Bernstein: Why Is Isiah Thomas In Charge Of Anything?
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) As if blessed with some magical power, Isiah Thomas is like King Midas. He has transformed every basketball business he has touched for the last 30 years, turning every one of them into horse manure.
His remarkable ability has been seen at every level since he retired from the NBA in 1994 and set out to destroy the basketball world, franchise by franchise. With a disarming smile, expensive suit and misplaced trust earned by his ability to bounce a rubber ball, Thomas declared himself a leader and a businessman and made people believe it.
Whatever trance once mesmerized James Dolan has never worn off, it seems, because the Knicks owner just installed Thomas as president and part-owner of the New York Liberty of the WNBA. Dolan has so much money that he doesn't have to care that he once had to remove Thomas from a similar position with the Knicks after a federal court ruled that he had created a hostile work environment there and wrongly fired a female employee for complaining about it. Dolan claimed the verdict was unfair and wrong but still cut her a check for $11.6 million in punitive damages.
The irony of Thomas returning to power as the face of a WNBA team notwithstanding, another issue is that he has control of anything related to the business of basketball. Dolan has to know that even beyond the court ruling, Thomas so befouled the Knicks roster and salary cap that the lingering aftereffects helped drag the team down to their current position at the bottom of the league.
But no matter. Thomas always seems to fall upward.
As the part owner and executive VP/GM of the Toronto Raptors from 1994-'98, he won nothing, lined his pockets with money and then exited in a dispute with ownership. After he left, they improved enough to make the playoffs for the first time.
Then came his unfortunate stint as the owner of the Continental Basketball Association, which at the time was the NBA's affiliated feeder league. Thomas conned the individual franchise owners with grand promises on which he never planned to deliver, eventually alienating everybody involved with an organization that had existed since 1946. He cut player salaries, turned down an offer from the NBA to buy the league for more than he paid for it, then tried to sell it to the NBA Players Association.
In response, the NBA renounced affiliation, rendering the CBA all but valueless. Thomas then froze the league's assets, hid all the accounting and bailed to coach the Indiana Pacers. The CBA ceased to exist.
Thomas didn't succeed in similarly running the Pacers into the ground, but he did take them from an appearance in the NBA Finals to three consecutive first-round playoff ousters before Larry Bird fired him and replaced him with Rick Carlisle, whom the very next season won 13 more games.
Then it was immediately on to the Knicks and their front office in 2003, and Thomas began to find creative ways to give massive amounts of money to terrible players, even trading for other teams' unwieldy contracts. He appeared to want to pay people to not play for the Knicks, at one point committing as much at $50 million to players not on the roster anymore. In his time there as head coach, their winning percentage was .341. He was fired in 2008.
Florida International University hired him a year later to be its head coach, in an apparent desire to ruin their program. Thomas coached three seasons there, compiling a record of 26-65, and made headlines after the first season by taking a simultaneous position as a consultant to the Knicks, only to change his mind after it was pointed out that such a relationship would be in clear violation of NBA bylaws. He was fired in 2012, and the next year the Panthers were 18-14 under Richard Pitino.
Now he returns to the basketball offices at Madison Square Garden, infecting the hallways with his unique ability to make everything awful.
There's sad, cold comfort in the truth that a WNBA team doesn't matter enough for many to care – Thomas will do it all wrong with the Liberty and nobody will know the difference, and whatever value is there for him to eventually scuttle is minimal – but he's in the same building with Phil Jackson and the Knicks again, still protected and empowered by Dolan.
This is only the beginning.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. Follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.