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Queeniepop
Posts: 20640
Alba Posts: 0
Joined: 12/29/2006
Member: #1233
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...kidding. (LUPICA 1 CURRY 1)
Shade to fall on sunny Jim
Thursday, February 8th, 2007
There is this idea going around that because the Knicks are better off than they were a year ago, because they are about to jump over a bar set as low as a subway grate, that they have somehow turned the corner for good. There is also the feeling, if you read the profile of Garden owner James Dolan in the current Sports Illustrated, that Dolan seems to think he is going good all of a sudden.
James Dolan seems to think this way even though neither the Knicks nor Rangers have won a single playoff game since he became the big boss at the Garden, not having to listen to Dave Checketts any longer, not having to answer to anyone. Not even dad.
Dolan had a lot to say in Sports Illustrated this week, especially about his sobriety, something which he thinks current employees, past employees, and even the huge readership of a national magazine believe is fascinating. What he doesn't talk about much is results. The reason for this is simple:
He has none.
Maybe the Knicks can have a big second half and win the Atlantic Division, which seems to be the best way into the playoffs for them. Or maybe the Knicks can get the eighth playoff spot in the Eastern Conference by passing the Heat or the Magic or maybe the Indiana Pacers. Maybe the Rangers - about whom Dolan wanted to talk plenty when he was talking to the New York media not long ago and now seems to have developed complete amnesia - can fight their way into one of the last playoff spots in their conference in the NHL.
Dolan can talk then. Until then, he should tell his story walking. He has been outspending the competition in two sports for years, and here is the real record on him, this guy who likes to think of himself as such a big player in New York:
The Knicks last won a playoff game on April 29, 2001.
The Rangers last won a playoff game on May 18, 1997.
Before the SI story on Dolan came out, there was some sort of blurb suggesting that the story would include a player poll ranking Dolan as the worst owner in the NBA. For some reason, this made Dolan and his various flacks at the Garden hysterical. But then the Garden has become a place where they worry more about a single line buried in a single newspaper story than they do about the standings, where they think if they spin things just right they can almost make the standings disappear.
Dolan's Garden: Where they try to make a Knicks record that currently stands at six games under .500 and has them five games behind the Toronto Raptors - who were four games better than the Knicks last season - as something that belongs in those 50 greatest Garden moments they've been shoving down everybody's throats lately.
Dolan's Garden: Where you don't have to produce real results, just "significant improvement."
Truth is, NBA players must look at Dolan and see him as a dream owner, for all times. Not only does he overpay you to play for him, sometimes you don't even have to play for him at all.
For example, Dolan this season is still paying the following players a total of around $63 million: Allan Houston, Jalen Rose, Maurice Taylor, Shandon Anderson, Jerome Williams. To give you a little context on this, there are 24 teams in the league with a total payroll of $67 million or lower. So not only do the Knicks still have the highest payroll in the league, at $130 million, they have another payroll, like a taxi squad, that includes injured players or retired players or ones that Isiah Thomas just made disappear.
So Dolan is absolutely right to chafe at the notion of being called unpopular by NBA players. The smart ones don't just want to play for him, they want Dolan to adopt them.
It is no better in hockey. Think about the fact that the Rangers have a chance to go an entire decade without a single playoff victory. Considering the money they have spent on hockey players in that time, before and after Dolan became the big Garden boss he craved to be, this is as remarkable a streak as Brett Favre's streak of consecutive games at quarterback for the Packers.
No wonder Mark Messier wants to replace Glen Sather as the guy running the Rangers. If Sather can last this long without any results, Messier has to be thinking he can last longer at the Garden than the spokes in the ceiling.
"If there's one thing that's constant about Jim Dolan," one of his fellow owners said yesterday, talking about the money that has been spent on the Knicks just since Isiah Thomas got to town, "it's that he still doesn't know what he doesn't know."
Maybe this is the year when the Rangers win Dolan a game in the playoffs. Maybe the Knicks can do the same thing. If it happens, I will be the first to congratulate him for finally putting some points on the board.
But if his teams don't deliver, if the Garden is oh-for-the-spring again, maybe we should take another poll then, and not just limit it to the NBA.
Maybe we should ask Knicks and Rangers fans who they think is the worst owner anywhere. Who they think is the worst owner the Garden has ever had.
Happy Daze
Reasons why James Dolan shouldn't be smiling:
- The Knicks' defense of Eddy Curry's All-Star credentials last week was more impressive than any defense played by Curry himself.
- Isiah Thomas' favorite time of year, the trading deadline, is fast approaching, so you can't rule out the Knicks' prez overhauling the team again in the name of getting "younger and more athletic."
- Knicks appear to be copying that decade-without-a-playoff-win plan the Rangers are working on.
- Even if Thomas' team is welcomed to the playoffs, there is a good chance its first-round opponent would be Detroit, which has looked revitalized since acquiring the big man Isiah coveted, Chris Webber.
- Have you heard the guy's band?
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2/9/2007 9:58 AM