No Place In the WNBA

Jim Dolan may have a lot of money, but he has once again proven he has no idea how to competently run a professional sports franchise.  In possibly the dumbest move he's ever made with one of his teams, he's brought Isiah Thomas back as president of the Liberty.  Isiah Thomas!?  In the WNBA?  Yeah, that's a great idea.

I've long held this theory that Thomas has to have some sort of incriminating dirt on Dolan.  How else can you explain why Dolan keeps hiring a guy who everyone else agrees is toxic?  Dolan's clueless, but I'm pretty sure he isn't blind.  He has to know what everybody else thinks about Isiah Thomas and for some reason doesn't care.

The sad part is that this has very little to do with how terribly Isiah Thomas ran the Knicks.  Sure, he ran the franchise into the ground, and he did it for years, but that's as much Dolan's fault for letting him do it and not doing anything about it.  Of course, being that bad at running a franchise should be enough to mean you won't get the chance to run another one.  But not if you're Isiah Thomas.  Apparently, in Jim Dolan's eyes, running a team of men and running a team of women are completely separate things and sucking at one doesn't mean you're going to suck at the other.  (He will.)

Rather, this is about Isiah Thomas' behavior during his time with the Knicks.  In 2006, former Knicks employee Anucha Browne Saunders filed a lawsuit against the team claiming Thomas sexually harassed her.  And Browne Saunders won the case.  The jury found that Thomas was guilty of sexual harassment and held the Knicks liable.  The suit was eventually settled for $11.5 million.

Unbelievably, that wasn't enough for Dolan to fire Thomas.  Instead, he gave him added responsibilities as head coach.  It was only after Thomas proved he couldn't do that job either (56-108 in two seasons) that Dolan finally canned Thomas.  He became the head coach at Florida International in 2009, then took a "consultant" job with the Knicks a year later, only to backtrack when everyone realized that was a violation of NBA rules.
Clearly there's some sort of weird bromance going on between Jim Dolan and Isiah Thomas.  Because there isn't a single person in the basketball-watching world that thinks Isiah Thomas is employable.  Except for maybe Jim Dolan.  Which is why the fact that Dolan constantly hiring Thomas for various jobs he isn't competent to do is mind-boggling.  Well, to everyone but Jim Dolan.  Even though it's Dolan's teams that Thomas destroys, Dolan doesn't seem to mind.

This has nothing to do with Isiah Thomas and Jim Dolan's relationship either.  It's about the fact that a man who was found guilty of sexually harassing a female team employee (and wasn't fired) has been hired (by the same employer) to run a women's basketball team.  Are you serious?  Once again, Jim Dolan has shown that he's either completely clueless or, worse, ignorant, to what's going on around him.

He certainly knew there was going to be reaction, primarily negative, to the hiring of Isiah Thomas.  And rightfully so.  People who serve prison sentences for crimes against children have to register when they get out, and they're not allowed to have anything to do with youth sports.  While I'm not comparing Isiah Thomas to those monsters, the situation isn't completely dissimilar.  He was guilty of sexually harassing a female team employee.  He has no place in women's sports.  And he definitely doesn't belong in the only professional women's sports league in the country.

Whether or not they can force him out, I don't know, but the league has to step in here.  You'd have to think there's something in the WNBA bylaws that they can use to prevent Isiah Thomas from having anything to do with the day-to-day operations of the New York Liberty.  If they let him be involved in the league in any way, it sends a bad message.  It's as if they're condoning the sort of workplace behavior that he's been guilty of previously.  And allowing that would be devastating to a league that struggles for relevance in a crowed American sports scene as it is.

For the sake of the Liberty and the WNBA, Jim Dolan and Isiah Thomas must be stopped.  If the WNBA can't do something to prevent the hiring, it's up to Dolan and/or Thomas.  Dolan needs to do the right thing and actually respond to public criticism with more than the "F.U." attitude he normally shows.  Or, even less likely, Isiah Thomas needs to realize he and the WNBA don't mix and resign.