| The Knicks looked so fantastic against the Nuggets last week that I thought it was the Second Coming. Now I feel like the guy who bends down to pick up a dollar only to discover that it is tied to a string and is being pulled away in a cruel joke. This week they are back to their old form, which is a group of nut cases so pathetic that even a grasping, scheming Anucha Browne Sanders can make a monkey out of them in a phony civil suit. Even as she is off in some balmy, tropical clime with $11million to keep her warm, the Knicks are working overtime to ensure that no edifice will be left standing in their little empire of knuckleheads. Marbury is hardly part of the team anymore, Collins and Balkman are literally on crutches, Eddy Curry seems to be sleepwalking, Isiah Thomas is in a catatonic state from which he is only aroused by the hysterical screaming and threats directed at him in post-game meetings with James Dolan (I am not present at those meetings, but I have worked for guys like Dolan. How could it be otherwise?). New York sports is at its all-time historic low, made all the worse by the triumphalist bleatings of our erstwhile suckers, Boston, who now beat us with a triumvirate of championship clubs: the Celts, the Patriots and the Red Sox. Certainly we are not losing out for lack of wealth spent to attract sports talent. New York is prepared to spend vast sums to lure the highest quality of stars. Part of our decline as an empire might be environmental, and I don't mean pollution, but a poorly designed physical environment which has been constructed without consideration being given to the metaphysical spiritual laws of feng shui. In spite of the vast sums being consecrated to new constructions I have often felt that we are living in a world out of balance. My opinion is that the City is being punished for worshipping false gods. New York was built on manufacturing and transportation. We have lost our manufacturing capacity and our transportation infrastructure and replaced them with shylocking and communications. People only dream of getting rich without working, by living off interest or clicking a computer mouse. This general slackness and loss of resolve translates into a public atmosphere of unreal expectations, which permeates sports management. If you think that this is illusory, think about the Knicks for a minute. The Knicks should have been back on their feet years ago, and not a load of garbage smooth-talked by Isiah Thomas. They should have beaten Anucha Browne Sanders in her phony lawsuit, but nobody in the front office or among their high-priced team of attorneys took a leadership role in controlling the case and coaching stoopid freakin' Marbury and Thomas in how to comport themselves on the courthouse steps or in the courtroom. The Knicks ended up getting their butts handed to them by an ignorant, greedy, grasping idiot of a woman. By the same token, James Dolan should have gotten rid of Isiah Thomas and read the riot act to the players years ago, but Dolan himself, a product of nepotism, is, aside from hysterical behavior, quite unqualified to administer even a hot dog stand. There is obviously a paralyzing dysfunction at the Knicks management level. Nobody is in charge. Nobody wants to work. The players are the Designated Suckers. It's not because of their lack of talent. It's because they are not being managed intelligently. A very smart guy once counseled me, "There are no bad workers, only bad supervisors." Why does Isiah Thomas still have a job? Steinbrenner got rid of Joe Torre, despite his having a very distinguished record, when the Yanks flunked out of the playoffs. How long would he have lasted if the Yanks had spent year after year in the cellar, like the Knicks? The Knicks is not a player problem. It is a management problem. But the managerial class as it's now presently constituted is not up to world-class standards. Maybe the Knicks should bring in a manager who knows nothing about basketball. Top managers move from industry to industry all the time. If you can manage one business successfully you can manage another. But as long as Charles Dolan owns the Knicks this is unlikely to happen. The Dolans make their real money from Cablevision. The Knicks are just the toy for Charles Dolan's fat, useless son, James, and the fans are just the suckers. Part of the problem is the players' union. Now that the players have so much power, the way the contracts are written makes it impossible to control them with the threat of dismissal for non-performance. And since most of the players are young persons with little or no work experience, they are very difficult to manage. Every year Isiah Thomas comes back with the same lame excuse, "It is a young team that needs time to develop." Blah blah blah. Maybe next year. Mañana. Those are the shopworn bleatings of a turkey who is trying to hold onto his job. Only, even the stupidest boss in the world is not going to buy a bill of goods like that. Unless, of course, the boss is the Big Boss' idiot son with a pineapple for a head. I wouldn't trust James Dolan to feed the birds in my pet store. Even the most stultified sports team eventually divests itself of its expired talent, as the moribund Jets proved when the finally jettisoned Chad Pennington after a disastrous start. Only Isiah Thomas seems to be immune to this fundamental law of nature. |
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