Larry Brown R.I.P.
One year and 29 wins later the self-described "Dead man walking," Larry Brown, has now been officially fired by the New York Knicks. It was painful to see Brown dragged through the mud by the evil twins -James Dolan and Isiah Thomas. They seemed to take perverse pleasure in watching Brown twitch in front of the media. Now there will be no more roadside interviews. Brown is gone. Long live Larry Brown.
Isiah has now been named the head coach. He has some heavy lifting in front of him as he is also the Knicks' President and General Manager. The sad part is, he's ill-suited for either of these jobs. But it is fitting that Thomas has to coach this 120 million dollar train wreck of a team. He will now have to clean up his own mess. Thomas will have to make Marbury, Francis, Curry, Robinson, Frye and Lee and others into some kind of team. He put it together so it is his to build on or tear apart. My bet is he stands pat until he sees just how poorly this team meshes and then he starts a fire sale. Isiah will sell the players out the same way he sold out on Brown, Toronto, the CBA and the Indiana Pacers.
My sources inside MSG have been telling me all year that the Knicks would not play for Brown. They laughed behind his back and "Starbury" convinced the rest of the malingerers that Brown was the problem and, if they could only get rid of him, then they could play basketball the way they were meant to. Well now it will be put up or shut up time. This November the rubber meets the road on Marbury's career. He will have no one to blame. No one is going to coddle this 30-year-old man-child. He will now have to be the franchise player he thinks he is.
Jim Dolan will also have to live with putting all his eggs in Thomas' basket. 2007-08 is a water-shed year for the New York Knicks. The city is fed up with the hapless play at the Garden. Things better improve or the protest being planned by pro-Knick and anti-Dolan forces on Wednesday, June 28 down 7th Avenue at 3 p.m. will just be the start of an ugly movement. When the "Sell The Knicks" marchers see the Knicks get beat out of another draft, the clock will be ticking on Dolan, Thomas and Marbury. It is called Karma and all past wrongs will be addressed. No one is going to get out of this alive.
-C.J. Sullivan
Larry Brown is no victim. Not from where I'm sitting. He must take his share of the responsibility. Forty-two different starting line-ups? Why did talented rookies play 48 minutes one night then sit for two nights straight? Brown never articulated a coherent direction to his players. That's no excuse for most of them quitting on him. But he must accept his share of the contributory negligence. There was some talent on this team. Larry made nothing of it.
Now Larry gets $40 million to nurse his acid reflux disease; nice work if you can get it. Dolan says he won't pay. His lawyers found a clause in Larry's contracts that said "disputes" go to David Stern for arbitration. Good luck. Win or lose, Dolan will make up the difference in jacked-up ticket prices, increased Cablevision fees and wage cutbacks for Radio City Music Hall employees.
Who knows what goes on behind closed doors with Dolan and Isiah. I find increasing credence in the theory that Dolan needs Isiah close to him to keep their stories straight when the Anucha Browne Sanders sexual harassment case explodes in the fall. That's a situation where Dolan and Isiah may be tied at the hip on different kind of sinking ship. Does anyone even remember the classless way they dumped Hall of Fame coach Lenny Wilkens? Now Brown is the second Hall of Fame Coach who "didn't work out." While Westchester neighbors, Marbury and Isiah, play kissy-face and borrow the sugar, the Knicks are burning.
The NBA needs to intervene. They have the right to do that. They have the right to take the Knicks away from this evil Fauntleroy. David Stern took the Cleveland Cavaliers from maniacal owner Ted Stepien in the early '80s. Commissioner, it's that time again.
The beginning of a new NBA season imbues every NBA fan with an acute case of short-term memory loss. Immediate winning can erase past wrongdoing. I think someone with C.J.'s limited abilities could coach a team toward playoff contention in the NBA's pathetic Eastern Conference. But whatever Isiah does with the Knicks, what he has done will take nothing short of his removal to undo. Tell me, where can I get one of those "Duck Folan" T-shirts?
-Dave Hollander
Two days ago, Madison Square Garden Chairman James Dolan and Knicks President, General Manager and Head Coach, Isiah Thomas, sat down with a group of reporters and finally came clean about the entire Larry Brown debacle. The following is some of the highlights of what turned out to be a very surreal press conference.
Larry wanted to focus on Isiah's job, and in fact, we had several instances where Larry goes and talks to a GM of a team or an assistant GM of a team and starts to negotiate a trade. We actually had two instances where Isiah was negotiating with a team and the GM said, 'That's great, but I got a better offer from your coach.' We brought this to Larry; we talked to him. I talked to him about it and said it can't be-you have to focus on coaching. Tell us what you want in the team and Isiah will do his job and go out and get the players that you want?I went into that meeting [last Thursday] hoping, thinking that we were going to have Larry Brown as our coach next year, that there was a way that this could work?He would not acknowledge that there was a problem, and in fact said that we had to change out essentially all but five or six players of the team and proposed that we take on another $180 million of salary. We're talking over $200 million. He wanted those five or six players waived."