Panic has officially set in for city basketball fans since Knicks president of basketball operations Donnie Walsh announced he was leaving the team yesterday. Do you really think that four-alarm Prospect Heights fire was just a coincidence? Knicks fans might be sad that the man who helped bring the Knicks back to something approaching respectability after the dire 00s is leaving before he got to finish the job, but they're apoplectic over the mere hint of Isiah Thomas returning to the team. "Never say never about anything," Thomas told ESPN last night, presumably while ominously twisting his pencil thin mustache.
Indeed, all of the Thomas innuendo has taken the spotlight for most fans.Thomas told ESPN NY he wasn't in the running for the job, but the current head coach of Florida International University dost protest too much: "I have no desire to return as president of the Knicks. I'm not a candidate to replace Donnie. I like the job I have right now, and the toll that the (Knicks) job took on me, my wife, and my kids, I don't want to go through that again." This is the same man who owner James Dolan tried to bring back as GM last summer, the same man who told ESPN last fall that he thought about returning to the Knicks "every single day of the week."
Walsh explained what he described as a "mutual decision" to leave to reporters yesterday afternoon, and said he was too old and exhausted to stay on in an active capacity. However, the details of the departure make it seem like Dolan was purposefully trying to alienate and push him out: according to ESPN, Walsh thought he had an oral agreement with Dolan on a two-year extension that spelled out his level of authority, but when he received the actual written contract there was an addendum that undercut that authority. After several weeks of trying to get Dolan to remove the addendum, Walsh decided last night to relinquish his interest in remaining as team president.
The Times details what exactly was in that addendum that so turned off Walsh: a 40 percent pay cut to offset the likelihood of a prolonged lockout, the inability to hire and groom his successor and no guarantee that corporate interference would cease and desist, including what Walsh considered excess marketing demands on the players. They call Walsh "elegant," praise him for "avoiding the muddy pool of his boss", and give a fair assessment of his three years with the team: "Walsh wasn’t perfect in New York...But within two years, Walsh made the Knicks matter after a decade of irrelevance."
However, even Walsh had to admit that Thomas was like a fly buzzing around his head during his Knicks tenure: "I don't think Isiah Thomas had anything to do with basically anything I'm doing right now. I would say the attention it drew did annoy me at certain points, but not overly so. But it was an annoyance, it wasn't like really getting pissed off." The Knicks now have to deal with Coach Mike D'Antoni, who is entering the final year of a four-year contract. His agent said he was dedicated to seeing this team continue to improve: "This is the team Mike wants to coach."
Maybe the Knicks are already tired of making the playoffs. Maybe Dolan is really obsessed with getting a new president who has closer relations to talent agency CAA. Or maybe this was just a decision three years in the making, ever since Thomas left in shame in 2008.
