“We’ll keep moving in this direction”
Mike Dougherty

Has it been two weeks already?

Almost.

Isiah Thomas sidestepped a tough question two weeks ago, noting it would be fair to ask whether something needed to be done to address his status as head coach if the Knicks did not improve over the next couple of weeks. They are 1-4 since then.

So the question was alertly raised yesterday after practice.

“We’ll keep moving in this direction,” Thomas said.

And what direction is that?

“Me as the coach,” Thomas said.

I know a lot of us were thinking south right before the actual answer was offered.

Really, it’s not a surprise to find out that Knicks president Isiah Thomas has no intentions of dumping Knicks coach Isiah Thomas, but it’s a good way to check the man’s resolve.

He isn’t walking away from the sidelines and heading back upstairs to orchestrate the rebuilding from the front office.

Knicks owner James Dolan is going to have to fire Thomas, who’s failed to inspire. And with an 8-21 record, the players know there are not a lot of alternatives left.

Maybe a blockbuster trade?

It seems like something needs to happen. Nothing else has worked.

“We’ve tried everything. We’re trying to get wins,” Zach Randolph said. “He’s doing the best he can. It’s up and down. It’s frustrating, but he’s doing the best he can.”

Eddy Curry believes the status of Thomas is in the back of everyone’s mind.

“It’s not in the back of my mind,” Randolph said. “It really ain’t. I don’t know. It might be on some guys’ minds, but I just want to win and do the best we can do. We can’t give in. It’s too early.”

Jamal Crawford acknowledged the questions about the future of Thomas are unavoidable.

“When you hear it everywhere you go that’s difficult,” he said. “But me personally, seeing how he keeps us prepared, I know that it’s not him.”

On the injury front, Crawford believes he’ll be ready for Wednesday’s game against Sacramento. He did not scrimmage yesterday, but was shooting with a padded glove on a bruised right hand. Crawford swears he connected on 42 of 45 attempts.

Layups?

“No,” he said. “Mid-range. Just inside the arc.”

Curry was defending.

Bad joke. Sorry.

Stephon Marbury went the distance in practice. He still isn’t allowed to speak with the media. That might happen on Wendesday postgame. Thomas is letting Marbury decide whether to play or not, depending on his emotional state.

The conditioning is still a work in progress.

“He looked good,” Thomas said. “He got winded a couple of times. But the good thing about these kinds of athletes is they’re able to bounce back quickly.”

Curry was on the receiving end of a verbal shot from Thomas, who responded to the centerpiece saying there’s nothing he can do about the decision to bring him off the bench.

“If anything, I’ve shown I’m going to try to play the best people,” Thomas said. “The people who play the best, that’s who you want to play. Now to his credit, he did come in and have a good game yesterday. He had 12 points and eight rebounds. It shows me, while he may not like the bench, it definitely had an effect on his rebounding effort. If he continues to rebound, then the minutes are there.

“From that position, we need rebounding and some shot blocking. And if you can’t get the shot blocking, then you definitely need the rebounding. But you can’t get 16 points and two rebounds. That doesn’t work.”

No argument here.

Posted by islesfan:

We were told that last year was a success because they had established Curry as an "All Star" caliber player. Despite that being false, it now seems that Curry isn't anything close to that in their eyes.

So now that they've proven that last year was a waste and this year is much worse, how does the Teflon Con keep his job?

People said that Larry Brown was sabotaging the team but Isiah is doing far more to damage this team on a daily basis than 100 Larry Brown's could have done. Name a single player that has done better under Isiah. Larry was able to find playing time for 3 rookies on a veteran laden team. Isiah can't find any minutes for last years and this years rookies on a team that is going nowhere and is continually getting blown out.

I used to think that it would take the next GM 5 years to clean up Isiah's mess. But seeing how it gets worse and worse every day, I'm thinking it might take up to 10 years to clean up this garbage and get rid of Isiah's stench.

Posted by bigbeast:

I thought shotblocking was overrated? You know, now that Isiah is coaching the mess that Isiah the GM put together, our only hope is that he's learning from his mitakes. Saying we need a shotblocker is a far cry than what Isiah the GM was saying. He's also seeing that we need a pg. Since it looks as if he isn't going to be fired, hopefully he's learning.


[Edited by - bigbeast on 31-12-2007 4:32 PM]