The Ghost of Christmas Past

Once colleagues and friends, Larry Brown and Isiah Thomas
are now sworn enemies

And just when you thought he'd faded into the yearning past, Larry Brown reared his ugly head this week and sent forth both a nice sally at his enemies with the Knicks and a great news item for a slow week.

Larry Brown, who presided over the original Team Titanic and that season from the depths of Dante's Inferno, must be getting jealous of all the new misery this year. His old bunch are getting overshadowed. And no one ever thought the Knicks could be worse than they were with Brown at the helm.

Brown opened his mouth this month to complain that MSG officials were spying on him regularly during his season with New York and giving him the cold shoulder, refusing to speak to the coach throughout the final weeks of his tenure. You can read all about it from the Post, the Daily News, Newsday and the Times.

Here's his nicest swipe, though. Brown, who's now with the 76ers in a front office position, was asked about head coach Maurice Cheeks and the potential he could replace him at some point. "I could never stab Mo in the back like that," Brown responded. Sort of like how Isiah axed Brown and then installed himself as head coach, right?

These sorts of comments might reek of sour grapes, but I like it. Brown, after all, waited almost two years to open his mouth - a fine show of restraint. And he also pulled off the salvo nicely. He didn't blame anyone particularly and instead indicted the whole organization as one filled with douchebags and creeps.

Frank Isola, the Daily News' beat writer, has a fine take on the whole event in his blog.

The False Prophet decided to stay above the fray, but that didn't stop the Times' Howard Beck from taking the opportunity to present a lengthy comparison of the Brown and Thomas eras.

Torpedo tubes open, fire away.

Marks of Futility

The Knicks are the basketball version of the post-steroids Jason Giambi - flabby, gaunt, overpaid and a complete disaster on the playing field.

"Could It Get Worse for the Knicks?"

That was the headline question in the Times sports section Tuesday. Thankfully and hilariously, the paper didn't require anyone to read the actual article to get the answer. The end of the header read "Amazingly, Yes."

Does someone at the Times read this blog? Probably not. But Mike Ogle's look back at the year that was and the one still to come answered some questions raised by my latest post. Yes, the Knicks are on pace for 22-23 wins and 59-60 losses. In the historical framework, those are awful results but potentially record-breaking ones. Yes, it is obvious that the Knicks are bad in an epic way right now. But it will take hard work to set a historical low.

Team Titanic 1, Larry Brown's 2005-6 squad is currently tied with the 1985-6 edition of the Knickerbockers with a 23-59 record. Those are the most losses in franchise history. Three Knicks teams, however, won fewer games. They were all from the early 1960s, when a season had fewer contests. The all-time mark of ignominy goes to the 1960-1 squad that went 21-58 for a .266 winning percentage.

Right now, the Knicks are winning a .276 clip. That puts some new records within striking distance. We may all look back on 2007-8 as the season of utter shittiness.

This passage from Ogle's article also intrigued me:

"Two weeks ago, Coach Isiah Thomas said that in another two weeks it would be a fair question to ask him, as the team's president, if his job as coach should be in jeopardy."

Dear Lord, how did this news escape me? How could any reporter have underplayed this tidbit? This should have been the basketball version of the General Petraeus report. The media horde should have descended upon Madison Square Garden, waiting for the False Prophet to hold forth with stoic, sunny optimism and that plastered-on smile of idiocy. Alas, we all missed a great opportunity to take insanity and absence-of-reality to a whole new level of hyperbole and comedy.

Even so, the inevitable follow-up to Isiah's timetable was delicious:

"When reminded of that statement at Monday’s practice and asked what he thought about his job status now that the losing had continued unabated, Thomas replied, 'We’ll keep moving in this direction.'"

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Is he completely fucking mad? Is that the let's-lose-lots-of-games-and-suck-worse-than-Jason-Giambi- after-he-stopped-juicing direction? Thankfully, we got clarification from Ogle:

"Which direction is that? 'Me as coach,' he replied."

Oh. Well that makes just as much sense.