Isiah Thomas was tasked with turning around a team that had one of the league's highest payrolls and little to show for it. Under Scott Layden, Thomas' predecessor, the Knicks had missed the playoffs the previous two years.

"I think that anybody who looks at that cap situation, the first thing they say is, 'You can't fix it. You can't do this,'" Thomas said on the day he was hired as team president in late December 2003.

"My only goal is to win an NBA championship. Anything else is a failure."

By that measure, the Thomas era was filled with failure. The Knicks made the playoffs just once in Thomas' five years running the team, which included a 56-108 mark with Thomas as coach.

Including the $30 million contract handed to Jerome James, the ill-fated trade for Eddy Curry and the embarrassing feud with prodigal son Stephon Marbury, the Thomas era was fraught with misspent money and troublesome off-court incidents. A jury in federal district court in Manhattan ruled that former Garden executive Anucha Browne Sanders was entitled to $11.6 million in punitive damages from the Garden and James Dolan after winning a sexual harassment lawsuit that alleged Thomas harassed her. On the day he fired Thomas as coach, then-GM and president Donnie Walsh said:

"I can't really tell you where he failed with the club. I think that we reached a point this season when our team didn't compete for a long time. ... It's very difficult to be the coach and general manager. Maybe it was too much."