Can Thomas and Brown Save the Knicks?

SULLIVAN: I can say this much: Larry Brown's coaching acumen will certainly lead to more than the 33 wins this pathetic bunch of overpaid losers managed last season.

A coach can only do so much, but I have to give GM Isiah Thomas props on his choice of head coach. Brown, 65, is making what's likely his last stop in the town where he grew up. He has the ability to take role players like Ben Wallace, turn them loose and make them better than anyone knew they could be. He's dealt with selfish babies like Allan Iverson and turned them into team leaders.

In 2000, when Brown coached the overachieving 76ers to the NBA Finals, I finally gained respect for Iverson. He took on the Lakers like he was fighting for his life. Since Brown left, he has gone back to his old ways, but for one brief season Iverson acted like a true professional.

One big question mark for the Knicks is their two centers, who are coming into the season as fat and out of shape as Shawn Kemp, but without Kemp's skills. Then there is spoiled-child Stephon Marbury, who could well be Brown's bete noire. Marbury defenders point out that he and Oscar Robertson are the only players to have averaged more than 20 points and eight assists a game. Please! Marbury is the A-Rod of basketball-good stats and no championships.

Brown will take this team of role players and make them better, but it all comes down to his ability to make Marbury act like a team player instead of a spoiled brat. If he doesn't, he'll have a fatal heart attack as he sits on the bench watching Marbury play like the selfish fool he has been most of his career. My bet is on Brown. Marbury will either see the light or get traded. Either way, the Knicks will at least make the playoffs this season.

HOLLANDER: Christ, C.J., is that all you got? The only thing that can save this franchise is a colon-blow from top to bottom.

Brown is besieged on both sides by a hopelessly incompetent front office and players only slightly better than those found at the West 4th St. courts. These Knicks are a far cry from the plum situations Brown has stepped into before.

When Brown came to the Pistons in 2004, he inherited the Joe Dumars?constructed and Rick Carlisle?molded 2003 Central Division Champs and Eastern Conference finalists. More than a "role player," Ben Wallace was the reigning NBA Defensive Player of the Year. Even your Guinness-addled mind can see that a handful of rookies, a 19-year-old pulmonary-challenged center and two members of SI.com's NBA "All Poison Team"-Marbury and Jerome James-aren't anywhere near what Brown had in Detroit. The Knicks' big free-agent signing, Quentin Richardson, looked great with Steve Nash setting him up, but Nash could probably make your gelatin physique look like that of an NBA Adonis. Marbury is the anti-Nash. Everywhere he goes, he makes everyone worse.

Brown can't fix Marbury. In Philadelphia, tough-guy President/GM Pat Croce had a lot more to do with taming Iverson than Brown's inflexible ego. In fact, Brown's egotism alienated a sweetheart Detroit front office where low-profile Joe Dumars won GM of the Year and kindly owner Bill Davidson displays an O'Brien Trophy and a Stanley Cup on his mantle.

Brown's new brain trust consists of Thomas, the laughing stock of NBA execs, who was run out of town on a rail from the CBA, Toronto and Indiana and owner James Dolan, the petulant vulgarian who hired the backstabbing Isiah, fired the legendary Marv Albert and whose bratty obstinacy has run a cherished franchise into the ground. Isiah and Dolan handle constructive criticism about as well as Dick Cheney. You think Larry Brown's opinion matters to them?

Each morning, as Larry Brown drags his ass out of bed away from his beautiful wife and his Hamptons estate, he'll increasingly dread going to work. In a short time, the only thing Brown will want to save, as always, is himself.

SULLIVAN: First off, my physique is rather trim, and I take offense at your cheap shot at my Irish heritage. Even a downtown, black-clothing-wearing man of clichés like yourself has to know that Guinness is good for you.

I can't argue with your evisceration of Isiah, Dolan, and the gang. Fat Cat's Queens crack organization was run better than the Knicks. That said, I stand by my predictions. The key is whether Brown can school Marbury to be a team player and not a playa. Marbury has to know, after what Nash did for Phoenix, that his stock is dropping faster than you would if I ever decide to take this argument out of print and into the gutter.

Plus, you should like Larry Brown. Back in the day, he had a goofy shag much like the one you display on the cover of your new book of sports interviews, 52 Weeks. It was the '70s when Brown sported the cut-what's your excuse?

The Knicks have to make the playoffs this year if Thomas is to survive. When people have to do something it gets done. [Iraq.-The Eds.] Of course the Knicks will take a first-round knockout, but a playoff run will give hope, and that's all New Yorkers want out of this mess of a team.

Larry Brown will do his best Jesse Jackson for the Knicks and keep hope alive.

HOLLANDER: Keep hope alive? Brown will be lucky to keep himself alive.

Last season, Brown had a hip operation in November and then had surgery for a bladder condition in March. He missed 17 games and suffered through the Pistons' playoff run. This year, Brown will likely sit out more than 17 games, and it's an even bet whether his 65-year-old carcass will even make it through the season. Given the agita he'll experience when he actually does show up to coach this sorry group, the poor guy's liable to crap his Versace pinstripes at crucial moments of the game. We all know you like to flaunt your incontinence as an amusing party gag, but Brown has serious health issues. The crucible of Madison Square Garden is no place to begin the sunset of one's corporal life.

Maybe this year's Knicks could beat last year's Knicks. The problem is they need to beat the other 29 NBA teams. They won't. There will be no playoffs.

I'm a Knicks fan. I remember when there used to be a team here. I like Larry Brown's style and his philosophy. But he's not the answer. Nothing short of a criminal indictment against the Dolans and Isiah Thomas' involvement in a chatroom sex scandal (see, I am keeping hope alive) will fix this organization's grave systemic ills.

And on matters of health, Sullivan, before we take it to the street you might want to adjust your dental plan for maximum coverage. You hear me?