By Harvey Araton
January 31st, 2006
Kobe Bryant makes his annual visit to Madison Square Garden with the Lakers tonight, briefly diverting attention from the sordid house dysfunction, barring a news bulletin that outs Isiah Thomas as a covert operative of Al Qaeda.
Then again, here comes Kobe, the provocateur behind another door the N.B.A. wished had stayed closed, to remind us that he at least had the sense two and a half years ago to ask the Colorado law enforcement folks how he might make a charge of sexual assault go away before word got out.
In the now-explosive case of Anucha Browne Sanders, the recently fired Knicks marketing executive, against Thomas, the embattled team president, the most gripping question beyond who is telling the truth and who isn't is why any of this had to become public knowledge in the first place.
What could James L. Dolan, the Garden's chairman, have possibly been thinking when he, the person with the last call as the holder of the golden checkbook, instead signed off on the dismissal of Browne Saunders after she filed a complaint within the company against Thomas?
Did his high-powered lawyers really advise Dolan that Browne Sanders had no case in court and could be vanquished without negotiating a suitable severance that would, as the lawyers say, make her whole? Or was Browne Sanders another Jets stadium to spurn, another perceived infidel to slay, another chance for the son of a rich man who wanted to be a rebellious rocker to smash his toy basketball team all over the stage?
When Dolan needed to be a pragmatic manager and chant: "War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing," he opted for his longtime anthem, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." Could he really be so uncompromising and disdainful of the public and his critics that he would destroy Thomas in the interests of defending him, and expose his organization and the N.B.A. to so much residual shame?
"Sometimes it behooves the organization not to fall to its knees, but all of the extracurricular possibilities have to be considered. Are you going to withstand, Mr. Thomas, the scrutiny for the things you may have forgotten? Whose interests is this going to serve, besides the attorneys? You can see this is not in the best interests of the organization, nor for her, in terms of remaking her career. But somebody went ahead and made a decision that would make David Stern want to pull his hair out."
That could only be Dolan, sending a message to Stern, the N.B.A. commissioner, that he couldn't care less about his carefully developed strategy to better the league's image. Unlike the players now shorn of their collarless shirts and sandals, Dolan will wear whichever scandal suits him.
What's new here? Nothing. A pattern of listening to no one and making business decisions in moments of pique can be traced back to when Dolan jettisoned Dave Checketts, who had power for a decade, first as the chief Knicks executive, then as the Garden president. Checketts was the buffer between Dolan and the Garden's jewels, the Rangers and the Knicks. Now Dolan makes decisions, and the results speak for themselves.
You can be a member of the chorus that has seized upon the Browne Sanders lawsuit to call for Thomas's dismissal based more on his basketball decisions. Or you can believe that the disaster Thomas inherited from Scott Layden entitles him to a longer grace period. But who can misidentify the common denominator that has turned a beloved arena in the heart of New York into a cold, forbidding fortress?
For all the bile directed at Thomas, for all the skeletons being dragged from his closet, if Stern had a wand and Knicks fans had a wish, wouldn't the prudent one be to make Dolan disappear, excised in the best interests of the franchise and the league?
Only last summer, Stern threw his weight behind minority owners in Atlanta in successfully ousting the operating partner, Steve Belkin. Several years ago, he networked feverishly to force an inept Nets ownership to sell a franchise that was a constant source of embarrassment to him from just across the river.
Wedging his way between James Dolan and his father, Charles, is another story. Those who have operated inside the Cablevision empire speak of a strange relationship fraught with family complexities, of the wildly unpredictable and contrarian son being granted the independence to do as he pleases with the part of the company the father has little interest in.
Even, apparently, when he misses the basket by 10 feet on what should have been a layup and winds up making everyone on the court with him look like a loser. Dolan, who for years has been sending checks to former players and coaches all over the country, is still a good bet to wind up writing a hefty one to Anucha Browne Sanders.
And what will have been the purpose of the circus that came three months early to the Garden this year, starring Thomas on the high wire and Dolan as the clown?