The Garden's Lawlessness

Much has been made on sports-talk radio and on ESPN of the New York Knicks’ recent re-flirtation with Isaiah Thomas. Thomas left the Knicks and Madison Square Garden in disgrace a couple of years ago, but own Jim Dolan always liked the guy, and so announced last week that Thomas would return to the basketball team as a “consultant.”

Most of the ire in sports-page banter has been directed at Thomas’ utter incompetence as a basketball executive. Thomas was a great basketball player himself, but he managed with the blessing and support of his owner, to run a relatively successful professional franchise into the ground. He touts himself as a great talent evaluator and recruiter, but his drafts were absolutely incomprehensible, and yielded no long-term benefits for the team. He wooed several redundant and overpaid players who could not play together, did not respect the job or their employers and put the Knicks so far over the league payroll cap that the team was essentially handicapped for three years after Thomas left. The best example was Stephon Marbury, a local playground star who never learned how to play with professional teammates and who imploded 18 months after he returned to New York.

None of these failures seemed to bother Dolan, however. He did not push Thomas out until Anucha Brown Saunders sued Thomas for sexual harassment and the Garden for doing nothing to stop it. In fact, the Garden fired Brown for accusing Thomas of harassing her – one of those obvious no-no’s. Rather than settle the case and apologize, the Garden went to trial, where witness after witness described in vivid detail the sexual predations, schoolboy antics and outright paranoia of the whole organization, with Thomas as the star idiot. Not until NBA commissioner David Stern stepped in to demand it did the Knicks finally apologize, settle and send Thomas packing.

I have not seen any commentary on the implications of this part of the story. Dolan’s decision to bring Thomas back looked to me like defiance of Brown, the judicial system that was about to support her and the NBA that treated Dolan like the immature brat he is. It was like none of it happened.

Turns out that the NBA once again stepped in to stop the hire. Because Thomas is also the head basketball coach at Florida International University, where he racked up a 7-21 record in his first year, it would be a violation of NBA conflict-of-interest rules for him to work for the Knicks. Wielding this technicality, Stern quietly told the Knicks and Thomas to “voluntarily” comply and cut the whole thing out.

(Why FIU would hire a jerk like Thomas is another matter. The university makes Thoams a major presence on its website, with no mention of his peccadillos. No different from Kentucky going out to get John Calipari, I guess. Note that this fan blog ) makes no mention of the fact that Calipari has already had two Final Four appearances voided for major rules violations.)

The moral is that Jim Dolan, spoiled heir to his father’s cable TV empire and owner of the Knicks for no other reason, considers himself above the law and the rules. He wants to play with his toys without adult interference, and he will do whatever he can to get away with it. Makes you wonder what he does with the rest of his life, doesn’t it?