Dolan's billion-dollar babies
BY MIKE LUPICA
Sunday, March 25th 2007, 10:59 AM


James Dolan has put a lot of money into trying
to make the Knicks and Rangers matter to New York again.

Since 2001, when James Dolan became the big boss at the Garden, Dolan has spent a small fortune of Cablevision money trying to make the Knicks and Rangers matter again, make people think he somehow matters in sports and New York. Call it around a billion dollars spent on basketball and hockey. It is up there with what the Yankees have spent since they last won the World Series, except the Yankees at least still finish in first place every year.

The Knicks and Rangers? They are currently grubbing for the last playoff spots in the NBA and NHL.

You know what the motto at the Garden should be for this era, and that means whether one of Dolan's teams or both teams manage to make it to the playoffs this time?

"Mediocrity. No Matter What the Cost."

Under Dolan's watch, the Garden is still the "World's Most Famous Arena," but it is more famous now for what it spends and what it gets in return. This isn't about good intentions or bad luck or the way the Garden tries to spin any kind of triumph into another one of those magic moments. This is about the way things are. The Knicks and Rangers have become famous for outspending people and then fighting for the eighth playoff spot.

Madison Square Garden: World's most famous eighth playoff spot.

Or seventh, if things break right and the teams around the Knicks and Rangers continue to collapse.

The way things are going, the Knicks could still make the NBA playoffs with one of the worst regular-season records in recent memory. And that will be treated as some validation of Isiah Thomas' operation, and Dolan's confidence in it. Right now the Knicks are more games under .500 than at any other time this season. They are 30-39, and their fans are supposed to be giddy at the idea of a Playoff Push. That is where we are with them, and that is what the Garden has become.

The Rangers have at least shown life when they could have fallen out of things. The way things go in hockey, they really could make a run under Tom Renney, one of the best remaining people in the place. But remember something about the Rangers: They have not produced a single playoff victory since 1997. So if they do manage a playoff victory this spring, it will be the first for Glen Sather's hockey operation. Same deal with the Knicks under Thomas. No wonder he and Dolan only want the Knicks to be measured against last season, instead of the one before that. And the one before that.

Think about something: If Larry Brown had come back this season, and the Knicks were sitting on 30 wins, does Dolan extend Brown's contract before the season ends?

Dolan so deeply wants to be in the Rock & Roll Renegade Owners Club with Mark Cuban, and probably was made giddy this week when it sounded as if Cuban came to town to carry Dolan's water. But the money quote from Cuban, for my money anyway, was the one I read in Selena Roberts' column in the Times, about how the Mavericks don't "work off of pedigree."

Pedigree is everything at the Garden, or Dolan, the son of Charles Dolan, would never have gotten the run of the place in the first place. It really was amazing, Dolan actually saying a few weeks ago that he could have extended Thomas' contract when the Knicks passed last year's victory total, as if that were some kind of new franchise milestone.

If the Knicks don't make the playoffs, in this wretched Eastern Conference, we will hear about the injuries. We will hear about them in a week when they couldn't beat the Trail Blazers even though the Trail Blazers didn't have Zach Randolph, who was on bereavement leave. These days Thomas shakes his head sadly and says, "We just don't have the bodies." Right. Check the payroll on the bodies he still has. He and Dolan are paying them more than most teams in the league.

And everybody will be asked to ignore how this team couldn't produce a three-game winning streak even before Jamal Crawford and David Lee got hurt. In this wretched Eastern Conference.

And everybody will be asked to ignore the overall Knicks' record since December 2003, when Thomas came to town and Dolan gave him the run of the place.

They better still make the playoffs. The Rangers, too. A billion spent over six years. No playoff victories. Tell any fan, of either team, why they're supposed to feel the future is bright, as they're constantly told, with these people in charge.