Isiah can't sell this mess to fans

By IAN O'CONNOR
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: October 29, 2006)

HACKENSACK, N.J. — The Knicks held a little afternoon party in New Jersey, no invitation required and no cover charge installed. Even on a rainswept Saturday, you figured a flagship NBA franchise could draw more fans to the FDU campus than, say, your average Northeast Conference game involving Robert Morris or St. Francis of New York.

But for their wide-open-to-the-public practice, the Knicks put only 1,500 non-paying customers in a 5,000-seat gym. Of course, this was hours after they surrendered 138 points to the home-state Nets in a 17-point defeat that didn't stop Isiah Thomas from praising his team's relentless drive.

Isiah's "we competed" sounded an awful lot like Art Howe's "we battled." A season removed from Larry Brown's 23-win epic, Thomas should know that nobody wants to hear about the Knicks' desire and passion when they're getting blown out on a payroll that would shame an old basketball executive named George Steinbrenner III.

Only this is how desperate the Knicks have become. They can't sell meaningful regular-season victories, so they sell the noble (and futile) pursuit of them. They can't sell any harmonic, modern-day version of Red Holzman's selfless champs, so they sell Stephon Marbury and Stevie Franchise running and gunning until their fingers bleed.

Maybe that's why the Knicks couldn't fill the Rothman Center on a freebie weekend day with a schedule that featured no Giants or Jets, no Yankees or Mets. Nate Robinson and Renaldo Balkman did stage an entertaining series of high-flying dunks, and the Knicks were good enough to stop for autographs at the session's close.

Truth is, a team with a legitimate plan would've inspired more ooohs and aaahs. Winning is the best community service, said Jeff Van Gundy, the former Knicks coach who loathed the Garden's obsession with positive PR.

Winning is the one product these Knicks don't stock.

"We're here to compete," Thomas repeated yesterday. Actually, he's here to add at least 10 victories to Brown's pathetic sum to meet the "significant progress" mandate set down by James Dolan, whose Garden teams never deal in the currency of significant progress.

It all starts in the Atlantic Division, where only one team is worth a damn.

"We're not saying we're better than (the Nets)," Thomas said as he stepped around the parking lot puddles and into the Academy bus that would pull the Knicks out of FDU and toward the river, away from the Jersey side.

"We know right now they're better than us. ... Normally they have their way with us and just walk through us. When you're on the bottom and trying to get to the top, you've got to compete. The guys at the top don't like the guys giving them a hard time coming from the bottom. But make no mistake about it, we're trying to get up there."

Thomas was talking about the chippy, edgy exchanges at the end of the preseason finale. At the final horn, Thomas headed for the Nets' bench and an assistant coach named Tom Barrise. "He was mouthing something and the game was over, so I went to see what he was talking about," Thomas said. "He just turned around and walked away."

As an angry little man, Isiah has perfected this Billy Martin act. He's never backed away from a fight, even punching the face belonging to his teammate and friend, Bill Laimbeer, in a bygone Bad Boys practice gone south.

"When I look in the mirror," he told me once, "I still see myself as a little ghetto kid on the West Side of Chicago. I still feel like I have to fight and I have to prove. ... I guess if you really psychoanalyze me, there's some insecurities there. You don't quite feel good enough, but that's how you grew up. You were always waiting in the food line while somebody else was laughing at you, so you still carry that around."

Thomas carries that around when shredding Greg Anthony for criticizing his draft pick, Balkman, on ESPN. He carries it around when reliving that original Dream Team snub. He carries it around when hearing the Jordan-Magic-Bird trilogy celebrated to his exclusion, and when remembering that Larry Bird, a lousy coach himself, fired him in Indiana faster than Bird could spell "payback."

So if nothing else, Thomas will coach these Knicks with an attitude. "The intensity," he said, "it starts at the top."

Just to survive, Thomas needs to be much more than intense. Smart, imaginative and thick-skinned would help, too.

His fate would be in better hands if he could rely on Thomas and Dumars rather than Marbury and Francis, but life isn't that forgiving. Thomas is the one who assembled this roster. Now that the toxic Brown cloud has been lifted, Isiah's career is the one that has to live and die with this team.

The new coach promised to reveal some offensive and defensive surprises for Wednesday's season opener at Memphis, but this would be the year's biggest shock: a Knicks return to relevance.

The Nets have reduced them to a practical joke in their own market, and no friendly show of open-gym appreciation can change that. The Knicks might've made a smart business decision yesterday by bringing their act to Jersey, which will wave goodbye to the Brooklyn-bound Nets in the near future.

But rain or shine, the 1,500 non-paying fans in a 5,000-seat house reminded the Knicks that there's only one way to please a crowd: win.

Posted by SugarRayRichardson:

35 years living in mansions and around 60 million in salary later and he keeps bringing this up?