Currently have too much work to come and post guys, but I couldn't afford not to post this one article. Have fun, go knicks !
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/02/sports/basketball/02knicks.html
Street-Fighting Man About Town Is Reviving the Knicks
By HOWARD BECK
Published: November 2, 2004
Suzy Allman for The New York Times
Since becoming Knicks president and getting to know New York, Isiah Thomas has overseen a rise in the team's fortunes and in fan interest.
the New York streets can be discomfiting to the newcomer, but street sense is not confined by geographic boundaries, so when Isiah Thomas walks among the masses here, instinct sometimes kicks in. And the street fighter from Chicago's West Side comes out.
If a boorish fan accosts Thomas and wants a fight, verbal or otherwise, he will probably get it. Take a swing at the Knicks, and their president punches back. Not with a fist (although he is capable), but with hard stares and cutting words and, sometimes, with that dangerously disarming smile.
Thomas needed the full arsenal after he took control of the Knicks last December. He wanted to know the city. So he rode the subways into Brooklyn and the Bronx and occasionally walked a few dozen blocks to his office at Madison Square Garden.
The city, it turned out, was feeling surly.
"I almost got into a couple fights," Thomas said with a mischievous grin. "People were talking bad about my players."
The discontent was understandable. The Knicks were heading toward a third consecutive losing season, with a roster of overpaid underachievers and nondescript journeymen.
Thomas was trying to change all that, but this is New York, and there was little patience. Not everyone was enthralled with the risk-taking, smooth-talking interloper from the Midwest who had been hired to turn the team around.
The smack talk flew. And occasionally, someone would step over the line.
"I remember telling this guy, 'You can say that stuff to your friend, but don't say that stuff to me about my players,' " Thomas said.
"They were talking New York smack," he added. "I was talking Chicago smack. In New York, people get in your face and they talk and they banter. Chicago, you get in somebody's face, you get your butt kicked. That's what I was telling the guy: 'Don't get in my face.' "
Feisty Face of a Franchise
It is Thomas's face that matters most these days in all things Knicks. The chairman of Madison Square Garden, James L. Dolan, is a media-averse businessman with limited basketball acumen. The team's coach, Lenny Wilkens, is an old-school gym rat who would rather teach his players than pontificate to reporters. Fearful of saying something impolitic, Wilkens rarely says much beyond the obvious and the predictable.
That leaves Thomas, who is entering his first full season as the Knicks' basketball boss, as the undisputed face and voice of the franchise. It is a role he embraces, even if it is one he never envisioned taking.
When Dolan and Steve Mills, the Madison Square Garden president, called him on Dec. 19, Thomas was in Chicago, spending time with his mother, Mary. Over the course of a long day of shopping and manicures, Thomas had called everyone he knew on his cellphone until he had run out of distractions. Now his phone was ringing.
Dolan and Mills asked Thomas if he was interested in a position with the Knicks, not specifying which one. But Thomas - at the time weighing two college coaching offers - did not need specifics.
Mills asked him, "How soon could you get here to interview?"
"I said, 'I can get on the next plane,' " Thomas said.
He chuckled as he recounted the story, noting that he was wearing gym shoes and a sweatsuit.
Thomas drove to Indianapolis, still his home after being fired as the Indiana Pacers' coach in August, to pick up a suit and tie and his basketball material - playbooks, the N.B.A.'s labor agreement, everything.
Three days later, he was being introduced as the Knicks' president, and implicitly, as the team's savior. An ominous task, to be sure, given the state of the team, but Thomas, who became a Hall of Fame point guard with the Detroit Pistons, has never hesitated to gamble on himself.
In 1994, he joined the expansion Toronto Raptors as a part-owner and vice president. Among Thomas's draft picks were Damon Stoudamire, who became rookie of the year; Marcus Camby; and Tracy McGrady.
After leaving the Raptors, Thomas purchased the flagging Continental Basketball Association. Then came his three-year run as coach of the Pacers.
"This is an unusual individual, in that he has so many skill sets, and his intellect is very, very high," said Brendan Suhr, the Knicks' director of player personnel, who is Thomas's longtime friend and who coached him as an assistant in Detroit.
At every stop, Thomas's reputation was the same: aggressive, savvy, political and sometimes abrasive, loyal to those who showed loyalty and intolerant of those who went their own way. Sure enough, two days after Thomas took the reins, he waived Slavko Vranes and brought the rookie prospect Mike Sweetney off the injured list. Two weeks later, Thomas swung the blockbuster deal that brought Stephon Marbury and Penny Hardaway from Phoenix for Antonio McDyess, the injured former All-Star, and four others.
After a couple of years of wandering in a desert of irrelevance, the Knicks were suddenly interesting again.
Thomas searched for the words to describe the state of the team when he arrived and finally settled on "apathy."
"We were really in a crisis here," he said.
Fans, disillusioned with the Knicks' direction under the previous general manager, Scott Layden, responded immediately, and many of them enthusiastically.
"There is now hope, and people recognize it," said Martin Cornman, 33, of Rochester, who along with his brother Andrew, runs the fan-driven Web site, ultimateknicks.com. "During the Layden years, it was ho-hum."
The Web site tells the story. In the months before Thomas took over, ultimateknicks.com received an average of 5,000 hits a day, Cornman said. Since Thomas joined the Knicks, the site has averaged 17,000 hits a day. 
Fans Finally Take Notice
Not everyone is in Thomas's camp, though few argue with the results. The Knicks made the playoffs after Thomas turned over most of the roster and changed coaches, hiring Wilkens to replace Don Chaney. And even the critics are talking about the Knicks more than they were a year ago, if the Internet fan sites are any indication.
"They have a lot of young guys who are athletic, with good potential. We're not talking about Ward and Eisley and Weatherspoon anymore," said Cornman, referring to Charlie Ward, Howard Eisley and Clarence Weatherspoon, all of whom Thomas traded.
Instead, fans are buzzing about Jamal Crawford, a potential All-Star guard acquired by Thomas this summer, and Trevor Ariza, a high-flying rookie from U.C.L.A. Magazines and N.B.A. executives are picking the Knicks to win the Atlantic Division.
Thomas has lived in New York only 10 months, but he radiates a New York sensibility. His tailored suits and million-dollar smile are pure Madison Avenue. Raised in a crime-ridden West Chicago neighborhood, he exudes a toughness that is straight Bronx.
He has a salesman's charm, a street kid's resilience.
[Edited by - raven on 11/02/2004 03:14:40]
11/2/2004 6:33 AM
