Hanging Garden

IN LATE MARCH, with their horrific 2005-06 season limping to a close, Knicks president Isiah Thomas sat at a table next to coach Larry Brown at the team's training site in Tarrytown , N.Y. , and said an interesting thing. "With us rebuilding, you've got to keep your mind on three years from now," Thomas (right) said. "Fortunately, we have a coach who has had so much success and has credibility in this league so we can do that. He's coming off back-to-back finals where he won one and lost in the seventh game. He didn't become dumb overnight."

Now, it seems, Thomas , who built the team with the NBA 's highest payroll and second-worst record, has changed his mind. Knicks owner Jim Dolan is reportedly considering a buyout of the remainder of Brown's five-year, $50 million contract and the appointment of Thomas to replace him--a move that would surprise no one familiar with Knicks intrigue and Brown's ongoing health problems. On Monday, Brown's agent, Joe Glass, said that Thomas denied such a plan was in the works. But during the March interview, Brown made it clear he would understand if Dolan cut him loose. "He made a bad hire--right now, that's the way I look at it," Brown said. "I think I've done a terrible job."

There was no improvement in the ensuing weeks, but by then no one expected it. Brown had little use for his overpaid roster, particularly point guard Stephon Marbury , and the feeling was mutual. All season he had roasted his players after nearly every game--"I never in my life thought I'd be in a position where you're begging guys to play," he said after a typical loss to Washington . His March 11 spat with Marbury played out publicly for days, and though Dolan reportedly asked for it to stop, neither Thomas nor the image-obsessed management types at Madison Square Garden appeared too interested in quelling it. It seemed like some kind of admission: Things can't get any worse, so why not let the damn boat sink.

Thomas shrugged off the skirmish when asked about it, and added, "I'm riding with the coach. This is an organization where he and I are going to build it the way we think basketball should be played and the way people should conduct themselves."

Despite a 2 1/2-year record of frenetic and so far pointless deal-making, Thomas has yet again managed to keep Dolan 's backing. But if the coach is ushered out, Thomas will be forced to solve the problems he once handed off to Brown; it's his neck now on the tabloid cutting block. "It's a bloody job," Thomas said about rebuilding a team in public. It turns out things could get worse after all.