Isiah Thomas beat the NBA to the punch and pulled the plug on his return to the Garden.

Thomas has reneged on a consultant’s job with the Knicks that he had originally accepted last week – which lead to an outcry from fans, media and other college coaches – because it violated NBA conflict-of-interest rules.

“After speaking with Commissioner Stern and Knicks executives, it has become apparent that my new agreement violates certain NBA bylaws,” Thomas Wednesday night in a statement. “Because of this, I have decided to rescind my contract with the team. I have nothing but the utmost respect for Jim Dolan, Donnie Walsh, Mike D’Antoni and the entire Knicks organization, and I want to thank them for affording me this opportunity.”

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Knicks Re-Hire Thomas As Consultant

Isiah Thomas Responds To Criticism From Magic Johnson’s New Book

Welcome to the Newsone Daily Sports Roundup.

#1 Knicks re-hire Isiah Thomas as consultant

Newsone Analysis: While many will criticize this move, I won’t. For one, the Knicks aren’t bringing him back to replace Donnie Walsh. He is being brought in as a consultant. We can all agree that Thomas has a great eye for talent. He drafted Damon Stoudemire, Marcus Camby, and a host of others in his NBA career. While he may not be any good at building a team, he is one of the best in the business at spotting talent.

Many across the net are surprised at Thomas being brought back to the Knicks. But anyone who has followed the Isiah/Knicks saga throughout the years will know that he and Owner James Dolan are real close. This was inevitable.

#2 Former Florida Gator John Curtis found dead; Possible suicide

Newsone Analysis: This is very sad news. I vaguely remember him contributing to the Tebow era Gator teams. All our prayers go out to the family.

#3 Fan Dies On Field Before Dodger Game

Newsone Analysis: This death happened during a Mormon Festival that was taking place before the game during the game. The fan is said to have collapsed after a heart attack.

#4 Alabama Tops College Football Preseason Poll

Newsone Analysis: While I believe Alabama will be a tough team to beat this year, the best team in the country is Ohio State. No one will beat them. We’ll revisit this prediction in January.

#5 Roger Huerta Street Fight Video

Newsone Analysis: The former UFC fighter attacked an unidentified Black man when he saw him hit a random woman on an Austin, Texas street. It then turned into an all-out brawl.

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Here’s why racism makes no sense: if left unchecked, it can obscure self-interest. For example, we all stand aghast at those mad citizens that suddenly pray for American sorrow just because a Black man is president. Similarly, I’d have been crazy to be pulling for LeBron or D Wade or Kevin Durant in last night’s NBA all-star game just because they’re Black like me. I had a more specific self-interest to look out for. We had a Knick in this year’s all-star game!

David Lee, in his 5^th year out of the University of Florida, is currently averaging 20ppg to go along with 11.4rpg. Lee has improved his scoring average every season since being drafted and he is the one New York Knick that is deservedly excluded from any trade talks.

Of course, I had to apply a little bit of self-administered racial back-patting just so that I could cheer more easily for my pale hero. I had to remind myself that it was the much maligned Isiah Thomas that brought our great, white David Lee to New York. Thomas’ taking Lee with the 30^th and final pick of the first round in the 2005 NBA draft secured the guy for us. David Lee is the first Knick to make an all-star team since we had both Allan Houston and Latrell Sprewell on the East’s squad in 2001.

David Lee is the best player on the New York Knicks—and I’m a fan of Nate Robinson. We’d have been a playoff contender this year if those idiots D’Antoni and Walsh had taken Brandon Jennings with the 8^th pick instead of Jordan Hill. Brandon Jennings, taken by the Milwaukee Bucks with this year’s 10^th overall selection, should win the Rookie of the Year award (if Sacramento’s Tyreke Evans doesn’t). Jordan Hill barely gets off the bench.

Yes, I am a Knicks fan and the minute you finish laughing realize this: next year, we might get LeBron James. In the meantime, we still have David Lee.

Notes from around the game: Why did Usher perform? Who came up with the Bloods vs. Crips version of the uniforms with the Western all-stars wearing red and the Eastern all-stars wearing blue? Doesn’t one team normally wear white? Expect Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban to be fined for saying that this year’s all-star game will make last week’s Super Bowl “look like a Bar Mitzvah.” I’m sure they’re something racist about the way that Black men are being used in those Old Spice commercials and I intend to find out what it is as soon as I can stop laughing. By sitting out with a (wink! wink!) injury, Kobe was trying to be as cool as Kanye at last year’s BET Awards. You ain’t hurt, punk! I saw Gabrielle Union in the crowd! She was with some other chick, I think Carmelo Anthony’s fiancé Lala Vazquez. Shakira was ok. Why did Alicia Keys sing a retooled Empire State of Mind II in Dallas? Makes me wanna wear a Barack Obama T-shirt to a gathering of Tea Party Patriots. The Eastern Conference won the game 141-139. Dwyane Wade was named MVP.

From Sports Illustrated:

When he heard the criticisms from his former friend Magic Johnson in a soon-to-be-released book, Isiah Thomas said he’d had enough. And so he began to fight back.

“I’m really hurt, and I really feel taken advantage of for all these years,” said Thomas, the Hall of Fame point guard and former NBA coach and executive, most recently with the Knicks. “I’m totally blindsided by this. Every time that I’ve seen Magic, he has been friendly with me. Whenever he came to a Knick game, he was standing in the tunnel [to the locker room] with me. He and [Knicks assistant coach] Herb [Williams] and I, we would go out to dinner in New York. I didn’t know he felt this way.”

The criticisms are made by Johnson in When The Game Was Ours, which he co-wrote with Larry Bird and author Jackie MacMullan. The book, to be released on Nov. 4, tells the inside story of the most important rivalry in basketball history.

Much of their story involves Thomas, who as captain of the Detroit Pistons served as a primary threat to the championship ambitions of Bird’s Celtics and Magic’s Lakers. The book offers revelations that have stunned Thomas. Magic addresses years of rumors by finally accusing Thomas of questioning his sexuality after Johnson was diagnosed with HIV in 1991. Magic also admits that he joined with Michael Jordan and other players in blackballing Thomas from the 1992 Olympic Dream Team, saying, “Isiah killed his own chances when it came to the Olympics. Nobody on that team wanted to play with him. … Michael didn’t want to play with him. Scottie [Pippen] wanted no part of him. Bird wasn’t pushing for him. Karl Malone didn’t want him. Who was saying, ‘We need this guy?’ Nobody.”

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Isiah Thomas Gets New Coaching Gig at Florida International

Isiah Thomas, Love & Basketball

Former New York Knicks president and coach Isiah Thomas has accepted the job as Florida International’s basketball coach.

The move gives the Hall of Fame player a second chance to revive his career. The school said Tuesday that Thomas signed a five-year contract.

Thomas has never coached at the college level. He helped the Detroit Pistons win two NBA championships as a point guard, then coached the Indiana Pacers before taking over in New York, where an array of problems marred his tenure.

At FIU, he replaces Sergio Rouco, who was reassigned Monday after posting a losing record in each of his five seasons as coach.

Isiah Thomas is slowly making the transition back into public life, first resurfacing with his successor and current boss, Donnie Walsh, at last week’s Pac-10 Tournament in Los Angeles and then appearing on an NCAA Tournament show in Las Vegas with his college coach Bobby Knight on Sunday.

When reached by the Daily News Monday, Thomas politely declined an interview request. He would only say that he’s “feeling good” and that the last few weeks have been emotionally draining, referring to his former Pistons coach and long-time friend, Chuck Daly, being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and the death of Detroit Pistons owner William Davidson last week.

Read the Whole Daily News Reports

What is clear is that Thomas, the Allen Iverson of my generation, known for his heart, toughness, and incredible skill, has endured a very difficult year. In fact, the last four years have been rough for a man deeply in love with the game of basketball.

Like any scorned lover, Thomas has probably had a rough time trying to rest his mind long enough to figure out how it all went so wrong. He is trying to figure out how after three decades of success, basketball-which rescued him from one the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods of the Westside of Chicago-has suddenly failed him so miserably.

Basketball helped him to secure a scholarship to St. Mary’s high school in Chicago and another scholarship to Indiana University. That led to an NCAA championship, two NBA championships, two All-Star game MVP kudos, and the honor of being selected of the fifty greatest players in NBA history, as well as all the fame and fortune such accolades provide.

But since 2003, the man who loves the game has endured a rocky relationship with basketball.  Oddly enough, Donnie Walsh has been at the scene of both of his dismissals from NBA organizations.

The first time, Thomas was the coach of the Indiana Pacers and Walsh was the general manager. Once Larry Bird was hired as president, the organization-as per Walsh’s directive-fired Thomas, despite the fine job he had done transforming what was then a very young Pacers team.

The next time, the New York Knicks hired Walsh to get things back on track after Thomas had made a bit of a mess of the organization in his four and a half years at the helm. During Thomas’ run as team president, the Knicks failed miserably: a losing record, only one postseason appearance, and not even one playoff win.

In October 2007, former Madison Square Garden executive Anucha Browne Sanders won a sexual harassment case against Thomas and the Garden. At one point during the trial, Thomas infamously declared it less offensive for black men to call black women the B word than white men. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ocb4MFkDiAY) In December, Sanders reportedly received an out-of-court settlement of $11.5 million.

So when the Knicks hired Walsh to replace Thomas as team president, his first order of business was to deal with Thomas. Instead of firing him again, Walsh reassigned Thomas to an ambiguous role of scout and consultant. In essence, his contract remained pretty good, basically paying him to get out of the way and assist the team as a talent scout.

While I am certain that Thomas is determined to resurface as an NBA general manager, his Knicks legacy has perhaps ended the likelihood of those aspirations.  It is unlikely he will be given the ball and asked to run the point for an NBA front office again.

To his credit, Thomas, who’s known for having a temper, kept his cool last year. Despite being bashed by the New York media, the chants during home games that he be fired, a woeful team, a sexual harassment lawsuit, his mother’s illness (resulting in a leg amputation), and his brother Preston’s stroke (suffered while visiting their sick mother in the hospital), there were no reports of him lashing out.

In time, I’m sure that Thomas will be fine. But, for now, like every scorned lover, he needs time to heal and regroup. Who wouldn’t? After such a stellar Hall of Fame love affair, from player to coach to executive, to have his one true love turn its back on him, Isiah Thomas is mending a broken heart.

Lewis is the author of the forthcoming Ballers of the New School: Race and Sports in America. He teaches English at Washington State University Vancouver.

The former Knicks executive who won more than $11 million in a sexual harassment suit against Isiah Thomas says she doesn’t feel sorry for the fallen Knicks coach — even if he was hospitalized after taking too many sleeping pills.

“I’ve said all along he should have time to reflect on how badly he’s treated people over the years,” former team executive Anucha Browne Sanders told the New York Post. “Now that he’s not working, he should think about the victims of Isiah.”

She added, “I don’t feel sorry for him. You make your bed, you lie in it.”

Sanders won her lawsuit against Thomas and Madison Square Garden last year, after testifying that he had used crude language with her and she endured unwanted advances from him.

The onetime Detroit Piston star was removed as the Knicks’ president and coach following the team’s dismal season, but was retained by the organization as an adviser and consultant.

Last Friday, authorities were called to Thomas’ Westchester County home, where police said a 47-year-old man was taken to the hospital and treated for an overdose of sleeping pills.

Thomas told the Post he wasn’t the one who was hospitalized, but his teenage daughter, who reportedly suffers from hypoglycemia, which causes occasional fainting spells.

Harrison Police Chief David Hall said Thomas is “trying to cover it up. He’s not telling the truth. It was a 47-year-old black man.”

Sanders said she isn’t surprised if Thomas used his daughter, given his general disregard for women.

She was fired from her Knicks job after complaining about Thomas’ conduct, and now works as an associate athletic director at the University of Buffalo.

Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) — Former New York Knicks coach Isiah Thomas was taken to White Plains Hospital Center today after overdosing on sleeping pills, WABC-TV reported, citing police and unidentified people.

Police were called to Thomas’s house in Harrison, New York, just after midnight for a report of a possible overdose of a 46- year-old male, WABC-TV reported, citing police sources. The former NBA basketball player and coach is 47, the network said.

The incident is being treated as an overdose and not a suicide attempt, WABC-TV said, citing police. Officials with the Knicks would tell the network only that Thomas is fine.

For all the animosity that Knicks fans, and women unleashed on Isiah Thomas after his various misdeeds, few could have expected such a shocking turn in his life. Details forthcoming.