MVN - Most Valuable Network

The Bad Apple in the Big Apple

Larry Brown has a track record of making gold mines out of landfills for every NBA franchise he’s been a part of.

But the New York Knicks? They were so beyond repair, they actually regressed under Brown’s watch. And despite his track record, some delusional Knicks fans will call it his fault (trust me, I personally know more than a few). But instead of locating the real problem, team owner James Dolan made Brown take the fall. Not only did team president Isiah Thomas keep his job, but he got Brown’s old gig, as well. And the Knicks have kept regressing. And, unlike with Brown, Dolan kept bringing Thomas back.

Now the word out of the media capital of the world is that owner James Dolan wants blue chipper Kiki Vandeweghe as GM. As a Cavs fan, Vandeweghe was one of my top choices to replace the fired Jim Paxson back in ‘05 before Danny Ferry got the job. Vandeweghe is also the same guy who fleeced the Knicks by dumping Antonio McDyess on them for both Marcus Camby (last year’s Defensive Player of the Year, mind you) and the freshly-drafted Nene.

Ironically, that’s exactly where you can go back to mark the beginning of the end for this once-proud franchise.

I’m a fan of Vandeweghe’s, but if Larry Brown couldn’t succeed by working with Thomas, then there is no doubt that Isiah and Kiki will butt heads, as well, and the storylines will be about what will definitely be a stormy relationship instead of the team making progress on the court. So before making any more moves, Dolan would have to get rid of Thomas. In fact, New York would have to blow up everything - everything - to get this operation back to being among the league’s elite.

Fire the coaching staff, fire the entire front office. Sure, taking such moves in a market like New York isn’t going to win over many fans, but had these things been done a few years ago, then we might be talking about a playoff team right now.

It’s either make these changes now, or be back in the same situation for years to come. And Thomas has to be the first to go.

And although I firmly believe that Kiki would help improve the New York Knicks, Dolan is going to have to look at a franchise that was once an arch-nemesis - the Indiana Pacers - and use their model of success as the path to get back to where they - and the league - need them to be: a perennial championship contender.

Pacers CEO Donnie Walsh’s name has been mentioned along with Vandeweghe’s as a possible GM for New York. Walsh has a reputation of making shrewd trades and bargain draft picks, and that’s how the Pacers were built (before Ron Artest sent that franchise to hell). Since the beginning, Walsh has shown that he will make the right choice instead of the popular choice: one of his first draft-day decisions was to pick Reggie Miller out of UCLA over local Indiana University hero Steve Alford. While Alford will never, ever be remembered for his NBA days, Miller is now a Pacer icon and a honorary Hoosier.

Let’s also not forget that this is the same guy who moved veteran Dale Davis to Portland for Jermaine O’Neal, who wasn’t getting playing time with the Blazers despite being a lottery pick out of high school in 1996. We all know how that turned out.

Thomas, on the other hand, recklessly traded away unprotected first-round picks to Chicago for the likes of Eddy Curry, who hasn’t even been an All-Star. Thomas, the Knicks franchise, and the entire city of New York, for that matter, are damn lucky that the ‘07 pick ended up being the #9 pick to the Bulls instead of one of the top two picks, which would have landed them either Greg Oden or Kevin Durant.

But had Thomas kept the ‘06 pick, he would have been drafting #2, and although Bulls GM John Paxson was Thomasish in picking LaMarcus Aldridge before trading him away for megabust Tyrus Thomas, Isiah would have had the opportunity to draft Brandon Roy, who was named as an All-Star this year in just his second season in the league.

Believe me, these are some of the things that Walsh’s mind would have been able to accomplish.

Walsh is semi-retired and considered to be serving as only a consultant to current Pacers president Larry Bird, which is why the Knicks would be able to give him their post. And although it was Walsh who gave Thomas his first coaching gig with the Pacers, it’s another coaching change that Walsh was around that would help make the Knicks even better.

Rick Carlisle was hired as head coach of the Pacers in 2003-04. That season, he led the Pacers to a franchise- and league-best 61-21 record. He lost to his former team, the Detroit Pistons and Larry Brown, in the Eastern Conference Finals. Indy was on track to remain as one of the league’s premier teams before the Artest brawl in Detroit in the fall of ‘04, and then Artest’s trade demands in ‘05 and ‘06 finished off whatever was left of the core that Walsh had built for Carlisle.

The Pistons were also an underachieving mess before Carlisle came aboard in 2001, where he led them to consecutive 50-win seasons. Although Brown was the one who eventually brought the Larry O’Brien trophy back to Detroit, keep in mind that the Pistons were a 50-loss team before Carlisle, who made them legit title contenders in just a year.

There’s no doubt in my mind that a Walsh-Carlisle combo would power the Knicks back to respectability. Absolutely none. The two have a long-standing working relationship, as Carlisle was an assistant on Bird’s coaching staff in Indiana back in ‘97. Walsh and Carlisle go back more than a decade, and they probably know what to expect from each other. Both men have succeeded together, and both were members of the only Pacers franchise ever to go to the NBA Finals back in 2000.

Like Brown and Vandeweghe, their track records speak for themselves. But unlike Brown (and probably Vandeweghe, as well, if recent reports are true that Thomas will still be coach), Walsh and Carlisle wouldn’t have Thomas around to screw everything up. Isiah was a brilliant point guard, but this is clearly a guy who can only succeed on the court. Off the court, the guy submarined the longstanding Continental Basketball Association and couldn’t get a legit title contender in Indiana out of the first round.

Now, he is the single reason why the Knicks have sunk to the lows that they’ve sunk to today. And yet Dolan, like an absent-minded fool who isn’t thinking like a guy who has been able to become as successful as he is, continues to keep Thomas around.

It’s simple: fire Isiah immediately, and then seconds later, fire the entire coaching staff and front office. Hell, do it today. As Father Knickerbocker’s Alex Benesowitz details, it’s not like Knicks fans care anymore, anyways.

New York is finally going to have a top-of-the-line draft pick this June that Thomas hasn’t recklessly traded away for the likes of Curry. There are plenty of franchise players available this June that the Knicks can build around.

The Knicks would be better off letting Walsh pick that player for them. And they’d also be better off letting Carlisle coach him up to be the franchise-saving superstar that he - whoever he is - was born to become.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.