Garden Party

The Knicks?!!?! I don't even know where to start really. Isiah Thomas clearly has a plan, and I think that's the best thing that I can say about his moves since taking over the Knicks front office. He has a plan but apparently he was on Heroin when he hatched it. Here's what he has done so far in a nutshell; He has traded away the Knicks future (in the form of an unprotected #1 pick in the upcoming draft, which by the looks it may end up being the #1 overall pick), imported high priced "talent" (Curry, Marbury, Jalen Rose, Crawford), brought in players who just plain suck (Richardson, Jerome James (come on Jerome James????? what the fuck!) and traded for broken down players (Penny Hardaway).

And what has all this wheeling and dealing brought? A God damned disaster! And now he has seen fit to trade for Steve Francis. Francis hasn't seen a shot yet that he doesn't think he can make. It's amazing, first there's Marbury, who last year proclaimed himself the best point guard in the NBA (unless there's an NBA in Sweden, I believe that to be a bit of an overstatement). And now add Francis to that mix. Someone forgot to tell Francis that he is not the second coming of Pistol Pete, Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson all rolled into one. I guess it's nice to have confidence in your game, but he's bordering on delusional. I don't know who gave him the nickname "Stevie Franchise", but they should ask for it back.

Instead of waiting for Hardaway's contract to expire at the end of the year and help the Knicks start to get somewhere near the NBA salary cap (they currently pay somewhere in the $60 million range in penalties for being over the cap), Isiah decided that Francis would somehow be able to turn the team around. Now the Knicks have Jamal Crawford, Nate Richardson, Quentin Richardson, Jalen Rose, Francis and Marbury to share two guard positions. How about that! Half the Knicks starting 12 will be guards. All of them are shoot first and pass maybe players. Jalen Rose is probably be the best point guard of the group, but Marbury would never allow him to move into the starting PG position.

I find it hard to believe that Larry Brown has signed off on these moves. First of all, he and Jalen Rose are basically sworn enemies. Rose accused Brown of trying to ruin his career while he was in Indiana. Larry Brown is a defense first coach, who has basically been handed a group of players that can't play defense. This has got to come to a head at some point. I'm guessing that Isiah will be shown the door before Larry. At least Larry has a defense for the dismal record of the Knicks. He can claim that he could only use what was given to him by Thomas, and he would be absolutely right. Why on earth did anybody think that Isiah knew what he was doing anyway? He didn't do anything with the Raptors (granted they were an expansion team, but he didn't move the needle at all during his tenure there), he blew a deal when he was the owner of the CBA that would have basically made them the developmental league for the NBA. He didn't take the Pacers to the NBA finals, in fact they got better after he left. This is the trail of "success" that he carried with him into the job as GM of the Knicks. I guess anything looked like an upgrade after the Layden era, but at least those teams made the playoffs.

I'm not sure that the Knicks could beat the bench players of an NBA team right now. They get beaten by 20+ so many nights that it seems the scoreboard at the Garden starts out with the Knicks losing by 20. I can only lay the blame at the feet of Isiah Thomas at this point. He either drafted, signed or traded for every player currently on the team. I know that when he came in, he was handicapped by the contracts that the Knicks had, but he has taken a bad situation and made it worse. I can only hope that the Isiah experiment will come to end shortly. It will take years for the Knicks to rebound, but at some point they have to realize that it's time to hit the chicken switch.