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I heard on the radio that the Knicks extended Isaiah's contract. Is he still GM as well? God, I hope so.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I'm not sure what is considered "cheap", but I think they've raised ticket prices in the past few years despite the abysmal record. The reason is that the Hawks are a very marketable team with the superstar (Joe Johnson), the highlight reel(s) (Josh Smith & Marvin Williams), the scrapper (Josh Childress), and the foreigner (Zaza Pachulia). I also think the ownership is trying to squeeze every penny out of the organization in case they're court-ordered to sell it back to Belkin....they want to make sure they maximize profit before being shown the door. It's really a sad affair.
In reference to ticket prices, when I went to the Spurs v. Hawks game it cost $80/ticket for first level, non-mid court seats (12 rows up)....so good, but not great seats for what I considered to be relatively expensive. Of course it was worth it to see the Manu show (24 straight points...).
I heard on the radio that the Knicks extended Isaiah's contract. Is he still GM as well? God, I hope so.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
March 13, 2007
Sports of The Times
Knicks Regain Mediocrity, and Thomas Gets the Glory
By HARVEY ARATON
Greenburgh, N.Y.
Isiah Thomas shook hands with some of his many news media tormentors yesterday, accepting congratulations all around. Experience told him the truce was temporary and wouldn’t last long.
He was nonetheless grateful to breathe the mild mid-March air, bask in the fresh job security that provides him the opportunity to continue in these fragile and, chances are, doomed relationships.
“It’s a sick part of me,” he said. “Something about me that draws me to that, that wants to do it, put up with the torture that comes along with New York.”
Thomas has always cast himself as an embattled survivor of mean streets, of long odds for an undersized overachiever in the land of the giants. Now he has slipped the posse of critics that not so long ago seemed to have him on the run, out of town — at least for the foreseeable future.
History tells us that the Knicks and their minions eventually get the best of the well-paid mercenaries who dare to lead them. Nobody escapes the fact that there hasn’t been an N.B.A. champion in New York for 33 years. But Thomas, playing by rules adjusted this season for serious deflation, was rewarded yesterday for merely making the Knicks functional again, and fun.
Not great. Not even good, by most reasonable standards. Just not bad — or what they were last season, an embarrassment.
“They look like a team, playing for each other,” James L. Dolan, the Madison Square Garden strongman, said in explaining why he handed Thomas, the coach and team president, a multiyear contract extension of undisclosed length two months short of the time he said he would decide Thomas’s fate.
That’s Dolan, once again proving himself to be a premature negotiator, getting ahead of himself when all he had to do was announce that Thomas would return next season. He’s earned that much.
From mid-December on, from Stephon Marbury’s length-of-the-floor dash to beat the Utah Jazz, the season has been a blur of wild, inelegant battles to the buzzer, three months worth of March Madness. The Garden crowds have been enthusiastic, alive. Thomas’s team clearly crossed a compe ive threshold some time ago, and just enough Eastern Conference teams have more recently gone into free fall to help the Knicks become the N.B.A. version of the lovable midmajor, making a push for the right to dream big, dance with the stars.
“If we get in, I want it all, not just a little piece of it,” Thomas said, while sitting a precarious eighth in the East, a half-game out of seventh, thinking along with the rest of us how beatable teams like Cleveland and Washington could be if the Knicks move up and avoid playing Detroit.
The bad news is that Jamal Crawford is out for the regular season, David Lee spent yesterday looking for a second opinion on his aching ankle, and it is entirely possible that the Knicks could lose a bunch and drop out of sight. That said, only those still feeding Larry Brown his bedtime milk and cookies would argue now that Coach Isiah hasn’t cleaned up much of the mess Brown made of the Knicks last season.
But let’s not forget it was Thomas who hired Brown, which might be his costliest move for the franchise during three-plus years on the job, and certainly was for the Dolan family fortune. On a personal level, it turns out now that Brown was the best thing ever to happen to Thomas. By restoring normalcy — or, if you will, mediocrity — after Brown’s 23-victory disaster, Thomas has guaranteed himself more money and a 2007-8 season without an “evident progress” mandate hanging over his head.
“I believe I earned it,” Thomas said. “I haven’t been gifted anything.”
How about the benefit of the doubt that he has the Knicks as currently cons uted heading in the direction of the conference elite? When the evaluation process is expanded beyond the leap from last season to, well, five games under .500, it’s not quite clear where the Knicks are going, if anywhere, beyond the possibility of the first round of the playoffs.
As this season has evolved, there is no doubt that several of Thomas’s personnel moves have been cast in a more favorable (if not completely justifiable) light. Eddy Curry has become an offensive force on the low post. Marbury has resurrected himself under Thomas’s mentorship. Before he was hurt, Crawford became a big-shot maker, however ditzy his overall game. Lee has proved himself to be a 2005 draft-night heist.
Curry and Marbury stayed around after practice yesterday to express their delight over Thomas’s new deal, to say the Knicks now have everything they need to continue the climb. Thomas talked about the need for collective growth, about nurturing another All-Star to play alongside Curry.
Except Curry, a genuine low-post force, had too many flaws in other phases of the game and wasn’t selected as an All-Star this season. Unless Thomas can teach energy and high basketball I.Q., Curry may never be one. For all their progress, the Knicks remain a team without that one player you build around without blinking.
•
And what if they should plateau next season, win between 35 and 40 games again? What would that say about the totality of the Thomas regime after four and a half years? That he built one that was not bad, not embarrassing?
Even in that place of paranoia we call the Garden, it has been apparent for several weeks that the bar wasn’t raised all that high. It didn’t have to be for Thomas to fulfill this season’s demand.
His players responded. He’s coached well. But even Thomas said yesterday that they all “have a long way to go.” The mandate for “evident progress” should have gone with them, into next season.
E-mail: [email protected]
LJ
Knicks(10)
Dolan gets a hard on and extends Isaiah when they briefly appear in the 8 spot. What a tool.
Nets are 7th with 35L, and Pacers and Knicks are 9th and 10th with 35L.
Along with Magic/36L, those 4 teams are fighting for 7th and 8th seeds. Could make for some uncommonly interesting EC games in the next couple weeks.
No kidding.
Knicks, Magic, Pacers, Nets games are gonna be worth a crap to watch.
Who woulda thunk it.
Knicks +18 in first half, up 9 in 4th qtr, lose by 2 pts to NOK.
Knicks missed 3 shots in last 13 seconds.
On the last shot, Stevie inside the arc, passes up a 2G to tie, and dribbles out beyond the arc to try to win with a 3G. Knicks lose, drop to EC 10th.
Timvp a jinx? Noooooooooooo!
Let's see how this works....
1. Be named GM of a team that's roughly 19th best in the NBA.
2. Bring in a bunch of overrated whiny players who don't even remotely buy into the philosophy of, or fit the coaching style of your veteran coach.
3. Coach and players predictably become disgruntled and disinterested and give up early in the season.
4. Team fades quickly to miserable lows in wins, effort, etc.
5. Take over as coach.
6. Bring in a couple of new players.
7. Fire up this still-mediocre group enough to claw their way up to appearing to be the 19th best team in the NBA during the middle of the season when a lot of teams are skating through their mid-year doldrums.
8. Impress the gullible ownership enough to get a multi-year extension for lots of guaranteed $jack.
Genius!!! Isiah Thomas is my hero.
tough loss for the Knicks
Do you still think the Knicks will get the final spot timvp considering they are just 2 games behind the lowly pacers (who play our spurs next)
This is just sad. The bottom playoff spots in the East are a joke...and the Knicks are still 2 games behind the worst Pacers team since 1987 in the playoff race.
The Knicks are doing this without Q-Rich (out for the season after back surgery), David Lee, and Jamal Crawford.
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