Smile is his umbrella, but rain never stops

NEW YORK —  Born in poverty, raised by a mother who chased the gangs off her doorstep with a shotgun, protected by big brothers, even as they succumbed to the drug culture....

And those were the good old days?

The plight of Isiah Thomas, coach and president of the Knicks, is so overwhelming, he sometimes compares it to his escape from Chicago’s West Side.

It’s so wild, it makes sense only to him and his few sympathizers. Press people aren’t impolite enough to snicker, but they’re used to being manipulated -- with the Knicks, manipulation has replaced communication -- and they’re not going for it.

To Thomas, it’s not hyperbole. It’s the truest thing he has said since he hit town.

In retrospect, growing up wasn’t that hard even if the streets were dangerous, the heat could get turned off in winter and he had to get up in the dark and ride the bus for an hour to get to his suburban high school.

He didn’t think about it, he just did it.

Besides, even if the odds were stacked against him, the world had nothing against him personally.

Now the NBA’s most star-crossed star has found this highest of high-wire acts, like a homing pigeon with a death wish or a beautiful actress who keeps marrying the wrong men.

“I think they’re getting better but I feel for him in that situation,” says Indiana Pacers President Donnie Walsh, one of the few people still close to both Thomas and former Knicks coach Larry Brown.

“In my mind, it’s a little man’s syndrome. Isiah was a great player in an era in which there were a lot of great players. You had Magic Johnson and Larry Bird and Michael Jordan....

“This little guy in his own mind was as good as any of them, but nobody was going to accept him on that level. So he did everything he could. He led them [the Detroit Pistons] to two championships and he did it in a tough, nasty way.”

If daring is a sin, Thomas pays for it every news cycle. The point man for a dysfunctional Knicks organization that forbids him to even acknowledge anything unpleasant, he has been turned into a smiley-face emoticon with no credibility.

This can go to am-I-hearing-this lengths, such as a recent 126-110 loss to Charlotte, which scored 74 points in the second half, after which Thomas, per organization policy, wouldn’t say a bad word about his defense.

“We got beat playing our game,” he said. “I can live with that.”

Nor does anyone have to go out of his way to bash him amid their pratfalls, including the maraschino cherry atop the sundae of Thomas’ woes, the Dec. 16 rumble with the Denver Nuggets, coached by Brown’s friend, George Karl.

Just before Knicks rookie Mardy Collins headlocked Carmelo Anthony, videotape showed Thomas uttering a warning to Anthony so clearly that “SportsCenter” anchors read his lips saying, “Don’t go near the basket.”

Commissioner David Stern didn’t penalize Thomas, but the press skewered him. The New York Times’ Selena Roberts wrote that Thomas’ “narcissistic powers of manipulation” turned his players into “dupes.”

Incidentally, the Knicks are day-and-night better.

Thomas inherited a small, creaky roster and a $120-million payroll. Now they have big young players such as Eddy Curry, David Lee and Channing Frye and veterans such as Stephon Marbury and Quentin Richardson.

Unfortunately for them, it’s only starting to show (they’re 10-10 after a 9-17 start) and Thomas needed the cavalry a while ago.

“I haven’t taken my pulse,” he says, doing the prescribed stoic act. “You know, it’s like you’re in it so I try to keep my head down and keep trying to plow through it.”

Happily for him, it can’t get much worse. The organization-approved story line has corporate boss James Dolan demanding “significant progress” but a team official says, “Dolan doesn’t want to fire him.”

Insiders think Thomas may even get an extension soon. Unhappily, nothing else is certain to get much better soon.

The Larry Brown

Era: 2005-2006

Contrary to public opinion, Brown wasn’t fired for going 23-59, since his bosses were prepared to be patient.

He was fired -- with four years and $40 million on his contract -- because, being Larry Brown, he couldn’t stop talking about their problems.

Candor, not failure, had become the ultimate Knicks sin since 2001 when Cablevision Chief Executive Charles Dolan handed Madison Square Garden to his son, James.

James was from the cable TV business, where infrastructure, not the consumer, ruled. Cablevision once blacked out the Yankees in Manhattan in a dispute over fees. The family-controlled company was so secretive, the Hollywood Reporter called it “the North Korea of the cable business.”

Since 2001, the Knicks have made the playoffs once (and were swept by the Nets). Their payroll, now $122 million, triggers $50 million-plus in luxury tax, which makes the difference between profit and loss for half the league.

In his rare public forays, Dolan is klutzy. In 2002 when the team started 2-8, he claimed it was better than the tumult-wracked Knicks who made the 1999 NBA Finals. (“That was one of the worst years.... This team has character and composure, a lot more composure than that team.”)

Dolan demanded iron-handed message discipline, missing or ignoring a basic principle -- in sports, your record is your message. Anything getting in the way of a sunny presentation had to go, even tell-it-like-it-is announcer Marv Albert, who was as much a Knicks icon as Walt Frazier and Willis Reed.

Showing his disdain for Albert’s style after firing him, Dolan told New York Magazine in graphic language that the announcer had a bad attitude “toward the company.”

Now there were rules governing all dialogue with the press. Thomas can’t talk without a public relations official present.

Knicks are to avoid negatives. Questions about bad times -- which is all they’ve had -- are redirected toward a brighter tomorrow.

“I’ve never seen an organization that had so many rules regarding just talking,” says former Knick Maurice Taylor. “There was a real paranoia of the media there. When you first sign there, they’re talking to you -- ‘Look out for that media, don’t say this, don’t say that.’

“What part of life is all positive? Especially basketball. I woke up this morning and my knees hurt -- negative. We played bad and lost -- negative. Don’t let everyday life into the arena.”

Everyday life rolled over them like a tidal wave last season. With their big contracts, Thomas couldn’t make quick deals. With everyone dangling, the players muttered about Brown, who was no happier with them -- while the staff kept reminding him that Dolan wasn’t enjoying his critiques.

Thomas had his own problem, a sexual harassment suit filed by a Knicks employee, Anucha Browne Sanders. Nevertheless, at the 2006 All-Star break, insiders speculated that Dolan would side with Thomas and fire Brown.

It sounded incredible at the time. Showing how easy the Knicks were to read, it came true.

It took 39 of the most incredible days in their history, from May 15 when the New York Post’s Peter Vecsey broke the story to the actual firing on June 23.

In between, a news blackout prevailed as the team waited for Brown to ask for a settlement, find a new job or even breach his contract.

Aware of the trap, Brown swallowed his pride, attended the pre-draft camp in Orlando, Fla., and showed up for all workout sessions at the practice facility. The media took to asking the college players what they thought.

One day when reporters staked out the Knicks players’ parking lot, a team official called the police and complained they were trespassing. Two police cruisers showed up and the press was ordered off the premises.

Several days later, Brown, seeing the media people across the road, pulled his SUV over and uttered his first comment: “I’m a dead man walking.”

With no one talking, the press was obliged to show up when Dolan’s amateur blues band, JD and the Straight Shot, played at a Manhattan club. Dolan didn’t say anything -- three Knicks publicists attended -- so the writers filed reviews.

The Daily News’ Frank Isola reported one song included the words, “There’s something wrong in my head.” The Post’s Marc Berman noted the group had a CD called “Nothing to Hide.”

Brown was finally fired -- in a press release. Days later came an invitation-only news conference for seven beat writers and tame interviews of Dolan and Thomas on the house TV network. The Daily News’ Bob Raissman called it “Bootlickers’ Ball.”

Riding the whirlwind

“No. 1, he’s a good evaluator of talent. No. 2, he loves to do something that nobody else would think of. Sometimes that works for him and sometimes it doesn’t.”

-- Donnie Walsh, on Thomas

With Thomas, audacity isn’t a choice but a fact of life, like having brown eyes.

Last spring he used the No. 20 pick in the draft to take unknown Renaldo Balkman of South Carolina -- “No, he doesn’t play soccer for Brazil,” Roberts wrote -- whose high-bounding style reminded him of a young Dennis Rodman.

The press, paging frantically through the draft media guide, found he wasn’t even among the 100 players in it. Knicks fans in the Garden, who had already been chanting “Fire Thomas!” and “Dolan, sell the team,” erupted.

“Renaldo isn’t here,” announced Stern, who had posed with all the other No. 1 picks.

“And it’s probably a good thing,” added Dan Patrick on ESPN’s draft telecast.

The last thing Thomas needed was yet another firestorm, but, as usual, he didn’t see it coming. “I thought everybody saw what I saw,” he says now.

Incidentally, he was right about Balkman, who’s now a fan favorite, joining a young, talented cast Thomas has amassed despite their misadventures.

“I try not to look at last year,” says Curry, averaging a career-high 19.3 points, up from 13.6 last season, when he arrived from Chicago out of shape.

“Last year’s past me. It wasn’t one of my best years and it definitely wasn’t an easy transition, coming to this team and wanting to do well so bad my first year here in New York and not being able to....

“A lot of people talked to me before I came, told me the kind of town this was, but as much as people talk about it, you really can’t fathom it until you’re here living it.”

They’re living it together. When they win, they’re “lovable underdogs” in a Newsday headline. The Knicks recently lost two one-point games in three days on last-second shots and Thomas was second-guessed for not saving timeouts.

“I keep saying to myself, ‘Don’t ask why it is that way,’ because if you do, you’re going to lose focus on what you have to do,” Thomas says.

“But it definitely feels solo over here.”

mark.heisler@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

How the Knicks were built

New York Knicks roster and how the players were acquired:

*--* PLAYER P HT AGE YR HOW ACQUIRED Renaldo Balkman F 6-8 22 R First-round draft choice, 20th pick overall, in 2006. Kelvin Cato C 6-11 32 9 Signed as a free agent in October. Mardy Collins G 6-6 22 R First-round draft choice, 29th overall, in 2006. Jamal Crawford G 6-5 26 6 Acquired from Chicago along with Jerome Williams for Dikembe Mutombo, Othella Harrington, Frank Williams and Cezary Trybanski. Eddy Curry C-F 6-11 24 5 Acquired in a trade with Chicago. Steve Francis G 6-3 29 7 Acquired in Feb. 2006 from Orlando for Trevor Ariza and Penny Hardaway Channing Frye F 6-11 23 1 Drafted in the 1st round (8th pick) of the 2005 NBA draft. Jerome James C 7-1 31 6 Signed as a free agent in July, 2005. Jared Jeffries F 6-11 25 4 Signed as a free agent in August 2006. David Lee F 6-9 23 1 Drafted by the New York Knickerbockers in the 1st round (30th pick) of the 2005 NBA draft. Stephon Marbury G 6-2 29 10 Acquired in Jan. 2004 from Phoenix with Hardaway, Trybanski for Antonio McDyess, Howard Eisley, Charlie Ward, Maciej Lampe, rights to Milos Vujanic, two 1st-round picks, cash. Quentin Richardson F-G 6-6 26 6 Acquired with draft rights to Nate Robinson and cash considerations for Kurt Thomas and draft rights to Dijon Thompson (54th pick) in June 2005 draft. Nate Robinson G 5-9 22 1 Draft rights acquired with Quentin Richardson and cash considerations for Kurt Thomas and draft rights to Dijon Thompson (54th pick) in June 2005 draft. Malik Rose F 6-7 32 10 Acquired with conditional first-round pick from San Antonio for Nazr Mohammed and Jamison Brewer.

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Source: nba.com