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Keith Strudler: Welcome Back Isiah

Say this about the Madison Square Garden Company, the ownership group for the NY Knicks and their WNBA counterparts the NY Liberty. They do keep it exciting. The thrill ride just kept on going yesterday as owner and executive James Dolan hired former Knicks GM Isiah Thomas as the president of the Liberty. This comes with the revelation that Thomas has been advising the Liberty organization for the past several months.

Now, to most Knicks fans, Thomas is slightly less popular than Reggie Miller. Thomas’s reign atop the franchise includes several poor personnel choices, a salary cap situation that resembled the national debt, and a series of post seasons playing golf. The Knicks went from bad to awful under Thomas's leadership, something duly noted by long time Knicks fans. And, of course, there was the scourge of a sexual harassment case against Isiah, which cost the organization millions of dollars in addition to irreparable public perception. The Knicks under Thomas had become something of a modern day sitcom. So dysfunctional you had to keep watching. All of this stood in somewhat stark contrast to Thomas's playing days, where he willed an otherwise lackluster Detroit Pistons team to multiple NBA titles.

For that, Thomas was eventually, the keyword being eventually, released from the Knicks organization. But he seemed to be given enough rope to weave a climbing wall. And one could argue that the residual scars from that era have led the Knicks to where they are today, still awful and irrelevant. Thomas eventually went on to coach Florida international University, where he proceeded to lose 65 out of their 91 contests. Certainly not a record to resuscitate a career.

Still, James Dolan and the Garden have offered life support. Thomas is now handed the reins of the organizations, and I apologize for the insinuation, of the lesser basketball property. The WNBA has always played little sister to the oversized big brother that is the NBA, and in recent years the women's league has receded even further. If you know when the season starts and ends, consider your self in the vast minority. It's hard to say whether this is a marketing problem, or a sociological one, as the women's college game has suffered similarly in recent years. Regardless, while Thomas has been given the keys to the car, rest assured it's no Mercedes.

For that reason, fan response will likely be more confusion than contempt. There are relatively few Knicks fans that care deeply about the trajectory of their female counterpart. And those fans of the Liberty are likely to have mixed reactions. On the one hand, Thomas does bring attention to their often overlooked product. Conversely, Thomas was the central figure in a sexual harassment case, so it's hard to envision him the face of empowerment for the women's game.

Only time will tell if Isiah Thomas is truly up to the task of running a WNBA franchise. Regardless of the gender, league, or age of the personnel, basketball is basketball. And thus far, Isiah Thomas has given fans little confidence in his ability to steward anything north of a grade school program towards success. So whether the Liberty becomes the Titanic or the Queen Mary is very much in play.

But what's interesting in this most peculiar hire is this. Isiah Thomas clearly was more than a job candidate to James Dolan. He was a friend, a confidant, someone that he wanted around his vast corporate empire. That's likely why he was so reticent to let Thomas go in the first place. It might also be why he hired Phil Jackson to oversee the Knicks, a vanity buy that thus far has lost considerable value in its first year off the lot. This is the critique of the Garden organization and Dolan's leadership. He treats his teams not like a corporate entity, with goals and objectives, like, say, win more games than you lose, but rather as playpen, a vacation house you invite your friends to every summer.

Certainly, that's James Dolan's prerogative. It's his team and his company. Problem is, the Knicks, and the Liberty, operate with the public trust. So while it's Dolan's to build, it's ours to distain. I'm guessing more than a few New York sports fans distain the decision to bring Isiah Thomas back to Madison Square Garden with any team in any capacity. But say this about James Dolan and the Garden corporation. They do keep it exciting.

Keith Strudler is the director of the Marist College Center for Sports Communication and an associate professor of communication. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

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