Knicks fans have long wondered what it would take to rid the franchise of Isiah Thomas once and for all.
He's the Rasputin of basketball, impossible to kill and full of terrible advice. Painstakingly destroying everything good and hopeful about the team wasn't enough to get him banished, neither was sexually harassing another employee and taking a job coaching a college team merely brought him deeper into James Dolan's good graces.
That's why last week's news about Donnie Walsh stepping down meant everyone who cares about the Knicks swallowed hard and started waiting for the other shoe to drop.
He isn't going to be the team's next president or general manager, even Dolan is smart enough to know that won't fly, but his name and creepy smile would still be hanging over just about everything the team did in the future unless something intervened to take him out of the picture.
Deliverence comes from the unlikeliest of places. If the cards fall the right way, Thomas might be headed back to where he came and finally leaving our basketball lives in peace.
Chris Broussard of ESPN reports that Thomas is a candidate for the vacant head coaching job with the Pistons. On the surface such a report naturally strikes as being about as believable as a Bigfoot sighting, but wishful thinking and history make you think twice.
The wishful thinking you can figure out for yourself and the history is pretty self-explanatory too. Detroit is the one city in the country where Thomas's name can be said without being met by laughter, expletives or the heady combination of both that's overly familiar to every Knicks fan.
So disregard the Post's report that Thomas won't take the job because he doesn't want to jeopardize his friendship with Pistons G.M. Joe Dumars (or that Broussard reports he isn't the front-runner) and just come up with ways to make it happen. Start a letter writing campaign to the Pistons, donate money to a fund to buy season tickets contingent on Thomas's hiring (give the tickets to charity for a win-win) and, heck, buy a Chrysler while you're at it.
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This is a time where we all need to come together and do whatever we can to get another NBA team to put Isiah on their payroll. It might not actually stop him from giving Dolan advice, but if anybody else has a better idea we'd love to hear it.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.
