LOS ANGELES – The thin veil of secrecy has torn away now, the pretenses gone and Isiah Thomas has left the shadows and moved into the light again. Once more, he is the New York Knicks’ top basketball executive.
Thomas is driving everything through owner James Dolan – the trade for Carmelo Anthony(notes), the departure of Donnie Walsh and perhaps even the eventual hiring of the New York Knicks’ next president and general manager, multiple league sources told Yahoo! Sports.
“Isiah is calling the shots for New York,” said one front-office executive with knowledge of the Anthony trade talks. “It’s a disgrace. Donnie should walk.”
Isiah Thomas has maintained a close relationship with Knicks owner James Dolan.
Thomas wouldn’t blink. After all, that’s his plan: He wants Walsh to leave out of sheer frustration because of Thomas’ meddling, or because Dolan doesn’t pick up the option on his contract in April. Fora franchise with a history of inexplicable dysfunction, even this is an episode for the Madison Square Garden time capsule.
Dolan has overruled Walsh in these trade talks and undermined his authority. Walsh has never wanted to give away Raymond Felton(notes) for an aging Chauncey Billups(notes) and throw Danilo Gallinari(notes) into the package, too. This is all Isiah, all his influence.
Thomas doesn’t believe Dolan is inclined to give him his job back, but it almost doesn’t matter anymore. In a moment of truth for this Knicks franchise, in the biggest trade they’ve tried to make in years, Isiah Thomas, the coach of Florida International University, has emerged as the de facto GM.
Eventually, Anthony will likely end up with the Knicks, and Thomas plans to take full credit with Dolan for delivering him. He’s worn out Dolan with the idea that Walsh is too old to recruit the biggest stars to New York, that he can’t connect with them. This is complete nonsense. What sells New York isn’t the GM, but cap space, the Garden and a magnificent teammate and leader like Amar’e Stoudemire(notes). Thomas is forever selling revisionist history and out-and-out lies to an audience of one: Dolan.
For months, Thomas has privately insisted that Walsh was done with the Knicks this spring. His option must be exercised by April 30 and that still hasn’t happened. Thomas believes it’s never happening, and believes he can install a puppet regime through Dolan to replace Walsh. This way he can eliminate the middleman. “He wants his own guy in that office, someone he can have some control over,” a league source said.
Thomas had a plan to run the Knicks again, and it failed a year ago: When Dolan pushed Walsh to bring back the disgraced executive as the Knicks general manager, Walsh reacted with the threat of resignation. This was pure lunacy, a plan hatched out of the incompetence of Dolan, out of the deviousness of Thomas.
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