After getting blown out by the grittily-guttily-led, coulda-been-a-contender Chicago Bulls, the Supes move on to the Big Apple, where they face the team that makes every NBA beat writer drool: The New York Knicks. (Seriously, could you ever have difficulty coming up with a story about a team like that?)

The Knickerbockers, payer of the league’s highest payroll, are just this week $11.5 million lighter in the wallet, following their settlement of a sexual harassment lawsuit with an employee whom owner James Dolan, in an episode that reads like the script for a “how-not-to” corporate training video, fired after she filed her harassment claim and without consulting with his legal team.

Still, for better or worse, Mr. Dolan is not the face of the franchise. That honor belongs to head coach/general manager/accused sexual harasser Isiah Thomas. Babyfaced, mercurial, and the butt of many an article and blog post, Thomas has turned the crazy up a notch this season. Here are a couple of anecdotes to help you get through tonight’s likely stinker. Get out your DSM-IV, folks, and enjoy the unvarnished Isiah:

From a press conference following Monday night’s 10-point loss to the Dallas Mavericks (it wasn’t as close as final margin), in which the team was booed and Isiah accused of chastising courtside fans for not being more supportive:

“I fight ’til I die. It’s not about giving up or quitting. To me, it’s win or die. I literally mean death, I don’t mean ‘walk away.’ I mean death. That’s how I have coached.”

But my favorite Isiah anecdote of the season was delivered by fashionista Craig Sager (if the Trailblazers ever change their name to the Tackyblazers, they’ll know who to hire as their mascot), during the Knicks epic loss to the Boston Celtics a couple weeks ago. It went something like this:

Isiah Thomas has renewed his hate affair with the city of Boston. After leaving his hotel for an afternoon spin class [spin class!], Isiah returned to find the key to his room didn’t work. He suspected the hotel of having changed the lock/card code. After waiting 45 minutes to get back in [at this point, one has to wonder what sorts of joints Dolan’s putting them up in], he refused to order room service or go out for his dinner, because he couldn’t trust anyone in Boston to prepare his food. Instead, he just ate from the mini-bar. Afterward, he told Saigs of the Bostonians, “I hate them as much as they hate me.”

Here’s to you, Isiah. Thanks for helping to make the Knicks one of the league’s most entertaining franchises.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Crazy People, Dumb Ideas, Supersonics, Roundball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.