Wilkens hiring makes no sense
But it could help Raps' bottom line


DAVE FESCHUK
BASKETBALL COLUMNIST

Isiah Thomas surveyed the basketball universe yesterday, searching for a new coach for his spaced-out New York Knicks, and quicker than you could say "How about Mike Fratello or Doc Rivers?" the Big Apple general manager proved he indeed resides on another planet. Lenny Wilkens, fired in April after three seasons spent presiding over the Raptors' steep decline, was pulled from the unemployment lines and handed the gig.

Martians Contacted! Raptors Champions! As newswire alerts go, Wilkens Hired! will go down as one of the all-time-most-memorable, you-can't-be-serious bulletins in history. Considering the way Wilkens had been run out of Hogtown — the way he'd been criticized by management for a laughable work ethic that clearly rubbed off on his already motivationally challenged troops and led, some believe, to an unprecedented wave of injuries — it sounded more like a punchline than a headline.

And you could imagine the scene at a certain Seattle retirement residence: "Iron my mock turtlenecks, Marilyn! I'm leaving today!"

Strange, but this is no fiction. And so the city that never sleeps awaits the arrival of a 66-year-old coach who once disgustedly remarked, when asked by a reporter if he and his Toronto staff would burn the midnight oil scouting a just-announced playoff opponent, "I'm not staying up past midnight."

It's an ill-thought-out move for more than that reason, and it came complete with something Torontonians would expect from Thomas, a bush-league parting. Deposed Knicks coach Don Chaney awoke to newspaper headlines that he was about to be replaced as coach by Fratello, currently broadcasting in Miami. But Chaney was made to preside over yesterday morning's Knicks-Magic shootaround, finally leaving Madison Square Garden without a job around 5 p.m.

Perhaps that kind of minute-to-minute job insecurity is to be expected in a league that recycles coaches with an efficiency that would make David Suzuki proud. And perhaps Thomas is cribbing an all-time great. Seventy-year-old Hubie Brown, after all, has done wonders for the Memphis Grizzlies since having his long-dead coaching career resurrected by general manager Jerry West last season.

But Thomas is no West. And while Brown remains a basketball junkie with a palpable enthusiasm for today's NBA, Wilkens, in his three seasons in Toronto, showed a growing disengagement from the game that was mirrored in his club's uninspired performance.

Thomas was looking for a coach to harden his club's soft defence but Wilkens presided last season over the league's most porous squad. Thomas was looking for a coach to mentor his club's talented-but-untamed point guard Stephon Marbury. And who better to relate to the tattoo-rockin', Bentley-rollin' 26-year-old than a senior who has long been criticized for his inability to reach young players.

It makes no sense for the Knicks although it could for the Raptors, who owed Wilkens $5 million (U.S.) in salary when he left. That could be reduced depending on how much he's paid in New York, Raptor GM Glen Grunwald said.

You shake your head. Last season when the media crowded around the locker of Charles Oakley, the former Raptor and longtime Knick, on the occasion of the opening of Wilkens' 30th season, Oakley laughed: "The crowd should be in Lenny's office, asking him how he got that deal."

They'll be asking the same question today, and only Thomas knows the answer. Perhaps he's convinced that Wilkens can actually get this not-untalented team to the playoffs, even though the winningest coach in league history — also the losingest — hasn't kept up with the league's strategic innovations.

More likely he's using Wilkens as a malleable rest-of-season replacement before seizing the job next year. More likely Fratello and Rivers and anyone else you figured might have been a good fit were too slick, too media-savvy, too much of a threat to Thomas' reign.

Whatever. It should be fun to watch. Wilkens bristled when kind-hearted Canadian columnists questioned anything from his commitment to his lack of timeout calls. Now that he's in viperous New York you can bet the heaped-upon coach will soon be reprising his favourite post-game refrain, "I'm not stupid, okay?"

Now that he's landed this deal, we'll never suggest such a thing again

Well where stuck,Hope Lenny works out better then he did in TO

Who cares?