Knicks-Nuggets Brawl Caps Thomas’ Coaching Career

Isiah Thomas was one of the NBA’s greatest players. He is also one of its worst front office execs, and he’s a lousy coach to boot. The brawl at Madison Square Garden Saturday would have been an embarrassment to any other team in the NBA, but under Coach Thomas, it is no longer possible to embarrass the New York Knicks organization.

The fight that cleared the benches and resulted in 10 players getting tossed from the game was the NBA children at their worst. Losing by close to 20 points, the New York team was plain outclassed by the Nuggets. With a minute and a bit to go, Knicks rookie Mardy Collins put a strangle-hold on Denver’s J.R. Smith, who had earlier dunked the ball after a 360 which may have appeared unsportsmanlike to some. Mr. Smith arose from the floor seriously annoyed when little Nate Robinson came charging up like a rabid chihuahua, followed by two more Knicks. Four on one is about the only way the Knicks can defend anyone these days, but it looked more promising as alley fight. At that point, the Nuggets arrived as the benches cleared. In the mix up, Mr. Anthony threw a punch that proves he’s never worn boxing gloves in his life while MSG security kept the players from serious hurting their manicured nails and tattoos with further displays of pugilistic incompetence.

While the NBA is doing an official investigation and will announce penalties later today, it has become clear that, with about 2 minutes to go, Coach Thomas had warned Denver’s Carmelo Anthony that the Nuggets should stay out of the paint (serious faux pax, one doesn't address players on the other side). The threat was clear, and when Mr. Smith got the ball after yet another junior varsity play from the Knicks, he got throttled as he went for a lay up. Coach Thomas spoke again to Mr. Anthony after the game, and told the press, “I just said to him you’re up 19 with a minute and a half to go, you and Camby really shouldn’t be in the game right now. We had surrendered. And those guys shouldn’t have been in the game at that time. They were sticking it to us pretty good. They were having their way with us pretty good. I think J.R. Smith had just made one dunk where he reverses it and spins in the air. I thought that Mardy didn’t want to have our home crowd see that again and he fouled him.”

In other words, if the Knicks lose badly in front of their (ever shrinking crowd of) fans, they’ll try to play rugby instead of basketball. Now, it’s true that there was little point in leaving the starters out there, but Denver Coach George Karl is best pals with Larry Brown, whom Coach Thomas and Knicks Owner James Dolan fired over the summer. It is almost certain that Mr. Karl took some joy in running up a score on his pal’s enemy. However, the Knicks are supposed to be professionals, able to stop other teams, able to play at the NBA level. Clearly, they can’t, and a survey of jersey’s worn in the schools and on the playgrounds of New York City sum it up: Suns, Clippers, Bulls, Sixers, and on and on – just not many Knicks. "We had surrendered" is a hard motto for young players to back.

Since Mr. Thomas took on the job of club president almost three years ago to the day, the Knicks have played 244 games in the regular season, and the Nuggets game was the 150th loss. This year, they have 9 wins against 17 losses. He needs to go. If Mr. Dolan won’t get rid of him, then Mayor Bloomberg needs to step in. After all, he’s letting downtown Brooklyn get bought up by a property developer to steal the Nets away from New Jersey. He may as well condemn the Knicks and have the city take the team over. One way or another, then, New York might just have a professional basketball team.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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