D'Antoni Worn Out His Welcome in New York

Isiah Thomas returns to the local area tomorrow when his Florida International Panthers play the Monmouth Hawks at West Long Branch.

He feels good knowing the Knicks are worse without him, and he exonerated himself from his failures in an interview with NY Daily News college hoops writer Dick Weiss the other day by mentioning how his predecessors couldn't lead the Knicks to a championship.

David Stern urged Knicks boss James Dolan to fire Thomas and hire Donnie Walsh and Mike D'Antoni to lead that organization out of this mess, but so far, nothing worked with the team playing awful in this young season.

The Knicks CEO wonders if that is ever going to work out with everything turning into nothing with the new regime. Walsh proved that he is not an astute of talent, and D'Antoni struggles to get the most out of his team.

General managers rarely get fired after couple of years, but coaches do so D'Antoni should start worrying about his job security.

The Knicks coach failed to vow people going back to last season. The team exhibits lack of effort on most nights, and they don't play defense.

Fair or not, that's an indictment on the head coach.

Folks talk about how D'Antoni does not have the players to win games. That's true, but coaching is about having the guys prepared and play as a team.

On both counts, he strikes out in doing those things.

It was a mistake to hire D'Antoni in the first place. He was not a great coach in his tenure with the Nuggets and the Suns prior to Steve Nash's arrival.

Even with Nash, the Suns never went to the championship game. They underachieved and lost their self-control against a defensive-oriented team.

D'Antoni's failure stems from his lack of ability to preach defense. It's remarkable why Walsh thought that was a good hire.

The Knicks president of basketball operations  figured the coach's presence would attract stars such as LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Amare Stoudemire and others in the 2010 free agent sweepstakes. Unfortunately, that strategy is flawed thinking at best.

Why would these stars want to play for a coach that does not have what it takes to win a championship? For all the talk about him being a great offensive mind, the Knicks play like they have no clue how to run an offnese.

Nash made D'Antoni's offense more than anything.

For the Knicks to matter in the summer of 2010, it's imperative that D'Antoni is out of the plans. He showed he is not a fit here.

So far, teams blew the Knickerbockers out in most of the games. D'Antoni's team start off flat, and they never recovered.

In a rare game which the Knicks dominated the first half, they couldn't finish in last night's game as they blew a 14-point lead against the Hawks by allowing 67 points in the second half, and they suffered their fifth straight loss by losing to the Hawks, 114-101. This loss relgates them to an 1-8 team.

New York sports fans expect answers from the head coach when things are bad, but the beleaguered coach sounds like he has no answers to how this can be solved and why it's happening.

It's interesting to know why he took this job in the first place. This was a no-win situation for him especially with him working with a bad roster.

The guess here is that he took the job because of the money. He is one of the highest paid coaches in the league, but he proved that he is not worth it.

He steals money right now, and he appears like he doesn't care.

The Knicks are better off without him, and the fans share that sentiment by chanting "FIRE D'ANTONI" late in the game last night.

Let Herb Williams coach for the rest of the season, and if he fails, Walsh can look at other choices in the summer.

Something must be done so that everyone knows the organization is serious about putting out a great product and displaying a productive effort on game night.