SULLIVAN: With the Miami Heat taking out the Nets in the second round of the NBA Playoffs, the 2006 basketball season ended in New York. The Nets were never in that series, but to their credit they never quit. The Nets knew they were in over their heads but still gave it their all—they are a team. As for the Knicks, well, Hollander, you did call it that Larry Brown would last one season, and that looks like the way it will go. His players quit on him, and he played the media game. Now we know that

Jim Dolan hates and fires employees that go to the media. Our sources in the Garden told us in March that Brown was toast.

Larry Brown could have coached the Knicks until he was 70. He's not going into that good night gently. He wants the full contract paid before he moves on, and this fight will get ugly; as ugly as multi-millionaire players quitting on a season. So the scenario now is that Isaiah will coach this mess of a team. Even Isaiah knows this gaggle of mixed and mismatched “talent” is hopeless. My bet is he will somehow get Dolan to put Herb Williams on the bench as coach. And the beat goes on. The Knicks may improve—it-- would be hard to be any worse. My prediction is that Starbury gets them into the first round—at best—and the Knicks will claim to be reborn.

HOLLANDER:  Hire Jerry Springer. That's what the Knicks should do. Here's a few sample episodes from a show treatment I'm working on. 

Episode 1: Anucha Brown Sanders and Isiah Thomas lay bare the accusations and shameful truth behind the hostile work environment and untoward advances suffered by Ms. Brown. Isaiah smiles blithely through it all as Ms. Brown can only offer a cardboard cut-out of Eddy Curry to substantiate her claims. She is carried off in tears after a female audience member calls her a “skank ho.” It is quickly revealed that the heckler was Stephon Marbury's niece, planted in the audience by Knicks staffers. Too late: Isaiah has already left the building.

Episode 2: Larry Brown tearfully opens up about his off-the-court battle with acid reflux disease and points to Stephon Marbury as his primary source of agita. In the second half of the show, Marbury faces his tormentor but insists on being addressed as “Starbury.” Brown scoffs at this. Springer skillfully teases out Starbury's displaced feelings of resentment toward his own father that he's projected onto Brown. An all-out melee ensues when Marbury's mother makes a surprise appearance and attacks Brown for hurting her boy's feelings. Making television history, she breast-feeds Stephon on stage. 

Episode 3: James Dolan sucks his thumb and discusses his childhood obsession with dismembering G.I. Joes. We come to learn that Dolan has always confused the shopkeeper's admonition, “You break it, you bought it,” with “I bought it, so now I can break it.” Peppered with questions from Springer and audience members about the plummeting fortunes of New York's once-hallowed NBA franchise, Dolan answers semi-incoherently. Curiously, he punctuates each response with this rejoinder: “And you know something, my Dad never let me eat cole slaw.” 

What can you say, really? These Knicks have sunk so low, they need to jump up to hit the bottom. 

SULLIVAN: With what the Garden will have to pay out to get rid of Coach Larry “Next Town” Brown, they will not be able to afford Jerry Springer. They might not be able to afford Joe Franklin. The only good news on the NYC basketball horizon is the Nets coming to Brooklyn. How sad is that? And all of you anti-Ratner protesters can save your letters. A Brooklyn sports arena is a cool idea—the other construction he does with the land is not in play in this column. I will stand by my prediction that somehow Isiah will get Dolan to let Herb Williams take on the coaching duties. Isiah did his three seasons in Indy as a coach, and he couldn't take it. This crew of Knicks will drive him insane. At least as a front office man, he can keep some distance from his brats.

HOLLANDER:  Isaiah didn't quit Indiana. He got thrown out by Larry Bird. Before that, he got run out by the city of Toronto. And, to his everlasting disgrace, he ran out on the Continental Basketball Association (CBA), leaving that venerable professional basketball league bankrupt. (I still believe that Isaiah conspired with David Stern to cripple the CBA so Stern could build his own minor league, the NBDL. This year, a few of the remaining CBA franchises took the money and ran to Stern, merging with the NBDL and leaving the beleaguered CBA in critical condition yet again. If it walks like duck, quacks like a duck…)

Remember, Isaiah Thomas is the guy who was kept off the original USA “Dream Team” because fellow NBA legends couldn't stand him. Why
on God's earth would
someone of Isaiah's repeated, demonstrated incompetence
be kept on as an intern, let alone general manager?

I don't love these Nets either. Carter is limited. He hoists threes and makes spectacular moves, but goes soft and stupid in crunch time. He is no superstar. He is a fake. But they knew this about him in Toronto (where he's better known as “Wince”). Carter better hope he doesn't last until Brooklyn. Brooklyn won't put up with it. And we all know Ratner sings sayonara to the Nets once the arena is built. The Nets and Knicks: Bilious billionaires bilking five boroughs and blundering our New York basketball bonafides. A pox on both their houses.