No Data Available: The Jimmy Dolan Saga

True story. A friend calls me the other day and says, "Man, I could kill Jimmy Dolan right now." To which I respond, "Oh, what now?" (thinking to myself, has he brought back Isiah? Did he hire "Aaron" from Eastbound & Down to replace Glen Sather?). "My DVR is frozen again," he replied. Astonished, I sputtered, "I will drive over there right now and slap your face! This is the man that has presided over the worst era in the history of Madison Square Garden, and your beef is about your cable?"

His point was well taken, however, as it's the little things that will throw a person over the mental edge. And all dealings must be taken into account when the owner of a team is so personally responsible for that team's demise. Another example is Fred Wilpon, whose losses to Bernie Madoff must be considered when thinking about issues related to the Mets payroll. For Knicks and Rangers owner Dolan, his position as CEO of Cablevision makes him double the villain, as everybody hates their cable company (it's true!) and every fan hates an underqualified, over-involved owner.

Any Ranger fan will tell you that the Blueshirts went downhill pretty much right after their Stanley Cup win in 1994, which was when Dolan took over. Under his management, (and it is management when the owner hires or does not fire the GM) the Knicks have not won a playoff game in a decade. Despite one of the largest payrolls and despite bringing in high-profile and grossly overpaid coaches Lenny Wilkens, Larry Brown and Don Chaney, all of whom got paid millions after being fired.

Dolan remained under the Jedi mind trick of Isiah Thomas so long, it's entirely possible he's still in the trance. The Knicks actually sent Isiah to recruit LeBron James this past offseason, in a display of how utterly out of touch Dolan and GM Donnie Walsh truly are. What must a man do to get fired? Isiah ran the Knicks into the ground as GM and coach, then was found guilty of sexually harrassing Anucha Browne-Sanders, which cost MSG $11 million dollars. $3 million of which was paid by James Dolan himself, his penance for firing Browne-Sanders after she complained about Isiah's sexual affronts. That was 2007. The Knicks sent Isiah Thomas to recruit LeBron in 2010. And what did that communicate? "Hey LeBron, we're sending someone we hope you (don't) emulate for (not) us."

Dolan is a modern-day gangster. He's rich enough to say, "f*ck you" to just about anyone, and he does it all the time. Right now, the 8th-largest cable provider in the country is not carrying FOX or My9 networks due to financial disputes. This is just the latest in a string of battles involving Cablevision, as Dolan has gone to war with NBC-Universal, YES Network, NFL Network, and ABC. During the ABC dispute, the information stream viewers saw when they tried to tune in went as far as to say that ABC (and their parent company, Disney) had demanded inordinate amounts of money from Cablevision due to their reduced theme park revenues. That was the verbal equivalent of Dolan pulling down Mickey Mouse's shorts, revealing ghastly undersized testes, then showing them to whoever would look-- it's what the Winabi call the "Jimmy Dolan Shake and Bake." There is no doubt that the proliferation of satellite, fiber-optic and web-based TV has punctured the Dolan family's monopoly, but his dogged stance in every one of these fights should tell FOX and NewsCorp that they're in the ring with Nicky Santoro.

But for all his reputed drug and alcohol abuse, violent temper, horrid management style, and obviously poor decision-making, Dolan's primary sin was adhering to one of the most disruptive axioms in sports: "New York fans will NOT tolerate a period of rebuilding." Rangers and Knicks fans haven't had to tolerate periods of sustained winning either, due to all the time and money spent not rebuilding.

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