Isiah gets one year to turn it around or else.............

[Blacknbengal]

Knicks' Thomas has one year to show progress

NEW YORK (AP) - With two first-round picks in the NBA draft, Isiah Thomas has a chance to help the New York Knicks start building a promising future.

Forgive Thomas if he isn't thinking that far ahead right now.
With Thomas seated next to him, Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan delivered a warning Monday that he is prepared to make another coaching change next season if he doesn't see improvement in the Knicks.

That means Thomas' time on the Knicks' bench could be just as short as Larry Brown's was.

But Thomas, already the team's president and general manager, said he wasn't afraid of facing such pressure.

"I'd rather bet on myself," Thomas said. "If my career is in the hands of somebody else ... trust is not something that I have a lot of these days.

"It's challenging. I don't think there's anybody else in the league, in sports probably, working under this situation. However, that's how it is."

Dolan fired Brown last Thursday after not getting assurances that the Hall of Fame coach would change the way he conducted himself off the court.

Thomas will be judged on how the Knicks do on it - and it had better be a step up from this season's 23-59 mark that tied the franchise record for losses.

"I'm saying this right with Isiah here. This is his team," Dolan said. "He made this bed. There's nobody better than him to make this thing go forward.

"But he has to do that and he has one year, one season to do that. At this time next year Isiah will be with us if we can all sit here and say that this team has made significant progress towards its goal of eventually becoming an NBA championship team. If we can't say that, then Isiah will not be here."

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What do you all make of this? Maybe this is Dolan's way to get Zeek out for good.

But he said Brown wouldn't acknowledge during that meeting that any of the issues Dolan brought up had even happened, so he had no choice but to make Thomas the Knicks' fifth coach in the last three years - even though Brown had four years and $40 million left on the contract he signed last summer.

Thomas coached the Indiana Pacers for three seasons through 2002-03, going 131-115 and leading them to the playoffs in each season. But he said he wasn't planning to return to coaching with the Knicks, claiming he was both heartbroken and mad that his longtime relationship with Brown had ended this way.
"I know from our standpoint, the Knicks' standpoint, we needed Larry Brown," Thomas said. "I wanted Larry to do a great job for us."

 

[Robber]

Dolan was wrong for putting Zeke on the spot like that. There's a right and wrong way to do anything, and giving Zeke that ultimatum in front of the camera was not the right way. He shoulda just told him privately and fired him if he didn't meet expectations.

I wonder what effect this will have on the players' willingness to listen to Zeke.

 

[Mr. Tiger]

This franchise is in complete shambles. If Thomas can turn this mess around in one year, I would say it was the greatest single-season coaching performance in the history of the NBA. But in all fairness, he did put together that horrible roster full of high-priced cast-offs from other teams. And since you can't fire the owner....Good luck Zeke...you're going to need it.

 

[jag4life]

He has a little talent there, though. The problem is getting the right combinations out there. He can go .500 in the East.