A Tragic Love Story

It was made public on December 22nd, 2003. Who knows when it actually started. It might have been a business meeting in the late 90’s or a dinner party in the early 2000’s. Or maybe he became obsessed with the bad boy that he watched from a distance in the late 80’s. Whenever it started, it became official in the Winter of ‘03. That was the day we first knew how desperately in love James Dolan is with Isiah Thomas.

Dolan hired the former Piston point guard to run his New York Knicks franchise. I can’t blame him for falling for Thomas initially. I mean there were few candidates who could boast the resume that he was carried into that job: After finishing his playing days in 1994, he bought a minority interest in the Raptors and was hired as VP of Basketball Operations. After three years, Isiah left the team with a 62-151 record. In 1998, Thomas bought the Continental Basketball Association (CBA) for $10 million. In 2001, by direct fault of his reckless spending (according to most accounts), the CBA was forced into bankruptcy. He was immediately hired to coach the Indiana Pacers, a team coming off a trip to the Eastern Conference Finals. The Pacers lost in the first round of the playoffs the next three season before Thomas was fired by Larry Bird.

So, what possible reason would a business mogul hire someone who failed in every capacity of the game since he retired from playing? At first, I think everyone just assumed that James Dolan lost a bet to someone in Isiah’s family. Thomas is the youngest of nine children, so the odds are pretty good that at least one of his brothers or sisters is involved in high stakes gambling. But the more time went on, the more it became apparent that there was something deeper in this seemingly professional relationship. There is only one thing that could make someone blind to all logic, business sense, financial losses, Jerome James signings, win/loss record, sexual harassment charges, Stephon Marbury turnovers, luxury taxes, and utter incompetence: LOVE.

James Dolan's Happiest Split-Second

James Dolan is so in love with Isiah Thomas that he doesn’t see what the rest of the world knows. There are thousands of relationships like this in the US. The difference is that the most publicity that the majority of these relationships will ever see is an episode of Cops: Albuquerque. Typically, it plays out as a woman running out of a trailer yelling to the police that she doesn’t want to press charges as her shirtless boyfriend is being handcuffed and placed into the back of a cop car. It’s not his fault he hit her in the head with a full beer can; she forced him to do it because she wouldn’t stop talking about her brother-in-law getting that sweet new job down at the plant. It just so happens in this case, the woman is actually a man who is worth a couple billion dollars and owns one of the most publicized teams in American sports and the drunken, shirtless misogynist is his President of Basketball Operations.

James Dolan is like Jane from the song “Jane Says”. He is like Satan and Isiah Thomas is like Saddam Hussein. And I don’t mean this in a literal sense in which I’m saying Thomas is a megalomaniac former dictator of Iraq and Dolan is the ruler of the dark underworld. I mean this as a reference to South Park, where they are recurring lovers. In the show, Saddam verbally and physically abuses Satan, but no matter how hard Satan tries, he can’t help but run back to Saddam in spite of the obvious negatives. There are plenty of parallels between this fictional relationship and the steamy love affair that ran the Knicks for the better part of this past decade.

On many occasions, Thomas has shown the tendencies of a Saddam-like (again, in South Park terms) lover. In 2006, he and Madison Square Garden were sued by a female co-worker for Sexual Harassment. Isiah, allegedly, made demeaning and sexually-charged remarks towards the accuser. He denies any wrong doing, although he did admit to calling her a bitch once during a work day (this actually happened). The ensuing trial unveiled numerous details about Thomas and the alleged frat-like atmosphere he ran with the Knicks. But of course, James Dolan stuck by his man and even paid the over $11 million settlement, much like a beaten, trailer park wife would pay her husbands bail.

What Up, Steph!?!

Sticking with the subject of money, Dolan has a ton and Isiah didn’t mind spending it. If you’ve ever been unlucky enough to see the movie Requiem for a Dream, you might remember the opening scene where Jared Leto steals his mother’s television so he can pawn it for drug money. No matter how much this screwed the mother over, she was always going to forgive him. She loved him. (I say unlucky enough to see the movie for two reasons; neither of which are that it was a bad movie. In fact, it was a pretty awesome movie. However, five years later, I’m still stuck with the image of Jared Leto shooting up into his rotting arm burned into my subconscious. Probably the single reason I haven’t ever tried heroin. So, really it might be a good thing, depending on whether you’re pro-heroin or not. The second reason I consider myself unlucky to see Requiem is that no matter how charming and beautiful Jennifer Connelly was in Blood Diamond, she just doesn’t do it for me anymore. If you’ve ever seen the movie, you know exactly what I’m talking about.) James Dolan loves Isiah Thomas. And no matter how much of Dolan’s money he spends on Eddy Curry, Jerome James, Jared Jeffries, Zach Randolph, Steve Francis or any of the other All-Hype All Stars, Dolan will always forgive him. He loves him.

In fact, Dolan loves him so much, that he decided to make him head coach in 2006. This goes along the same logic of “you beat me, steal my money, and cheat on me, so why don’t you move in with me so I can change you into the type of man I want.”

But in most dysfunctional relationships, friends and family of the abused will start to pressure them to move on. “Can’t you see he’s no good for you?” In Dolan’s case, it was all of his friends in the New York media that held an increasingly desperate 4 year-long intervention. It began as a couple back page editorials, but eventually climaxed with the media inviting 90% of the fans in attendance at MSG to chant “Fire Isiah” over the final 4 months of the ’08 season. Finally, Dolan’s eyes were opened. He ended it. He met someone else: Donnie Walsh, the generally successful General Manager of the Pacers, who he would hire to replace Isiah. Dolan had moved on from the heroin-like highs (or so I’ve been told) and hell-like lows of his love affair with Saddam... I mean Isiah. At least this is what we all wanted to believe. We hoped, for Dolan’s sake, that it was over.



But the flame of a love that passionate doesn’t go out with just a strong breeze. And in the past month, Isiah’s name was again connected to the Knicks organization. According to several sources, Dolan and current coach, Mike D’Antoni, asked Isiah to speak to Lebron James in a last ditch effort to lure him to Madison Square Garden. Somehow, Lebron was able to turn down his charm. (Who the hell thought this would work? “Well Lebron, we know you turned us down earlier this week and the consensus is that you are either going to play in your hometown with the team you’ve been with for the past seven years or you’re going to take your talents to South Beach and play with two of your best friends who also happen to be a couple of the best players in the league, but here’s Isiah Thomas. What do you think about the Knicks now?”)

And, this week it was announced that New York offered to put Isiah back on the payroll as a consultant. Do they really want him to consult them with his obvious wealth of knowledge on how to run a team? Of course not. James Dolan wants Isiah back in his life.

(Rumors started to swirl in the wake of the Consultant announcement that Donnie Walsh was thinking about retiring. He came to the realization that Dolan would never truly be over Isiah and he wanted to get out before his heart was broken.)

It turns out that David Stern has nixed the idea of Thomas returning to the Knicks, saying it would cause a conflict of interest with Isiah’s current job, head coach of Florida International. (Another genius David Stern move.) But don’t worry Dolan, Isiah will return to you someday. A love strong enough to make it through all of this, has to have a happy ending.