Posted by Nalod:
Assistants have unusual contract not tied to larry being here. They too got 4 year deals.
Dumlan got to pay them also. Isiah could be stepping in with Larry coaches. After making Wilkens use Isiahs coaches, it would just be all too funny to keep the loyal larry lubbers around.
The more I think about it the less likely I think it is Isiah coaches.
1) He just doesn't want the accountability. if the team gets off to a slow start and the boo's come quick where does he hide? He hide most of the second half of last season. How can he hide from a scandalous lawsuit, a hostile fanbase, and a voracious media all at the same time?
2) He knows the chemistry of this team sucks and has sucked since early on when he took his favorites under his wing (marbury) while making enemies of most everyone else (Shandon, Penny, Deke, Dyess, Wilkens, etc.) People think Isiah will heal the rifts that brown produced but they forget how many Isiah and his flunky produced themselves. How many times have we read that players resented their relationship and the entitlements for Steph it produced? Does anyone believe for a second that pairing them up on the bus and in the showers is gonna make things any better?
And all that is on top of the personal hatreds Steph has produced on his own: Kurt, Q, TT, and "everyone."
I talk about chemistry a lot (it's one of the main reasons I dislike marbury) and I'm always told I make too much of it. but this is from brendan Suhr before last season began:
This group that we have this year is exceptional. At the end of the season, Isiah knew we needed to make significant changes. Not that we didn't like our people but we just knew we had to upgrade and we had to change the chemistry on the team, change the personality in the team, change the competitiveness in the team.
And we needed more players that would be able to say - be more excited about winning a game than doing anything individually.
We found that in three college players....They know the chemistry sucks and that they need people who are more concerned about winning than individual achievements and they think they did that by bringing in 3 rookies, but they leave "Star"bury on the team to talk about playing like "some other dude" and how can he walk into a GMs office to demand a max contract - while he's still owed 60M for 3 years?
getting Isiah any closer to Marbury is a disaster and it's been a huge part of what's been wrong with this club for the last few years, and the assistant coaches know it:
According to an assistant coach, Thomas has been subverting Brown's authority with the players almost from the moment his coach began to undermine (read: devalue) his roster to the media. We're talking very early in the season.
From then on, there was hostility among the troops. "It's like two competing militias in Lebanon," underlined an extremist view of the scene. And
One of Brown's many coaching associates believes that Garden chairman James Dolan should give team president Isiah Thomas the authority to cut players, including Stephon Marbury.
"If you don't feel it's working and you have to pay them anyway just cut them," the coach said. "I'll bet you that Larry hasn't changed the way he coaches. There are just some guys on that team that can't be coached. It would send a powerful message. Cut four veterans and sign four players from the D-League. You'll see an improvement."Can isiah really work with people who see thru his mess, especially if he fails to make the changes and then just furthers the divides already present on the team?
Isiah knows two hall-of-famers could put Humpty Dumpty together again. We know he has a big ego, but does he really think he's
that good? Can he really manage and coach this team while massaging Steph and operating out of a bunker, all while trying not to fire himself?
I just don't see it.
6/20/2006 9:50 AM