Knicks Finally Fire Brown

Team President Thomas Steps In as New York's Coach

The New York Knicks finished 23-59 and missed the playoffs last season with Larry Brown as their coach. (By Tom Strattman -- Associated Press)

Larry Brown's brief but tumultuous tenure as coach of the New York Knicks is over. Brown, the Brooklyn-born Hall of Fame coach, was fired Thursday by Knicks President of Basketball Operations Isiah Thomas and Madison Square Garden Chairman James Dolan. Thomas will replace Brown as coach.

Brown was hired by Thomas last July and given a five-year, $50 million contract to turn around one of the NBA's most prominent franchises, but the Knicks finished 23-59 and missed the playoffs.

The decision to fire Brown has been rumored for several weeks -- Brown at one point referred to himself as a "dead man walking" -- and Brown had no contact with Thomas or Dolan once the season ended.

Thomas, Dolan and Brown met for the first time yesterday morning at the team's practice facility in Greenburgh, N.Y., and Brown was informed that he was being relieved of his coaching duties. Brown still has four years and $40 million remaining on his contract, but it remains to be seen how much of that money he will receive.

According to several reports, the Knicks will try to avoid paying all of the money owed to Brown, who has a clause in his contract that designates NBA Commissioner David Stern as arbitrator of any financial disputes.

Neither Brown nor Knicks officials were available for comment.

"Larry has had a long and storied career," Dolan said in a statement. "We hired him last summer with the expectation that he would be with the Knicks for a long time. Sometimes decisions work and sometimes they don't. After careful consideration, despite the best intentions from everyone involved, this current structure did not work for us last season and I did not think it was going to improve next season."

Thomas was responsible for putting together a high-priced but dysfunctional roster that includes Stephon Marbury, Steve Francis, Jalen Rose, Jamal Crawford, Eddy Curry and Quentin Richardson. He was the head coach of the Indiana Pacers for three seasons (2001-2003) and compiled a 131-115 record, making the playoffs each season.

However, the task of winning with the Knicks will be far more difficult for Thomas, who led the Detroit Pistons to a pair of championships as a player. From the home opener last Nov. 4, when the Washington Wizards beat the Knicks, 86-75, Brown struggled to get his team to play competitive basketball.

Brown used 42 different starting lineups, an NBA record, and was in favor of midseason trades that brought in Francis from Orlando and Rose from Toronto. Those moves did nothing to improve the play of a team that was sloppy and selfish on offense while consistently horrendous on defense.

The season hit a low point on Feb. 25, when the Wizards blasted the Knicks, 110-89, at Verizon Center and Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas scored 46 points in only 30 minutes. The relationship between Brown and Thomas may have started to fracture when Brown began publicly criticizing Marbury, whom Thomas acquired in 2004, and other players acquired by Thomas.

The entire saga slipped further into absurdity in recent weeks when Brown attended pre-draft workouts at the Knicks' practice facility and the annual pre-draft camp in Orlando yet still had no contact with Thomas or Dolan. In Orlando, where representatives of every NBA team gathered to review draft prospects, Brown sat courtside while Thomas watched the workouts from a corner in the upper deck of the gym.

The two men never acknowledged each other. Following each session, Brown found himself swarmed by reporters. His usual reply was, "There is nothing new to report."

Thomas, who has run the Knicks since December 2003, handed out a league-high $123 million in salaries last season and will now bear the brunt of the pressure if the team does not play better basketball.

"No one in our organization is happy with last season and we all accept responsibility for our performance," Thomas said in a statement. "This has been a difficult time for our entire organization and our fans. Today begins the 2006-2007 season for the Knicks and I strongly believe we are on the right track to take major steps in our rebuilding process to achieve our goal of being one of the premier teams in the NBA."

Brown won a championship in 2004 as coach of the Pistons and is 1,010-800 in 23 seasons as an NBA coach -- with stops in Denver, New Jersey, San Antonio, Los Angeles (with the Clippers), Indiana, Philadelphia, Detroit and New York.

There are no head coaching vacancies in the NBA, but Brown's name could emerge in relationship to the Charlotte Bobcats. Brown, who played at North Carolina, has a close friendship with Michael Jordan, now a partial owner of Robert L. Johnson's franchise.

Bernie Bickerstaff carries the titles of coach and general manager for the Bobcats, who finished 26-56 last season while struggling to fill Charlotte Bobcats Arena. The Knicks, meanwhile, are now on their fifth coach since January 2004 and have not won a playoff series since 2000.