Timing of contract extension surprises even Thomas

GREENBURGH, N.Y. -- Surprisingly, there was no "Mission Accomplished" banner hanging from the wall. And shockingly, the New York Knicks were not wearing limited edition T-shirts and caps to commemorate their eighth-place standing in the Eastern Conference.

It's shocking, we argue, because the first warm day of the year in suburban New York brought a burst of spring-like enthusiasm and haughtiness from Jim Dolan. The Knicks were so happy with themselves Monday at their practice facility, we're surprised they didn't serve cake at the latest Jim Dolan Spends More Money Day.


Not even 48 hours after his team moved into its current tenuous position to qualify for the playoffs, Dolan seized it as an opportunity to declare this season a success by handing Isiah Thomas a contract extension to remain for the foreseeable future as both coach and president of the New York Knicks.

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Yes, the Knicks are the only team in the league to improve their winning percentage every single month this season. Yes, this season is eminently more promising than last season's Larry Brown debacle. And yes, Thomas is getting a heck of a lot more out of Eddy Curry, David Lee and maybe even Stephon Marbury than any coach ever had with any of them ever before.

But do those things, taken together, constitute making a move of this magnitude? Isn't it a little early for the owner to be placing a stamp of approval on a team with a 29-34 record with the NBA's highest-paid roster? Hadn't the bar been placed a little too low? Shouldn't the final 19 games mean something, Mr. Dolan, before you unilaterally declare that keeping the franchise under the direction of Thomas is the best long-term plan?

"It's a relief, I think, it's a little bit of pressure off," said Curry, who threatened earlier this season to ask out of New York if Thomas was not retained.

Pressure off? With 19 games left when you're sitting in the eighth seed?

"What do you mean by that, Eddy?" I asked.

"Not all the pressure. Just that pressure as far as will he come back, what's it going to take for him to come back," Curry said. "As far as that goes, we feel confident that he's here to stay, and we can start just focusing 100 percent on basketball and trying to make this push.

Knicks' record in Isiah era
Season Record Finish
2003-04* 29-25 7th in East
Lost in 1st round
2004-05 33-49 T-11th in East
2005-06 23-59 15th in East
2006-07 29-34 8th in East
(as of 3/11)
*hired Dec. 22, 2003


"I was surprised when I walked in today and everybody told me what happened. I was like 'Wow,' but it's a good thing."

The best thing you can say about the Knicks is that they are indeed better than they were a year ago, and they have shown a sustained resiliency that makes their lack of consistency even more baffling. They haven't won more than three in a row, yet they haven't lost more than three straight either.

Dolan told the team's beat writers (he denied a request by ESPN.com to be present, but he also barred local newspaper columnists and, most baffling, his own writer from knicks.com) that he had seen so much "evident and significant" progress -- especially over the past 10 days while Lee and Jamal Crawford have been sidelined -- that he wanted to remove any uncertainty regarding Thomas' future from the equation.

"Nobody was playing to save Isiah, we were playing to win," Marbury said. "Now that it's signed and sealed up as far as where we're going in the future, it makes things a lot clearer. The picture is easier to see."

But Dolan's vote of confidence equates to a tacit declaration of this having been a successful season, and the middle of March is no time to even be insinuating such a thing. The Knicks still have three games left with Toronto, two with the Nets, two with the Cavs and two with Dallas, and a back-to-back set against Detroit and Chicago on April 9-10 that begins a span of six games over the season's final 10 days. Our point being that it's egregiously premature to come even close to declaring anything definitive. I'm not saying Thomas is the wrong guy to have leading the Knicks beyond this season, but I think the time to make that determination is in late April, not mid-March.

Thomas said the timing of the extension took him by surprise, too, with Dolan calling him Sunday to tell him he had passed his ultimatum. Thomas said he wasn't exactly feeling a sense of vindication, more of a sense of fulfillment that he'll have a chance to continue building a body of work that ultimately will go down as the legacy of his post-playing career.

"I didn't want to have a failure here. That was my concern, not necessarily if I was going to have a job. I wanted to make sure that I lived up to a certain standard of basketball that I know," Thomas said. "Because when I took the job, that was one of the big questions that I had to ask myself, if you can't get it done in New York, then it's not going to be a pretty picture leading out."

For now, though, and for the foreseeable future thanks to Dolan's loose definition of what constitutes success, Thomas gets to keep steering the ship. You couldn't help but feel happy for the guy, if only because he appeared freshly unburdened, but you also couldn't help but wonder why this was the time Dolan chose to make up his mind.

If this move saps the team of its will to compete, and Curry's comment makes you wonder whether it will, it'll go down as yet another of Dolan's blunders. The nice thing is we'll get to make that call just a month from now, and Isiah has 19 games to make Dolan appear to be either a sage or a buffoon.

"It's a relief, I think, it's a little bit of pressure off," said Curry

Well it sounds like Curry is about to check out mentally. Is this stiff serious?

I'm starting to like this extension, and it's timing, more and more all the time.

Premature, pretty much describes this 8th seed bit