Tuesday, February 26, 2008

DOH-mer Of The Week- Isaiah's Trade Winds


Isaiah Thomas was one of the more skilled basketball players at the collegiate and professional levels, achieving greatness, and winning championships at both the University of Indiana and with the Detroit Pistons. But sometimes you have to know and understand your limits, because when you cross that line between playing and managing, you may find your feet are more suited for sneakers than wing tips.

Isaiah took over as President of basketball operations for the New York knicks, a position his former Detroit teammate, Joe Dumars, took with the Pistons. Well, Dumars’ Pistons have won a title, while Thomas’ Knicks are receiving your annual “class clown” awards. And just when you think his knicks have hit rock bottom, and their jokes have become boring and expired, this week’s DOH-mer will find a way to liven things up again.

The Knicks currently stand at 17-39 on the season, which isn’t even funny anymore. But what’s funny is the excuse given by Isaiah last week, for his squad suffering a humiliating 40 point loss to the Sixers. According to Thomas, the NBA trade deadline served as a huge distraction to the team. Really? I can’t recall any of the other franchises losing by 40 on that night. I guess they weren’t distracted, and that would include the teams that were actually involved in last minute trades or those that traded earlier and still didn’t have key players in their new uniforms.

Thomas either formed his reasoning in the time between the final horn and the circling of the media hyenas around the dead carcass, or he took a full 24 minutes to create his post game blabber. 24 minutes accounts for the game’s second half, where he sat motionless and staring off into space. What else was there to think about, when you’re down 46, besides questions, flash bulbs and what Stephen A. Smith will say about you on Sportscenter?...HOWEVA, I’ve tried to latch on to the DOH-mer excuse, but my mind keeps drawing comedic images of an entire Knicks team placed on hold.

Isn’t it just awful when players run up and down the court, wearing their Bluetooth earpieces, nervously awaiting a call to say they’ve been traded? And what about the coaching staff, sitting there for 48 minutes, calling every NBA team to offer a package? That would definitely throw me off my game! But the game of blame turned out to be even worse than the one against the Sixers, because I think Vegas would give better odds of the Knicks overcoming a 46 point second half deficit than they would give the public believing the Knicks were routed because of trade distractions.

Since Isaiah has been restructuring the Knicks, he’s brought Stephon Marbury, Steve Francis, Jamal Crawford, Eddie Curry, Quentin Richardson, and Jalen Rose to the Big Apple. He’s drafted Channing Frye, Nate Robinson, and others. Now he’s sitting around waiting for phone calls? Face it, putting balls in the hoop was his forte, but making pieces fit is not. His Knicks rebuilding project is equal to a preschool student trying to complete a colonial puzzle, by trying desperately to fit Paul Revere’s head in his horse’s a$$.

And finally, I’ll end this with a post game quote from the DOH-mer himself:

“We’ve had our good moments, and we’ve had our bad moments.”

When you’re 17-39 on the season, and you lose by 40 points to a team that isn’t much better than you, good moments are known as the “NBA Lottery”. He should have given the correct answer to all the questions and said, “Something stinks in New York, and it’s either the coach, the president of basketball operations, or both.”

He still needs to find one player to blame for any anticipated trades that never occurred. But hey, I’m sure Devean George is still an available scapegoat.

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