Walsh Only Makes Sense if Thomas Goes

Let the speculation begin.

Yesterday's news that Donnie Walsh will step down in his role as chief executive of the Indiana Pacers has New Yorkers waiting for the obvious other shoe to drop — in the form of Walsh agreeing to come on as the new president of the Knicks. According to an unnamed source, ESPN reported late last night on its Web site that Walsh would join the Knicks after the season and sign a three-year deal worth $15 million.

Plus, one has to wonder why Walsh would bother stepping down right now, if it weren't to quickly take a new position with another team — especially since he told the Indianapolis Star a week ago that he wouldn't discuss his future to the end of the season. This is head-rolling season in NBA front offices, so it's no surprise that struggling teams such as the Knicks or the Pacers would choose to clean house. Additionally, Milwaukee just fired general manager Larry Harris, and it's suspected the Hawks might can lame-duck general manager Billy Knight, so expect there to be some musical chairs in the next few weeks. In fact, those moves might force the Knicks to act sooner and make an offer to Walsh before another club can nab him.

The first question Knicks fans might ask is "why Walsh?" After all, he was the man who oversaw Indiana's recent decline to Eastern Conference also-ran from perennial contender, a period that also included numerous run-ins with the law by Pacers players, and a fall to last place in the NBA in attendance.

But the most recent era of Indiana basketball happened as much under the watch of Larry Bird as it did under Walsh. Bird, the team president, took charge of much of the day-to-day decision-making in recent years, while Walsh moved to the background in an orchestrated semi-retirement. The arrangement left some confused as to who was really calling the shots, and produced several bad decisions that put the Pacers' roster into its current mess.

The reason the Knicks would want Walsh is because of everything he did in the two decades before that. He took Indiana to six conference finals, which is impressive in light of the fact that his team didn't have a single superstar player, and because his team was in the same division as Michael Jordan. Indiana also made the Finals in 2000, and put up a credible six-game fight before succumbing to Shaq and Kobe.

Perhaps Walsh's most impressive stretch was how he rebuilt the team on the fly in the late 1990s, making a series of shrewd moves to flow from the Reggie Miller–Rik Smits–Jalen Rose–Mark Jackson team that made the Finals in 2000, to the Jermaine O'Neal–Ron Artest–Brad Miller team that won 61 games and went to the conference finals in 2004. It's incredibly difficult to change from a veteran contending team to a young contending team without a protracted period of suffering in between. But Walsh did it in four years without ever missing the playoffs. Among the moves he made were two laugh-out-loud heists: The trade of Rose and Ron Mercer to the Bulls for Miller and Artest, and the swap of Dale Davis to Portland for O'Neal. Clearly, the man has an eye for talent.

The question for Knicks fans, however, is whether that eye is as sharp as it used to be. Walsh is 67 now, and while its easy to pin the Pacers' recent failures on Bird, nobody but the flies on the wall is really sure who was pushing for what moves the past couple years.

Oh, and there's one other reason to be wary of Walsh: He's an Isiah guy. Gulp.

Just this week it came out that Walsh opted to let Thomas run the Pacers' draft in 2003, when Thomas was the team's head coach. All the Pacers' scouts wanted to take Tayshaun Prince with the 14th overall pick; Isiah had his eye on Fred Jones. So much for the idea that Zeke's big strength is the draft.

And remember, it wasn't Walsh who dropped the ax on Thomas. That was Bird, in one of his first moves as team president in 2003. Of course, the worst fear of all Knicks fans is that Thomas will somehow keep an office at Madison Square Garden even after Dolan hires a new team president. Recently, it's been suggested that Thomas might hang on as coach and work under a new team president, which is a bad scene on multiple levels. For starters, Knicks fans wanted him out of here yesterday, and with good reason. Moreover, it seems the players do too.

But perhaps the worst reason to keep Thomas around is because he knows how to work Dolan's corner. Before you know it, he'll have a found a way to pin every failure on the new guy, and one fears he'll use his survival instincts to hang on through another half-decade of failure. Just ask Larry Brown, who thought he could out-wrestle Thomas behind the scenes and turned out to be badly mistaken.

So it makes one wonder, then, if Walsh is the right guy after all. Certainly, anybody who would keep Thomas around is very much the wrong guy as far as Knicks fans are concerned. One hopes Walsh has seen enough to know that, at the very least, Thomas needs a fresh start in another city — and the Knicks need a fresh start with a new coach.

The rumor mill seems to support the latter idea, with names such as Scott Skiles, Jackson, and Rick Carlisle already being suggested as potential successors for Thomas on the sidelines. (Another casualty, incidentally, would likely be general manager Glen Grunwald, which is unfortunate, since he probably deserves better.)

It's a sad commentary that the most optimism that Knicks fans have had all season came when another club whacked their top executive. But with just a few weeks left in another lost season for the Knicks, having a highly qualified NBA front office guy replace Thomas really is the best possible news the Knicks fans could get — even better, I would argue, than winning the lottery.

Let's just hope that if Walsh does come aboard, Thomas receives more than a partial dismissal.

jhollinger@nysun.com