I have been harping on "Isiah accountability" for some time. Like Layden before him, I root for him to right this ship.

From the NY Post this morning by Pete Vescey:
ISIAH, KNICKS RIDE ON ROAD TO NOWHERE

PAYING off or buying out predecessors' blunders — coaches, players and front office personnel — is acceptable standard operating procedure for newly hired sports executives. Initially, that's what they do best in an attempt to turn things around, public perception being the No. 1 priority.

Conversely, the first time the new guy is compelled to swallow one of his principal financial brainstorms, the first time he's obliged to admit a major mistake was committed on his watch, is the beginning of his downfall, the perfect opening for critics to flick on the brights and intensify scrutiny on each and every questionable decision.

That's the defenseless position Isiah Thomas finds himself in today.

Nobody really got all that bent out of shape when the Knicks president paid Don Chaney and Shandon Anderson to leave; we understood completely when it was time for them to go.

Nobody took their protests of Lenny Wilkens' hiring and his excessive salary (bidding against phantoms) to extremes, . . . after Mike Fratello's candidacy was abruptly annulled and Willis Reed rejected the interim job. Despite failing conspicuously in previous engagements in Atlanta and Toronto, Wilkens was given the benefit of cosmic doubt based on Hall of Fame lifetime achievements. Consequently, Thomas was allowed to slide his last-grasp selection onto the sidelines with only a brief interlude under the microscope.

Nobody ceaselessly demonstrated in disgust or tirelessly circulated overcast opinions of the Keith Van Horn-Tim Thomas trade, because, in the final analysis, acquiring Nazr Mohammad in the deal proved worthwhile.

Yes, Thomas has been taken to task for overspending for underachievers in James Dolan's no-budget restraint system.

Yes, he has been mocked for being unable to so much as maintain mediocrity since replacing Scott Layden more than a year ago.

But nobody, in all fairness, has regularly ripped him for purely picking up where Dave Checketts, Ernie Grunfeld and Layden left off . . . throwing ungodly money around, thus lengthening the mortgage on the Knicks' future; their cap currently tops the NBA, a grotesque $103 million and building briskly.

Despite what you may read or hear elsewhere, the Knicks gave Wilkens the dignity to throw himself under the snow plow, as opposed to being summarily sent back to his home in Seattle by his very last NBA employer. For agreeing to cite Hubie Brown-like health issues (his mother, indeed, is ailing) instead of causing a commotion, or quitting like Jeff Van Gundy, or faxing in his resignation like Pat Riley, the Knicks will make good on their remaining obligation, what's left of this season's $5M tab as well as next, which isn't fully guaranteed; we're talking roughly $6M total.

Would Wilkens have survived, you ask, had Scott Padgett not hit the game winning, coach-killing shot Thursday night? No. Win or lose to the Rockets, Isiah was prepared to offer Lenny an arrangement in upper management if he wanted to stick around; it's almost definite he won't.

Where does that leave the Knicks? They are what their 17-22 record attests they are: A mess. A different shade of lipstick on the same pig.

Where does that leave Thomas? By paying off Wilkens so soon after recruiting him it's now official; Isiah's honeymoon in New York is harpooned. Even vocal supporters wind up nuking him when confronted with damning data.

I'd say it's back to square one except a solid argument can be made that the Knicks have receded to below square one.

A year ago, Herb Williams was only considered experienced and worthy enough by Thomas to coach one game in between Chaney and Wilkens. Now he's being entrusted to lead a brood with a superiority complex out of the wilderness.

I understand why Wilkens wanted Williams to replace him; he's a man, loyal to the foundation, not a phony bone in his body, or a skeleton in his closet. I also understand why Thomas thinks the oldest member of the staff deserves a promotion. At the same time, why import faithful companions like Brendan Suhr and Mark Aguirre if they can't be relied upon to cover your assets in crisis?

Again, where does that leave the Knicks and Thomas? Neither here nor there. Treading water. Marking time. Lost in Limbo. Waiting for the end of the season to ask the Pistons' permission to talk to Larry Brown. Doing what they should have done the last time they had a coaching vacancy, kept it open and remained patient on the favorable chance owner Bill Davidson, for the right price, would allow his championship coach to come back to New York where the Browns recently rebuilt a home in East Hampton.

Still, I can't help but think, if the Knicks players had only spent as much time defending opponents as they did Wilkens, he'd still have a job.




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Isiah is really getting a handful this moringing....

Also from Vaccaro.......

A TRUE MASTER OF CHA-GRIN

THE smile can no longer camouflage the mess he has helped perpetuate. For a while, it was easy for Isiah Thomas to pretend all the bad things that happen to the Knicks were grandfathered in by Scott Layden, because around the Knicks it is always fashionable to blame Layden for everything short of the 1929 stock market crash.

Doesn't wash anymore. Doesn't play. Not now, not in this city, not with the Knicks as dysfunctional and disorganized a jumble as they've ever been. Not with Lenny Wilkens exiled, the parting termed a "resignation," even though he resigned from the Knicks the way Tessio resigned from the Corleone Family.

"I'm not disappointed at all," Thomas said through that permanent grin, a beam of light that forever disarms potential critics and dismisses would-be cynics. "This league — it's tough, tough, tough. I like where we are. And I like where we are headed."

If you just read those words, hot type on cold paper, you would have little choice but to conclude the president of the New York Knicks has completely lost touch with any form of reason, logic or common sense. You might also assume he hasn't been watching his basketball team perform across the past couple of weeks.

But when you see the man deliver those up-with-people sentiments live, with those dimples working and those perfect teeth sparkling — well, you'd believe Isiah if he told you the new Jason Alexander sitcom was the funniest half-hour in television history.

But, then, that's always been Isiah's way, the smiling assassin with a doctorate in spin, Machiavelli in a business suit. He was that way as a player, which is why he was forced to watch the Dream Team win the gold in Barcelona after compiling an enemies list that would've made H.R. Haldeman proud. He ran the CBA into the ground, declaring victory afterward like Baghdad Bob.

Now, he talks about how the Knicks are right where he wants them to be, how you have to go through a few hardships in order to see the light. It sounds impossible. It sounds implausible. But, damn, that smile sure makes him look earnest.

Even when he talks about the shortcomings of this roster, which has his fingerprints all over it now. Even as he talks about how you have to hang around and wait for the cavalry to come in, wait for the horses, how Nazr Mohammed (one of his prize acquisitions) is fine, but no Yao Ming.

Even as he somehow explains away his resistance to taking over the coaching reigns of this team because of — get this — the traffic.

"In a smaller town, maybe it would be different," he explained, and it's touching to see how much compassion Isiah has for his chauffeur, and surely this has nothing to do with the fact if he ever did coach this team, and if he did it as well as he has general managed it so far, there would be plaintive wails of "Fire Zeke!" inside of a month.

No, that couldn't be true.

Because Isiah said so!

With a smile!

Thomas' honeymoon isn't only over, it's so far a part of history as to belong with Willis Reed limping on the court before Game 7.

When he took over the team, he was careful to talk about how he, like Knicks fans, demanded immediate results, and to back that up he exchanged all of his usable assets for Stephon Marbury. He obtained Jamal Crawford. And maybe it's only coincidence, but two of the best stories of the NBA this year are the Suns and the Bulls, teams that sure got a whole lot better after pawning Marbury and Crawford off on Thomas.

Now, he says he hoped Wilkens could have lasted three years, but even if he had, "he wouldn't have been the one to lead us to a championship. He was an intermediary coach." Which sounds an awful lot like one of those five-year plans he dismissed when he took the job.

Whatever. He smiled that day. He smiled yesterday. The smile tells you anything is possible. The results, so far, tell you the same thing. Just not in the same way.