Isiah Thomas will not be returning to the New York Knicks after all. Thomas announced yesterday that he was declining a position as a consultant with the franchise he ran for 4½ years because it may not be legal. “After speaking with Commissioner Stern and Knicks executives, it has become apparent that my new agreement violates certain NBA bylaws,” Thomas said. “Because of this, I have decided to rescind my contract with the team.”
When I wrote about Thomas a few days ago, I had forgotten about the league rule that league personnel are not allowed contact with players who are not yet eligible for the draft, which Thomas would have in his role as Florida International University coach.
Still, why would you want to have such a controversial person in your employ – for a second time? It makes you wonder if there are blackmail pictures involved….

A former co-worker argued many years ago that anti-discrimination legislation was no longer needed because in typical “the free market will handle everything” someone will see the true color of importance (green money) and will ignore racial considerations. I disagreed with him then (back in the late 1990s) and I still do, because racial profiling and prejudice are still alive, and, dare I say it, with a black president, prejudice has become more blatant than it has in years.
The Huffington Post reported today (from stories by Fox Chicago – TV and the Chicago Sun-Times) that a Chicago couple faces federal discrimination charges after allegedly refusing to sell their South Side home to a black couple because of their race. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced charges against Daniel and Adrienne Sabbia, and their real estate agent Jeffrey Lowe after they allegedly took their home off the market when a black couple submitted the highest offer.
According to the complaint, the Sabbia’s 5,000-8,000-square-foot home on the 3300 block of South Normal in the Bridgeport neighborhood had been listed for $1.799 million, and had been on the market for two years. But, in January, the home was abruptly taken off the market when radio personality George Willborn and his wife, businesswoman Peytyn Willborn, made a $1.7 million offer to buy the home, which was the highest offer received on the property.
After accepting the price and preparing for a final sales contract, the Chicago Sun-Times reports that the Sabbias then refused to sign. HUD said that in an interview with an investigator, the real estate agent for the property, Jeffrey Lowe of Lowe Group Chicago Inc., said Daniel Sabbia told him he would rather not sell to an African-American. The couple then took the home off the market claiming they could not find a suitable new home and wanted to keep their children in the same schools.
The Wilborns did the right thing, taking their situation to HUD, and apparently, the deal was apparently back on. Lowe contacted them and offered to sell the home, with all its furniture, for $1.799 million, and then in March 2010, the home was re-listed at that price.
“Racial fairness is important at all income levels,” John Trasviña, HUD assistant secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity said in a statement. “Civil rights enforcement must be the effective shield against housing discrimination that in this case wealth was not.”
The complaint, which alleges violations of the Fair Housing Act, will lead to a hearing before an administrative law judge, according to the Sun-Times. It could be moved to a federal court if any person involved wants it to be. The Sabbias could be fined up to $16,000 and a judge could also award punitive damages.
For all of the concern that people have for “big government,” this is exactly the type of thing that government is designed to do – protect people. The most pro-business pundits like that moron Rand Paul believe that corporations should be allowed to do anything it wants, but corporations are, as entities, sociopathic, willing to do anything for profits. How many corporations have been caught polluting the environment; poisoning people; breaking the law; or, in cases like this, have maintained an unfair status quo? Here are people who shouldn’t care who buys their house as long as they have the money, but are trying to restrict them.
The Indignant Wife and I were steered to a black neighborhood when we first started looking at buying a house in the western suburbs of Chicago. We didn’t like the homes or the neighborhood (remember that The Indignant Wife is Chinese-Canadian), and we never spoke with that realtor again (and she was African-American). Fortunately, no one seemed to care when we were looking in the northern suburbs and found our home in very ethnically diverse Skokie. But someone could have. And that’s what government is for.

CNN.com is reporting today that Ben Quayle, the son of former Vice President Dan Quayle who is seeking a House seat in Arizona, has a new campaign ad in which he says, “Barack Obama is the worst president in history.”
“My generation will inherit a weakened country,” Quayle says solemnly in the 30-second ad. “Drug cartels in Mexico, tax cartels in DC. What’s happened to America? I love Arizona. I was raised right. Someone needs to go to Washington and knock the hell out of the place.”
Quayle, the 33-year-old son of the former vice president, is one of 10 Republicans seeking the GOP nomination for the third district House seat of retiring Rep. John Shadegg.
Fortunately, the elder Quayle disappeared from public life as an embarrassment to his party and the country for making incorrect and inappropriate comments, but this anonymity hasn’t been passed on to his offspring. Neither has any intelligence obviously.
Now if we could get another ignorant Vice President/Vice Presidential candidate whose comments make the elder Quayle’s statements look like comments from Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking, to go away and fade into obscurity; the world would be much better off.

Both Chicago newspapers had headlines today highlighting the escalating violence in the hot summer of 2010. Two young girls playing jump-rope were shot Tuesday evening when two people rode up on bikes and opened fire reported the Chicago Tribune.
Tanaja Stokes, 8, was shot in the head and died soon thereafter. Her 7-year-old cousin Ariana Jones was also shot in the head and was in critical condition at Advocate Christ Medical Center.
They were among 10 people shot overnight in Chicago, including a 14-year-old boy wounded in the leg south of the Loop. The shooting comes two weeks after 13-year-old Robert Freeman Jr. was shot down in West Pullman, about a mile and a half away.
The Tribune is great at putting black-on-black murder on its front pages, to scare the crap out of white suburbanites. I know of people in my area who never go into Chicago due to fear, even though the city limits are less than 2 miles from my house.
But, again, we can talk about the lack of opportunity; institutional racism; unequal and often substandard education; and these are all factors that have plagued black people in this society for 400 years. But it comes down to us, gunning each other down. Here are these two girls, innocent bystanders as other kids came by with guns trying to settle some ultimately unimportant disagreement.
I hate to say this, but maybe it’s time to round up all the gangbangers in some unused urban area and just let them kill each other, like in the John Carpenter movie? Take a rust belt area, surround it with walls, and drop the gangsters in. Airlift food and supplies into the site periodically; and just keep dropping the next wave of little thugs into the “city” and let the killing continue amongst them.
Too harsh? Too extreme? Too Sci-Fi an answer for you? Then, at least, let’s get them target practice so that they shoot who they’re aiming at.

One wouldn’t invite Shaquille O’Neal and ESPN host Jim Rome to the same party (unless of course, you’re mean like me and would like to see the little man beaten to a pulp). In an interview Monday on a Washington D.C. sports radio program, O’Neal emphasized his point that Rome has no legacy.
“One, I would never be upset from a person that doesn’t have a legacy and second of all people that haven’t done what I have done can’t say whether I have a legacy or not,” said the new Boston Celtic on the Huffington Post..
O’Neal continued that Rome is just looking for good ratings. “Jim Rome knows better than that and he’s just throwing my name around so he can get the ratings for his terrible show,” said O’Neal. “I understand the business and people can have their own opinion, but one thing I can’t take is a bashing from a bum like Jim Rome.”
O’Neal challenged Rome to a boxing match via Twitter last Wednesday night. He even offered to donate his salary to charity if Rome wins.
I have to admit that I like Shaq. He is honest in the way that a 7’2”, 350-pound athlete can be. Jim Rome is best known for getting beaten up on national television by former Ram quarterback Jim Everett after Rome kept calling him “Chris,” after the female tennis hall of famer.
Jim Rome is the epitome of the worst style of sportscaster: the controversy stirrer just for ratings/sales. Like the former Sun-Times “writer” Jay Mariotti, Rome is a smarmy little twerp who seems like he was always the last kid to be picked for sports and has had a chip on his shoulder about it ever since. He’s never played anything, and, as far as I know, has never been on a beat.
But for the past many years, he has had shows on ESPN including the vile “Rome is Burning” that comes on in the early afternoon and late nights on the cable network. He does very little on the shows but issue his opinions/slams on players without having them on the air to rebut or shove the little bastard into a garbage can. He must have naked pictures of someone in power with the network or his ass would have been canned long ago.
Most athletes ignore him I guess, but I guess Shaq has had enough and is calling Rome out. I’m sure that Rome will talk tough on his show, but if he were in the same room with O’Neal, he would probably wet himself.

Here’s a story that makes me feel sorry for New York sports fans (I always thought that would be impossible). The New York Knicks announced that it had hired former team president and Coach Isiah Thomas as a “consultant.”
Thomas, who had been fired in 2008 after running the franchise into the toilet by overspending on talent and putting together teams that didn’t mesh on or off the court, reportedly got the OK from the NCAA and Florida International University when Thomas remains men’s head basketball coach. I think this has the potential for conflict of interest, but maybe the NCAA thinks that FIU si too small to matter. But now, FIU has a recruiting advantage other than just having an NBA Hall of Famer on the sidelines. Thomas could say to a young player that he could have an exclusive pipline straight to the Knicks and the NBA by playing at FIU. According to reports, Thomas helped the Knicks sign Amar’e Stotlemyre and tried to convince LeBron James to come to Gotham.
My question is: what does Thomas have on James Dolan, CEO of Madison Square Garden, the corporation that owns the Knicks? It is universally agreed that Thomas ran the team into the ground; spent millions of dollars on players that never panned out and some remain on the Knicks payroll due to the outlandish money doled out. And he brought shame on the once proud franchise in losing a sexual harassment lawsuit by Anuka Browne, a former NU alum, basketball player and married mother of two children.
So, Isiah was trying to go back to college and rebuild his basketball life, but a 7-23 record makes me think that he needs to spend more time with his primary job, not further screwing up his former employer.
Long-time readers know that I think Thomas was a great player, but a little punk as a person. That hasn’t changed. I think that as long as he’s involved with the Knicks, they will suck. Sorry New Yorkers.

Sometimes, we Northwestern alums think that our student athletes are “better” than the athletes at other schools. Maybe not athletically, or in wins and losses, but are smarter; less prone to making the personal mistakes that athletes at other schools do. Of course, we had our betting scandal; a death on the practice field; and other problems (but no NCAA sanctions, yet). But, our athletes are still young men and women and being human, and young, they are going to mess up just like everyone else.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that the Indianapolis police arrested Colts defensive lineman John Gill, an NU alum, after finding him passed out in a ditch on the side of a road about 4 a.m. Sunday.
In the police report, the officer involved says he called out to Gill, who tried to stand up, but couldn’t and kept falling over. The officer says he eventually leaned Gill against his police car to keep him from falling. He describes the barefoot 23-year-old’s blue shirt and khaki shorts as disheveled and soiled and he was arrested for public intoxication.
It is expected that Gill will be suspended for most if not all of the season under the league’s personal conduct policy.
It’s sad.