Isiah Thomas era: Poor roster decisions
On December 22, 2003, the New York Knicks hired Isiah Thomas as President of Basketball Operations. This move was generally seen as a positive for the struggling organization. Director Spike Lee, a long-time superfan of the Knicks said at the time:
"I’m sorry, but the Knicks and Madison Square Garden mean something to me and to New York basketball fans, and kills us to see the team in a shambles the way it’s been. It’s a good day today."
Thomas would make a lot of changes to the team but failed to interrupt the patterns of overspending and trading away draft picks, practices that had landed the Knicks in a deep hole that Thomas would only dig deeper.
During his tenure in New York, Thomas spent a lot of salary on players who would ultimately provide very little value to the team. There are a lot of names on the list so to put it into perspective, the Knicks would spend $323.4 million on 15 players that conceivably make up the list of Thomas’ worst contracts. They would combine to average a paltry 11 points a game during their time on the New York Knicks’ roster. Of these contracts, two would stand out as being especially terrible deals for the Knicks.
Jerome Williams
Jerome Williams would come to the Knicks during the 2004 offseason along with Jamal Crawford. Williams, a fan favourite in both Detroit and Toronto was known as The Junk Yard Dog for his scrappiness in rebounding and guarding players bigger than himself. But he had never had huge numbers averaging 6.6 points per game over the length of this NBA career and by the time New York signed him he was well below his career average in rebounds.
On August 15, 2005, after only one season the Knicks would waive Williams using what is known colloquially as the “Allan Houston Rule” meaning Williams’ salary would not count against the teams’ luxury tax total. Williams would retire immediately after he was waived but the Knicks still had to pay him through the 2007- 08 season costing the team a total of $27.5 million dollars.
Ironically, the rule that came to bear his name would not be used to dump Allan Houston’s bloated salary. Instead, Houston retired after the 2004- 05 season with one year left to be paid out on his contract.
Eddy Curry
Signing Eddy Curry in 2005 would be another costly misstep for Thomas. This deal again typifies the Knicks’ repeated inability or refusal to make moves that made sense in the long-term in an effort to turn everything around in one fell swoop.
This deal would go down as, arguably, one of the best for the team on the other side, the Chicago Bulls. The Bulls were concerned that Curry may have a genetic heart condition that he ultimately refused to be tested for.
Apparently ignoring those red flags and having learned absolutely nothing from the issues created by Allan Houston’s six-year deal, Thomas would create his own mess in signing Curry for the same length of time in a deal that would cost the Knicks an insane $44.7 million. Curry would have some decent years in New York, but his actual value to the team would not come anywhere close to what he was being paid.
Much like what happened with Houston, the back end of the contract turned this deal into an absolute money pit. In the fourth and fifth year of the deal, Curry combined to play less than 15 minutes and missed the entirety of the sixth season of his contract.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, more first-round draft picks had been sent away in order to make the trade happen. Picks that would become LaMarcus Aldrige and Joakim Noah who combined to have nine All-Star appearances, five All NBA team selections and three All-Defensive team selections between them.
Not to mention that as recently as last season, both were still making measurable contributions to their respective teams. Aldrige especially having nearly averaged a double-double in the 2018-19 season with 21.3 points and 9.2 rebounds per game at 33 years of age.
Thomas would acquire a well past his prime Anfernee Hardaway as well as Stephon Marbury in a deal that included two more first-round draft pick leaving the Knicks’ possession. One of those picks would become Gordon Hayward.
If the idea that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity, the New York Knicks’ leadership was practically certifiable.
The team finished with an uninspiring 39 and 43 record and made the playoffs for the first time in three seasons. And while reaching the playoffs may have seemed like the goal, the Knicks simply weren’t good enough to make anything of it and they again had a first-round exit.