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Since many of us are watching the tournament, a new post for it. Good luck to all those who are betting on their brackets. My guess is if Davidson wins it all, some people are going to get pretty rich…

As many have already said here, the season is lost, and again, I’m livid the Knicks are not going to the playoffs. I’m going to take a break from Knicksdefense for a while. I can’t stomach anymore losing, even if the goal is now to get a high lottery pick instead of make the playoffs.

This is far worse than last year, worse than the year before with that disgrace Next Town Brown. As a Knicks fan, I want Isiah Thomas out of New York now. He’s had four years to do it and has failed in every sense of the word, so it is time for him to go now. You can talk about the relative failures of Larry Bird or anyone else, as Scoop Jackson has in his recent article, but the bottom line is I never cared about Larry Bird, I never cared about the Pacers or any other team, my team is the New York Knicks, there is no comparison. By refusing to quit, Isiah has betrayed real Knicks fans everywhere because he is not getting the job done in New York. He sticks around just to get the paycheck, which makes him no better than Larry Brown, who also betrayed this Knicks franchise in my opinion.

ESPN

If Walsh comes in as GM, that means Isiah may stay on to coach, because Walsh has always supported Isiah when no one else besides magic would. I can’t agree with Isiah staying on in any capacity should Walsh take the helm. Isiah must go, Glen Grunwald must go, that scrub Steve Mills must go, and Mark Aguirre and Brendan Suhr must all go as well. The ultra-loyal soldier Herb Williams and the young coach Dave Hanners would do well to stick around the organization, but I won’t complain if they must clean house to eradicate the divided, defeated, halfhearted, lackadaisical, underachieving, excuse-making culture Isiah Thomas has cultivated during his New York tenure.

I rooted for him at first, but now it seems Isiah Thomas was never a true Knick, not in my mind. Never. The day he is gone will be a great day for real Knicks fans everywhere. It will be a sad day for the fakers. He screwed with New York for four years using the blame game, and this year even went as far as to blame it on the fans at the Garden for not kissing his ass while they lost. Guess what Isiah? Layden is gone, Chaney is gone, KVH is gone, Weatherspoon is gone, Shandon Anderson is gone, Kurt Thomas is gone, Allan Houston is gone (twice removed by you), Lenny Wilkins is gone, Larry Brown is gone, Stephon Marbury is gone, Eddy Curry is out, the season ticket holders you alienated are obviously MIA having been outsourced by tourists who just want to see the inside of MSG. Your last card was the rookies, and now that they’re playing, you can’t say anything. Finally there is no one left to blame but yourself, Isiah Thomas.

Four years ago, I thought it was unfair and mean-spirited when Mike and the Mad Dog talked smack on Isiah the day he came to New York, because he had not yet done anything to merit that kind of doubt. I thought then that Isiah would be worth a try to bring back glory to NY, he should start with a clean slate and not be judged for previous experiences. They doubted him. They cited the CBA bankruptcy under Isiah’s direction (forget the owners, what of the Starks and the Masons of that time just trying to make the pros when that minor league went under), and the Raptors as evidence that Isiah was a bad choice for the Knicks, and really implied that he would fail in New York. I don’t know how they knew it then, but it turns out they were proven right, and it has nothing to do with MSM or spin doctoring. After four full years, Isiah is objectively a loser in New York.

I’m going to spend the remainder of this month taking care of other business and watching the NCAA tournament, where mid-level exception atrocities don’t kill a fan’s spirit.

Hopefully Isiah will be gone soon because I’m sick and tired of talking about him. You might say to talk about the game instead, but it is very hard to watch this kind of prideless, spiritless knicks basketball. I never, ever thought I would say that, but that’s how it has been lately. They suck. Crawford isolation plays definitevely suck. Zach is no team player. Curry and Lee have taken steps in the wrong direction. Fred Jones shouldn’t even be on this team.

Dolan has the keys. He can do what he wants, and has done just that. In spite of the media’s opinion, and contrary to the patrons’ collective voice, nothing changes. If he keeps it the way it is, obviously he doesn’t give a rat’s ass, so why should anyone else? Dolan treats the most loyal, die-hard Knicks fans like stray dogs. Insulting your clientele is simply not the right way to run a business. Dolan’s father knows that. Does Jim? From the looks of it, I doubt it.

I’ll still be around, just cutting back a little because I don’t want to sound like a broken record, though the team is playing like one. The record called “Lose Horribly,” by I Drive a Tank. Save your money; don’t download that mp3.

Thanks to every single one of you guys for blogging here with your thoughts and ideas. It has been a tough season and you deserve something for getting through it. Too bad the knicks can’t deliver it though. The next thing I suppose we have to look forward to is what Steady alluded to previously, the draft. That’s way off in June…

Hours after the Pacers held a press conference to announce Donnie Walsh leaving the franchise, ESPN has published a report singing Walsh to the Knicks for $15 million over three years by season’s end.

Who knows how the headlines will read tomorrow? Whether there is truth to this latest report and if so what it means for Isiah Thomas and his dual jobs as Knicks coach and president of basketball operations.

A dude named Giaps over on knicks fix mentioned this story but since there was no link, I doubted it at first considering all the hearsay as of late. Time will tell what is what. If Isiah is removed from both jobs I’m all for it, though I think there are better choices out there than Walsh, no doubt. Why didn’t they ask Jerry C.?

This team needs a culture shake-up, so if it is true, I welcome Mr. Walsh. Losing has had a numbing effect on the players and the fans–enough is enough.

read all about it.

I did not watch the loss Saturday night, but now Nate Robinson is starting to sit out Knicks games as well as Quentin Richardson, Eddy Curry, Zach Randolph and Stephon Marbury.

I understand the concept of tanking, and obviously it looks like the Knicks organization is electing to tank, but what I am concerned about is best illustrated by what happened to the once promising point guard Mardy Collins by the end of last season.

Mardy was a rookie last year, drafted at the end of the first round by Isiah Thomas out of the Philadelphia school, Temple University. Just before the preseason, Mardy showed me quite a bit in the celebrity wheelchair classic game in Madison Square Garden-he and Renaldo Balkman were catching and dunking alley-oops all throughout the game.

Still, Mardy basically sat for most of his rookie year, so those that did not follow Collins at Temple or during the NBA summer league didn’t know what he was about on the basketball court, until April came along.

When most of the Knicks backcourt fell out of the rotation due to injuries, Mardy Collins went from playing no minutes to averaging over 40 minutes per game. Collins played well, getting the ball to Curry, driving to the basket at will and playing solid defense. Collins has never been known as a shooter, but he showed that he may be an otherwise functional NBA point guard in the making. Clyde Frazier was impressed enough with Collins to proclaim that he would work with him over the summer to improve his game to be more “Clydesque.”

Then Collins hurt his knee so bad he required surgery. I assume the Clyde tutelage never had a chance to take place. The Knicks tried to prevent this surgery information from becoming public, then announced after the surgery had been performed, that Collins would not be available for the summer pro league that was about to start in Vegas.

Now I’m sure regular NBA practices and strength training are enough to keep a player fit, but when your Knicks team is sometimes skipping practices, shortening practices and basically giving up on improving this season, it seems risky to have players like Wilson Chandler and Randolph Morris getting thrown onto the floor against other team’s starters. You have to be concerned about preventing the past from repeating itself with these young players, if they are valued as such.

After secret knee surgery over the summer, Mardy Collins is just now starting to get some of his game back. He was basically a better player last season before the knee surgery then he is right now, almost a full year later.

All I’m saying is, I hope the kids that are finally getting a chance to play are in good enough shape to keep up with the demands of the NBA, because much is suddenly being asked of them. Possibly too much.

The first few months of the New York Knicks 2007-2008 basketball season were simply dreadful.  Who could forget that humiliating massacre in Boston, aired on national television, culminating with a diehard Knick fan throwing his orange and blue jersey onto the court–and that’s just one example.  Head coach Isiah Thomas was sure to point out on a regular basis that the Knicks were just like all the other teams in the east in terms of games lost (except of course Boston).  Isiah maintained then that the Knicks were still in contention.

Fast forward to this month of March.  Most of this month has been nothing more than extended garbage time, and promises to continue along those lines for the remaining month in the season.  For whatever reasons, the players who have started for most of the season are not suiting up to play any longer.

So what does that add up to, from November through April for these New York Knicks?  If it didn’t matter in the beginning, and apparently it doesn’t matter now as we close in on the end of another season without the Knicks in the playoffs…  did this Knicks team’s season ever really matter at any point in time in ‘07-’08?

Was this Knicks season essentially over on the first day of training camp, when Isiah was not present to run practice in South Carolina because he was still testifying in the sexual harassment trial in New York?  What was Herb and the rest of the assistant coaching staff thinking that day, when they had to run the drills instead of Coach Thomas, who was about 750 miles away from Knicks basketball on day 1?

Was it over when Marbury left Phoenix by his lonesome?  Did things start to go south when Isiah started to blame the fans for his team’s performance at the garden?  Perhaps it was when team leaders Zach Randolph and Quentin Richardson each mouthed off to Isiah in front of the entire team?  Maybe when Stephon decided to have season-ending surgery on his ankle?

Or was it even over before all of these occurrences, when, during the summer pro league in Vegas,  a chillin’ Eddy Curry showed very little interest in meeting up with the other Knicks to form a bond with his new players–including Zach Randolph.  Maybe it was when Jamal Crawford showed up to training camp about 20 pounds too buff–it fucked up his shot something terrible, and took him a few months just to get back to his normal shooting percentages of 40% from the field.

Who knows exactly when this season ended?  All we know for a fact is that it is actually over, and that the Knicks are now losing on purpose to try to get a good pick in the 2008 NBA Draft Lottery.  Good luck with that.

There are a few positives I take away from the Knicks’ current misery having hit rock bottom of the Atlantic Division and Eastern Conference, only ahead of the deliberately tanking Miami Heat.

1. This season has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to me that Isiah Thomas is absolutely not the coach for the New York Knicks if they’re to try and WIN basketball games. The players aren’t buying into the system any longer.

2. With all the losing the Knicks have accomplished this season, there is a good chance Derrick Rose will be sporting orange and blue in November of 2008. They might also pick up Ron Artest if he finds a way to opt out of his contract after this season, although that still seems like a long shot. Getting Rose and Artest would be a great reward for all the suffering this 19-48 season.

3. A new GM might be brought in to correct the redundancies/errors on this roster, depending on “El Duce,” James Dolan. The strategy of Zach and Eddy in the game at the same time on the same team did not work. It failed, it smelled, it set the franchise back a few years to the pace of Larry Brown’s 23-win season. If Isiah goes, I would hate to see Mills and Grunwald stay, that would be like having George W. Bush step down only to be succeeded by John McCain, who essentially will continue the same foreign policies.

As our friend DaVonn Jefferson has hinted, this team needs “Obama” level change in order to become competitive again. Removing the problem of Zach and Eddy should be the first issue dealt with. Defensively, this combo has been a nightmare. Eventually, only a handful of current Knicks should be spared. Most of the current players are not Knicks in the truest sense of the word, but Isiah Thomas Indiana/Chicago transplants that did not step up and produce in the big apple. True Knicks give 110%, sacrifice their body on defense, do what it takes to secure the win.

The leaders on this team are just good statistical players that have no idea how to win a ball game through team play. The players that could/should have been true Knicks have been slowing down. Stephon, Q, and Malik should all probably retire soon considering their limitations on the basketball court. They’re simply not as effective as they once were in this league. A good indicator of who should stay is this: if you are not still on your first/rookie contract, you probably shouldn’t be a Knick long term.

Of course, with James “El Duce” Dolan in charge, what seems obvious to some, may be contrary to the position he’ll take. Isiah could still have the keys to this franchise, through this season, into the next, five years from now. There is no end in sight, no accountability for another season sans playoffs. It was my opinion before training camp started that if Isiah didn’t get these Knicks into the playoffs this season–no excuses, not even natural disasters, awol players, anything–Isiah should go.

So here we are, no playoffs–again. You know what that means to me?

Time to go, coach. You too, GM.

Knicks fans deserve better than 19-48.

Current stats for Jerome James as of 03/18/08

Can anyone still tell me that decision to keep Jerome and cut young, more talented players in the preseason was the correct one? We’ve played more than 70% of the games this season, and Jerome has racked up five minutes of PT over two games. Those that supported Isiah’s decision then argued that he’s good for 5-6 fouls and some blocks off the bench, but that really hasn’t happened at all this season. At all. Those of us that were against it at the time KNEW back then that he wasn’t going to play. At all. How many minutes has this guy played in a Knicks uni total since he got the max mid level exception years ago?

To be honest with you, right now, I’d rather have Demetris Nichols and Jared Jordan on the Knicks than Fred Jones and Jerome James, but that is just me. I know some here are rooting for Nichols to fail because Isiah cut him but I’m not down with that. Give the young kids a chance to fight for their careers, and let the satiated, wealthy, lard-ass, no longer any fire nor desire, former ballers fail for their lack of effort, regardless of the ridiculous contracts Isiah gave them.

A month remains in this nightmare season, and the Knicks are now 19-47 going into Indiana tonight, having already lost as many games as many of us believed they’d win this season.

Frank Isola sounds like a desperate lawyer in A Few Good Men, checking the flight records at Gitmo to see if Col. Jessep (Dolan) ordered the “code red” on Dawson (Steve Mills) and Downey (Isiah Thomas). The problem is, they can’t get Dolan on the stand to testify to anything.

you can’t handle the truth!

Looking forward to seeing the kids play tomorrow, Chandler can shoot if given the opportunity to find his rhythm, and Morris has good footwork for a big, if he’s allowed to step off the bench and into the game.

Hawks were a solid athletic team without Bibby, a better team with him, because Bibby is the kind of guard who gets his teammates going.