Isiah's Metrics for Success

Knicks owner James Dolan has made it clear that the Knicks will need to show improvement this season, or Isiah Thomas will go the way of Scott Layden. But "show improvement" is a pretty vague standard, especially when you're following up a 23-win season. So the big question is: exactly how long is Isiah's leash?

Well, if you listen to Isiah, the Knicks are already on the right track. After Friday's preseason finale against New Jersey, Zeke told reporters that the Knicks played with "competitive fire" and that the team had "turned the corner."

Wow. Sounds great, huh?

I suppose it does. If you ignore a couple of minor issues like:

• The Knicks allowed 138 points in the game (Final score: Nets 138, Knicks 121)
• They couldn't hang on to the ball, coughing up 27 turnovers that led to 39 points
• Three knicks (Quentin Richardson, Channing Frye, and Eddy Curry) fouled out
• They let Bostjan freakin' Nachbar score 20

I'm sorry, but no team that lets Bostjan Snackbar score twenty has turned any corners. Apparently, Isiah was all pumped because the team actually responded when Mikki Moore threw a forearm shiver at Steve Francis late in the fourth quarter.

(In fairness, last year's team probably wouldn't have noticed if Moore had taken a folding chair to Francis head all WWF-style... so maybe that IS progress.)

The fact that Zeke chose this occasion to talk up the Knicks' positives gives me the impression that maybe... just maybe... he has a different set of success metrics than the rest of us. With that in mind, I'm going to make a couple of guesses as to what Isiah will say when this year's Knicks hit a few more key milestones:

When the Knicks open the season 0-5:
Isiah: I feel like the team is really gelling. I've been impressed with their intestinal fortitude.

When the Knicks drop their 20th game and take sole possession of the worst record in the NBA:
Isiah: We've really turned the corner. Our competitiveness was excellent. When we fell behind by 25 points in the second quarter and Kyle Korver was openly mocking us from the Sixers bench, I could tell that the team was really upset by it. They took it to heart, man.

When he's fired -- probably around the All-Star break:
Isiah: I feel like right now, the team is in a better position to turn things around than at any previous point in my tenure.