Isiah Thomas Has Found a New Home to Wreck

By Adam in Featured, Opinion ⋅ April 20, 2009 at 5:52am ⋅ Post a comment

Don’t you hate it when pests return? Well that’s what happened this week when it was announced that Florida International University hired Isiah Thomas to coach their team. It’s a sad attempt to grab attention. This is after all, the same Isiah Thomas who has failed at almost every post-playing-career job that he has been hired for.

Isiah’s been a failure on an executive level in a variety of ways. He bought the CBA for $5 million in 1998 and within two years caused the league’s bankruptcy, despite having received an offer of $11 million for it to be bought and become the minor leagues of the NBA (of course Isiah rejected it). For normal people, 11 is greater than 0, but in Isiah World, 0 beats all.

Then as President of Basketball Operations of the New York Knicks, allow me to list his accomplishments:

He managed to keep their payroll way beyond the cap limit
He acquired Eddy Curry for way too much
He did not protect certain lottery draft picks
He signed Vin Baker, who put up numbers that any SoB authors could have put up
He traded Baker for Maurice Taylor which hurt the Knicks’ cap
He signed Jared Jeffries before deciding to draft a player with a similar skill set
He signed Jerome James to an outlandish contract
He traded Trevor Ariza for Steve Francis despite having Stephon Marbury on the roster
He hired Larry Brown despite not having a team built for his style of play
He fired Larry Brown after one season
He acquired Stephon Marbury early on in his tenure for way too much

Gee.. does anyone see anything resembling positive results here? If Isiah Thomas ran any investment bank during the past 10 years, they would’ve been so badly in the hole, the US would have to double it’s national deficit just to bail them out.

But, let’s not forget that as a coach Isiah has been an underperformer as well. Under Thomas, the Pacers never performed very well and the Knicks were even worse. Thomas showed a consistent ability to get his teams to perform below expectations. Furthermore, with the Knicks he managed to even create negative controversy with the brawl in Denver. Isiah finished his time in New York by “coaching” the team to a .280 winning percentage.

Finally, Isiah has shown an inability to even be a positive human being. Isiah Thomas was found guilty of sexual harassment of a Madison Square Garden and New York Knicks employee. After the jury rendered its verdict, Isiah spoke as if he was living in a different reality than everyone else, saying “I’m innocent, I’m very innocent, and I did not do the things she has accused me in this courtroom of doing, I’m extremely disappointed that the jury did not see the facts in this case.”

I suppose that’s how Isiah justified that it was the right move to let the CBA go bankrupt as well. There is also the sad incident of Isiah overdosing on sleeping pills and attempting to claim that it was his daughter that the ambulance rushed to the hospital, not him. Despite the facts stating otherwise, yet again Isiah claimed his story was right.

So FIU has managed to hire someone who sees the world through very filtered lenses and why? I guess they need the attention that badly in a state where they are far from the top attraction, in a sport where they rarely win their conference and have only had one NCAA tournament appearance. FIU, however, is opening up a can of worms they won’t be able to contain.

Tags: Eddy Curry, Florida International University, Isiah Thomas, Stephon Marbury, Steve Francis, Trevor Ariza