There are many reasons that the New York Knicks have been as bad as they were before Mike D'Antoni showed up last season, but surely Isiah Thomas was one of the main reasons, so that makes the recent announcement that Thomas is being hired by the Knicks as a consultant all the more curious. Adding to the intrigue, it appears that D'Antoni was not consulted on the decision. Moreover, Knicks vice president and general manager Donnie Walsh opposed the hiring and was said to be livid that Knicks Chairman James Dolan went ahead and hired Thomas over Walsh's objections.Aside from the questions that the hiring raises for the Knicks, the fact that Thomas will keep his day job as head coach at Florida International raises conflict of interest issues for both the NCAA and the NBA. The NBA has not yet approved the contract and there is a chance that David Stern may reject it. Several owners are said to be very upset and very much opposed to the hiring of Thomas, which must clearly be a stand they are taking on the potential conflict of interest issue and not on the effect Thomas will have on the immediate on court prospects of the Knicks.
The NCAA should step in and put a stop to this arrangement and if there is no current rule that prohibits a coach from moonlighting for a professional team (hard to believe that one doesn't exist in that 500 page rule book, but who knows) then the NCAA Executive Committee ought to quickly pass one. The opportunities for recruiting abuse that this example may afford are too numerous to mention and just because Thomas happens to be at FIU and not Florida or Kentucky doesn't make it any less of a conflict of interest or make the potential for abuse any less a real.
The coaches who regularly put kids in the NBA are now selling their ability to get kids ready to be drafted, and academics and education be damned. Imagine how much more powerful that message is if those same coaches are now employed as consultants to individual NBA teams. Think Calipari at Kentucky would ever lose out on a top 5 recruit if he was also a consultant to the Nets? How about Coach K and the Bulls? Think this situation would be a good one for the other teams in their conference whose coaches don't have consulting agreements? Think the gulf between the high majors and mid-majors would widen much in that scenario?
