Even before the season began, New York was generating most of the off-season NBA news. New York Post headlines have featured, in turn, the fallout from Tim Donagy and the NBA referee betting scandal; the lawsuit brought by Anucha Browne, former senior vice president of marketing for the Knicks, against Isiah Thomas for sexual harassment and against Knicks owner and Madison Square Garden President James Dolan for failing to protect her in a "hostile" work environment; and the latest, Stephon Marbury's disappearing act in Phoenix Tuesday, when he went AWOL and failed to show up for morning shootaround. With his customary smile frozen in place, Isiah reacts to Starbury's no-show in the video below.
New York Knicks (2-4; three-game losing streak, two megalomaniacal leaders, one missing person)
Stephon Marbury, reportedly back in New York as of 4 p.m. Tuesday and telling The Post that he received Isaiah's permission, might be crazy, but Isiah Thomas is definitely crazy. The annual Zeke-Starbury flareup is the inevitable image of two doppelgangers battling to determine who is whose alter ego. Imagine two attention-seeking point guards playing one-on-one for center position in front of an HD fishbowl. Of course, Zeke considers their tiff itself to be a private matter. When Thomas talks about this latest controversy as an "in-house" matter, he's talking about how things are handled inside the crazy house.
Earlier this summer, Thomas seemed to monopolize the spotlight when he was found guilty of sexual harassing former Knicks executive Anucha Browne Sanders, but as the sordid trial wound down to judgment, Marbury managed to pop up in the testimony of Knicks employee Kathleen Decker, who stated that she had backseat sex with the married Marbury in his SUV while parked outside a night club in 2005. She, unlike Sanders, consented to her superior's advance. Six weeks before the trial began, Decker received a big promotion.
Meanwhile, Sanders' saga goes something like this: First, in executive meetings, she complained of Thomas' unprofessional behavior and then threatened to sue if something wasn't done. The Knicks suspended her pending an internal investigation, then Knicks owner and MSG president James Dolan, concerned that the “overall health of the Garden was in jeopardy,” fired her after he determined that her allegations were unfounded. Amazingly, Dolan was able to do so without even bothering to talk to legal counsel or look at a report on the investigation of Sanders' claims. Now that's great leadership, Jimmy! Sanders subsequently sued Thomas, MSG and Dolan in January 2006, and on Oct. 2 a civil court jury found Thomas guilty and awarded Sanders $11.6 million.
Dolan, the mad doctor in charge of this loony bin, is crazy himself. All told, basketball in the Big Apple is more than a few dashes of cinnamon shy of apple pie. On the other hand, there's nothing more American than a good-old family feud. And that's exactly what the show at the Garden looks like these days.
While Thomas' guilty verdict represents the point of terminal velocity for the Knicks' disaster, who can say when it all began to unravel? It's like trying to identify the first snowflake in an avalanche. Did it begin in September 1999, when Isiah honed his franchise-killing skills by buying the CBA only for it to declare bankruptcy less than two years later? Or maybe October 1999 when Dolan first assumed managing control of the Knicks? Was it in December 2003 when Dolan named Thomas president of basketball operations? Or in the 2005-06 season, when their managerial strategery of accumulating huge contracts of overpaid underachievers resulted in a 23-59 record paired with the league's highest payroll of $130 million?
(Head coach Larry Brown, axed after that awful season, is no dummy; perhaps he loathed associating with these guys so much that he purposely tanked in order to be "fired"/bought out of his misery for $18.5 million.) Or was it when the buyouts didn't end there, and Dolan shelled out another $14 million and then $30 million (both amounts including luxury tax penalties) to Maurice Taylor and Jalen Rose, respectively, in order to secure their unconditional releases and allow the Knicks to acquire more players and incur additional luxury taxes? For a full litany of the Knicks's struggles since the volatile Dolan, a recovering addict prone to "treating people like shit," was named CEO of Cablevision by his father in 1995, check out Sean Cunningham's History of the Decline and Fall of the New York Knickerbockers for Esquire.Back to the present hostile environment, Thomas of course vehemently asserted that he was "extremely disappointed that the jury could not see the facts" and will appeal the decision. Meanwhile, SportsCenter reported early Wednesday morning that the NY Daily News quoted Marbury as saying, "Isiah has to start me. I've got so much (stuff) on Isiah and he knows it. He thinks he can (get) me. But I'll (get) him first. You have no idea what I know."
At least Isiah isn't on the hook for Sanders' $11 million settlement. That bill also goes Dolan, the richest and most entitled daddy-made man in professional sports and sketchy Zeke's staunchest supporter. On the brighter side of things, now Dolan finally has personal inspiration to sing the blues and play rhythm guitar in his band, JD and the Straight Shot.
Nonetheless, Isiah narrowly edges out Martina Hingis on
dp's Sick Six List of Over-Emphatic Protestations of Innocence:
6. Martina Hingis: The tennis star retired last week in the wake of a positive test for cocaine on June 29 at Wimbledon. She says, "I have tested positive but I have never taken drugs and I feel 100 percent innocent.... I have no desire to spend the next several years of my life reduced to fighting against the doping officials.... I am frustrated and angry. I believe that I am absolutely, 100 percent innocent.
Here's what the PTI guys have to say:
Adding to the sense that she was overdoing her claim of "absolute, 100 percent" innocence, Hingis verbosely rambled on to say, "I find this accusation so horrendous, so monstrous, that I have decided to confront it head-on by talking to the press.... They say that cocaine increases self-confidence and creates a type of euphoria. I don't know. I only know that if I were to try to hit the ball while in any state of euphoria, it simply wouldn't work. I would think that it would be impossible for anyone to maintain the coordination required to play top class tennis while under the influence of drugs," Hingis added, displaying accurate knowledge of the drug's effects. Hingis lost in the third round on the day she tested positive, but she assures us that her lawyers can prove her innocence. Who knows? Perhaps the "Swiss Miss" consumed a tainted packet of instant hot chocolate powder.
5. Original "Bad Boy" Isiah Thomas:
Concerning his sexual harassment conviction, Isiah told a throng of reporters outside the courtroom, "I want to say it as loud as I possibly can. I'm innocent. I'm very innocent." Of course, true innocence need not be qualified with the redundant "very" and would thus only be used by a (very) guilty criminal.
4. Rafael Palmeiro:Just months before being suspended for testing positive for the anabolic steroid stanozolol, Palmeiro wagged his finger before Congress and testified, "I have never used steroids. Period. I don't know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never." Of course, the second never negates the first, and the resulting double-negative equals a positive steroid test. If only Palmeiro had taken elementary math (or non-juiced Vitamin B-12 shots) instead of simple reverse-psychology.
3. Pete Rose: "I never bet on baseball." Oh, wait, actually he did, and he'll tell you all about it in his best-selling autobiography, My Prison Without Bars. Seriously, go buy a copy. One dollar of every copy sold goes directly to the IRS, and two dollars go toward Rose's "lock" in the daily No. 9 race at Santa Anita. Come 0n, give the old boy something to do while he waits in vain to be reinstated by Bud Selig and consequently enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
2. Marion Jones: Perhaps the saddest story of all, fool's golden girl Jones recently came clean about using performance-enhancing drugs during the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where she won five medals, including three golds.
1. O.J. Simpson: Even though he's admitted to "masterminding" a plot to forcibly enter a Las Vegas hotel room with the intent of taking sports memorabilia "stolen" from him by unscrupulous dealers, doesn't everyone believe O.J's claims that there were no guns involved and that all of the junk was rightfully his anyway? In a move familiar to amateur poker players, Simpson practically invented the old "act strong when you're weak, and act weak when you're strong" tactic. (Remember the defense's argument that the battered Juice was too debilitated after his Hall of Fame pro football career to even wield a knife in the manner required to violently murder Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman? "Your honor, I'm only able to powerfully stiff arm, not vengefully stab, defenders to the ground.")To steer dp's meandering scope back where it started, dp hopes that Zeke and Starbury don't stop at the kissing part of making up; they should continue their love affair indefinitely. This makes sense on multiple levels:
1. Both playmakers have already expressed a desire to pursue sexual relationships in the work place.
2. Both know how to score off a backdoor cut.
3. The ensuing media bonanza celebrating the NBA's first open gay relationship would generate huge interest and expand the Knick's fan base, which would in turn increase revenue that could supplement Dolan's operational costs of poor performance, payroll mismanagement, executive favoritism/nepotism/sexism, and professional lechery. Not to mention the fact that this backcourt combo would transcend even the metrosexual model of modern man and take coolness to a whole new level. Short of the Knicks winning the NBA championship (Vegas has optimistically posted 60-1 odds), this is the best possible news for which fans can hope.
Boston Celtics (6-0, three synergistic superstars, two previously embattled but currently thrilled leaders)
Simply put, KG and the Celtics are killing it. dp was there for The Big Three's home opener versus Washington on Friday, Nov. 2. Check out the energy of the TD Banknorth (bleh!) Garden during introductions:
dp attended the game with three of his college roommates, Boston's original Flickster trio, Ron "Jeremy" Mazza, John "Not Ryan" Flynn, and Zed Fong-Torres. Predictably, Milwaukee native dp was the only one of the bunch to pick Ray Allen as the best-looking member of Boston's Big Three when surveyed by an ESPN Magazine reporter. Presumably, the NBA's last undefeated team will lose at some point, but possibly never to a (L)Eastern Conference team. Boston GM Kevin McHale, er, Danny Ainge, and "coach" Doc Rivers rejoice.
Los Angeles Lakers (3-3, tenth in Western conference, one superstar's impossible trade demand)
Paradoxically, Los Angeles has almost no chance of completing a Kobe trade because Bryant holds the NBA's only active no-trade clause and will only approve a deal that he thinks will enable his prospective team to compete for a championship; the Lakers would consider any such deal patently unfair to their own future interests and thus fail to pull the trigger. Despite the unlikelihood of a deal happening, speculation will continue unchecked because the Lakers cannot come out and declare that Kobe won't be traded. They are prevented from doing so by the terms of the pact that Kobe and Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss hashed out this summer in Barcelona. Buss promised Kobe that he would at least listen to trade offers, while in return Kobe promised to play hard and publicly support the Lakers. Perhaps the most entertaining aspect of the Kobe trade drama is watching other teams implode. The Bulls have been intensely scrutinized as having the inside track in the Kobe sweepstakes, and the talented team (49-33 last year) has fallen apart on the court with an atrocious 1-5 start. Meanwhile, Kobe's former companion, Shaquille O'Neal, isn't even a shade of his former self, and the Heat, desperate for Dwyane Wade's return, are playing so badly in accumulating a 1-6 record that Pat Riley is considering suiting up himself.
That's about the tenth of it. Check back in three weeks for dp's 20% Season Report: Five Surprises a Fifth of the Way, which will include:
-dp's first Double Deuce Slotter, his Top 22 teams (11 each in the East and West)
- First quarter Division Grades for the Atlantic (Boston, Toronto, Jersey, New York, Philly); the Central (Detroit, Cleveland, Indiana, Milwaukee, Chicago); the Southeast (Washington, Orlando, Charlotte, Atlanta, Miami); the Northwest (Utah, Denver, Portland, Minny, Seattle); the Texas Blues (San Antonio, New Orleans, Houston, Dallas, Memphis); and CaliZona (Phoenix, Clippers, Lakers, Sactown, Golden State)
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