Larry Brown was fired by the New York Knicks earlier today, the organization announced. His place will be taken by Isiah Thomas, who is also General manager and president for the team. This move was expected ever since the first rumors appeared in the media starting with
May 14th.
Larry Brown has had one of his worst records with the Knicks, winning only 23 out of 82 games in 2005-2006, tying the Knicks franchise for their worst record ever from his first season.
New York Knicks owner, James Dolan said about the former head coach: “Larry has had a long and storied career. 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. I have great personal admiration for Larry, but have concluded that it is best for our franchise if we make this change. We understand that fans were not happy with the performance of the team last season and neither were we. We are committed to making major improvements next season towards our goal of producing a winning basketball team.“
Before joining the Knicks in december 2003, Isiah Thomas was head coach for Indiana Pacers, winning for them 131 games and losing 115. the Pacers made it into the playoffs every year with Thomas.
In a recent interview, for the Dan Patrick Show on ESPN, former Indiana Pacers star, Reggie Miller talked about the Knicks situation, and said about Isiah Thomas: “My years played for Isiah were fantastic, i think he was an excellent coach, he was a fabullous extra note coach.“ Asked why did they never made it out of the first round, Reggie replied: “We were a very young team, his first few years there, Jermaine O'Neal just come, Al Harrington was a very young player, we traded for Ron Artest and Brad Miller who had never made the playoffs, so we were a very young team. But, we made the playoffs, we beat Philadelphia in the first game and took them 4 games against a Larry Brown coached team that went into the finals, so we beat Philly IN Philly; the next year, we should have beat the New Jersey Nets, we went 5 games against them; that team went on to the finals, so Isiah as much as he has been knocked, he understands the game, obviously we know how great he was on the court as a player but, we did made the playoffs years while we were there.“
