Dan's Hamptons

Just prior to last summer’s Artist-Writers Softball Game, it was announced that Rudy Giuliani and Larry Brown would be attending. Giuliani did come, and he umpired, and he seemed to enjoy it very much. As for Larry Brown, he did come briefly but did not play or ump, much to the disappointment of the crowd. Then he left.

At the time, Larry Brown was a much-celebrated new addition to the New York City sports scene. A legendary professional basketball coach with an unparalleled proven ability to turn mediocre teams into champions, he had been hired by the New York Knicks to do exactly that. The owner of the Knicks, James Dolan, had lured him away from the Detroit Pistons with an offer of $50 million for five years. And Brown had accepted. At the time of the Artist-Writers Softball Game in East Hampton, he was just ninety days from taking charge for opening day. He had been on the front page of every newspaper in the city. He was already as famous as Rudolph Giuliani. And he’d bought a multi-million dollar home in the Hamptons.

Of course, everybody in New York expected that the big turnaround for the Knicks would take place within a matter of weeks. Brown, however, lost his first five games in a row. He was, he said, learning what his team could and could not do. And he would tinker with the lineup and try different combinations out on the court. Apparently, he was looking at this as a long-term project. He had five years, didn’t he?

As the season wore on, Brown came to the conclusion that he would have to have the president of the team, Isiah Thomas, do some trades so he could plug some holes where the team was not competitive. Thomas, a one-time star of the game, had been president of the Knicks for six years for Dolan. He was a friend of Dolan’s. And he knew the game. But what Brown wanted was a playmaker. He had a good star in Stephon Marbury. But nobody to get the ball to him. Now twenty games had been played. They’d lost thirteen.

If Brown said he needed a playmaker, Isiah Thomas went out and bought Steve Francis, another star, somebody else that needed to be passed to. Now there were two stars and nobody to get them the ball. Brown tried. The two together stood there flatfooted while the enemy ran down the court and scored. Brown said he couldn’t work with this. Thomas and Dolan said that’s who you got. And so the rest of the season passed disastrously. When it ended, the Knicks had the worst record in basketball, and the second worst in the history of professional basketball. They had won 23 and lost 59 for a won-lost percentage of .280. And there was practically nobody paying money to sit in the stands to watch this nightly slaughter.

As summer arrived and the basketball games ended, James Dolan stepped in and announced that enough was enough. He fired Brown and replaced him with Isiah Thomas. Thomas had coached for several years with moderate success. He could do it. Dolan told Thomas he would have one year. If the team could not rouse itself on some sort of upward trajectory, he would be gone too.

“You made your bed, you sleep in it,” were Dolan’s exact words. Thomas swallowed hard and said he understood.

After that, Dolan looked at Brown’s fifty million dollar contract and, gentleman that he isn’t, said he would not pay his failed coach the agreed-upon amount. There were things in the contract, he said, that would allow him to do that. Brown had not lived up to expectations. If he wanted to be paid out, they could negotiate. Otherwise, Brown would have to sue him.

Ultimately, Brown and Dolan settled for an amount that they both agreed they would not reveal to the public. The amount is $17.5 million, on reasonably good authority. So decide about that what you want.

Brown, I am told, has both his Manhattan apartment and Hamptons home up for sale and is moving out of the community. We will likely not hear of him much anymore. It seems a certainty we will not see him at the softball game.

Meanwhile, the fate of Isiah Thomas has turned into something of a gong show. He has one year to improve the Knicks record from their dismal 23-59. Or he’s out.

And so I have been watching the games. So far they have played 20 games out of what will eventually be an 82-game season. Thomas has found out the same thing that Brown before him learned. This is a basketball game and the better five players win. And the better five players are very rarely the players from the Knicks. So Thomas, using some of his second-line players who sit on the beach, is trying different combinations just as Brown did before him. And the only difference seems to be that where Brown yelled at all the ballplayers and openly told them he didn’t like them, Thomas stands there like John Wayne with his arms folded watching them go down in flames. But the later pats them on the back and says we’ll get it right. So far, the team has won 7 and lost 13. It’s exactly the same start as last year. It really does seem that Marbury and Francis cannot play together on the same floor.

And so now Dolan is looking for a playmaker, just as Brown had Thomas doing the year before. And reportedly they have found one in Kevin Cato of the Detroit Pistons, who is recovering from an injury, but should be ready to start for the Knicks next week.