years ago at this time were in the NBA Finals, who in their glory days were a standard of class and excellence in their sport:

Their coach conducts roadside interviews outside the team's practice facility three weeks after the first news reports had him fired.

Their team president, Isiah Thomas, desperately holding on to the last big job he will have in basketball, works out college players with the coach and never discusses whether the coach will be fired.

The owner, James Dolan? He performs at a midtown club with his silly midlife-crisis of a rock band, his only true fans Garden employees, then is walked to his limousine by a security man. Why wouldn't someone like this, the rich man's son who has Cablevision and the Garden, be singing the blues?

This is the joke operation of all sports, more of a joke by the minute, a joke operation that could make bizarre news such as this all summer. Dolan has no resume as a sports owner, none, is as bad a caretaker as Madison Square Garden has ever had. Thomas has no resume as an executive. Brown, though, is the one who has to go, not just because the Knicks were 23-59, but because he is now perceived by Dolan and Thomas to have been disloyal to them in the way he conducted himself this season. It sure was a bad season, the most disappointing in Knicks history.

But was it bad enough for the Knicks to become this sort of clown act? No one will ever know how much the sexual harassment suit filed against Thomas by Anucha Browne Sanders has cost the Garden in terms of image. It is tipping money compared to what we get now.

Dolan got handed the Garden, and then handed it over to Isiah Thomas. Guys like David Glass in Kansas City, they won't spend money. Dolan doesn't know how. So what? It's not his money, after all. If he needs to hold the line on Cablevision's bottom line, he just raises the cost of your monthly bill. There is now a Web site, selltheknicks.com. It won't be the last.

Yet in some bizarre way, as bizarre as the situation with the Knicks, Dolan seems to enjoy the attention. Maybe because people are actually paying attention to him. What will Jimmy do? It seems to make him hot.

The most interesting story to come out of the Garden this week, one that comes from a neutral person - it means he isn't tied to the Brown side of things or the Thomas side of things - is this: Dolan is now annoyed with Isiah Thomas because Thomas has asked him for more time, before they lower the boom on Brown, to somehow make a Big Move.

Understand that Thomas has already informed Brown, the last time they talked about the Knicks and not college kids, that he isn't making any Big Moves, that if he comes back, he coaches players that he, Brown, obviously hates. But Thomas is smart enough to know that if he attempts to coach this roster, it is the same as firing himself. So when Brown goes, Thomas wants to have some kind of hero deal in place to make himself look good, no matter how much money it costs. In this way, Thomas is a perfect executive for Dolan:

Not his money.

On one hand, he has convinced Dolan that for him to turn over the roster the way Brown wants him to, the Knicks payroll, already the biggest in the league, will get even bigger. Forget about saving money when survival is at stake. If the money spent saves Thomas - and that really is job one for him - he doesn't care.

Only there is no Big Move out there for him right now, maybe ever.

It would be fitting somehow if Dolan is as angry at Thomas as Thomas is at Brown. There would be a certain Garden-like symmetry to that. Dolan loves to pride himself on how loyal he is. That's what we hear from his guys, how loyal he is. We're supposed to forget that the night Don Chaney got fired he got about as much respect as the ushers Dolan has fired over the years.

Dolan has a perfect right to fire Larry Brown on his record if he wants to. But doing it this way, no matter how much money Brown gets on his way out the door, without him or his general manager having the guts to make a single public comment, goes on Dolan's permanent record.

He wants to fire Brown, he should step to the plate and do it.

Before that, he should fire Isiah Thomas twice.

I got the blues
I got them rolex wearing, limo riding blues
I said I got them blues
I got them rolex wearing, limo riding blues



[Edited by - BASKETBALLJONES on 06-04-2006 16:02]