Business as usual, for now
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- April
- 2
Isiah Thomas is still in Memphis with the Knicks, and he’ll probably be on the charter bound for New Orleans after tonight’s game. And then it’s on home to New York.
He’s probably going to play out the string.
The answers might not all come this afternoon when Knicks owner James Dolan officially welcomes Donnie Walsh to the front office, but there’s no reason to follow George over the ledge. Not yet. It sounds like a number of the restrictions that made effective leadership impossible are being lifted.
Maybe there is hope.
Walsh is going to report to Dolan, which seems to limit the role MSG sports chief Steve Mills played in basketball operations. He is not expected to be cut off from the media, which is a good thing for a man who always stopped by the Indiana press room for dinner before games.
I’m thinking we’ll know more based on the candor of this afternoon’s Q & A.
While keeping Thomas on the sideline until season’s end could prove to be awkward, he is under contract. The golden parachute might be worth up to $18 million. It’s business as usual in Memphis this morning, according to a team spokesman. Since the Knicks are playing out a back-to-back set, there is no shoot-around. They will probably meet later on for brunch.
Player reaction will come before the game tonight.
Judging by the moves already made, it seems Walsh and Dolan are in agreement here. They both seem to know the importance of starting over, so it seems unlikely Thomas will play a visible role in the future of this organization.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 8:53 am by Mike Dougherty.
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Dolan seems to have given Walsh a GREAT deal of authority – which is awesome news because Dolan is finally realizing that he needs to have a professional in there to run things.
Steve Mills now becomes redundant. He should be packing his bags with Isiah.
Clean out house. Start over fresh.
I only hope that the garden crowd will be more voracious in their “fire Isiah” chants now so that Walsh will know that he has to get rid of Isiah for the sanity of knicks fans.
If I were Dolan – I would demote him to cleaning up MSG after games…so what if he gets paid $18mil to clean up garbage – knowing Isiah’s ego – he would rather quit than be forced to go through that humiliation
that word should have been vociferous not voracious ;) lol
I think voracious offers a nice poetic twist. After all, Isiah and Dolan have chewed up any dignity that this once proud organization owned. Okay, maybe I’m biting off more than I can chew with that metaphor.
On the Walsh hiring, I still can’t believe they didn’t even speak with Colangelo. But, Walsh provides some hope and if the past couple of weeks were about forcing Dolan to step back then there is some hope. None the less, Dolan will continue to harm this organization and I’m not convinced Walsh will have the stamina to fight it out. We’ll see.
I too an not in agreement with this Walsh move, there could have been better choices, but what is done is done. Now, do we really need to wonder about this move in regards to Isiah? Duh, the Walsh move was announced with Isiah ON THE ROAD. Enough said. Of course Isiah is gone. It would be shocking if he was not. Time to start moving on that TODAY. The very first thing that should happen is to yank Isiah right now. Let Herb finish the season. It would be seen as a positive by most of the fans and the Isiah ‘hatin media. Let’s get it out of the way. Then we can begin a sensible discussion of where this team needs to go and how best to get there.
I think the general consensus was that Colengalo was tied up with USA basketball and wouldn’t be able to devote 110% of his time and effort to cleaning up the knicks malignant mess.
I think Walsh was brought in to do damage control – to stop the knicks from falling further into the abyss – to start righting the ship and cleaning up all the folly that Isiah has done to this team. He seems to he the kind of hands on guy that can do it.
I think we should let Isiah coach out the remaining games. I mean what better way to ensure that we get a great lottery pick if we have a coach who can’t even coach :)
That should guarantee us a few more losses and better odds.
I just hope the knicks will see better days…back to being the knicks who were feared, the knicks who laid it out all on the court – who wanted to win no matter what!
It is just like this organization to hire a new president before they fire or re-assign the old one!