These Are Selfish Times

What happened to Isiah Thomas today is not easy to digest. I think that's largely because on a very personal level, it makes me come to terms with the fact that it's not easy to be Isiah.

Here you have a guy that did a truly terrible job in almost all capacities with the Knicks. He embarrassed one of the league's most storied franchises on and off the court. He was eventually relieved from his post (although fully compensated). He is still employed by the team; he's basically paid to hang out in his office, do a little work, and stay away from the players.

That must be the life, right? No more overwhelming expectations and responsibility, just collect that paycheck and live the sweet life of making a living while being around the sport that you love. For an NBA legend, life sure seems easy.

Obviously, it's not. Everyone is bad at something. Isiah just happens to be bad at certain things he believes that he should have natural talent in. For one minute, put yourself in Isiah's shoes. Not just in the "Oh, even I could be a better GM!" kinda way, but I mean really empathize with the guy. Being a general manager is not an easy task. Add in the most critical media center in the world and you've got a disaster just waiting to happen. Every misstep is ridiculed, every mistake is magnified. But the thing that really makes it difficult to live in Zeke's shoes is a unanimous agreement of just how bad he was at his job. By the end of the Isiah era in NYC, there were no loyalists left. Everyone who had once supported Isiah had taken a step back, retracted their opinions, and crossed the line in the sand. You were either with Isiah or against him, and Isiah, after Dolan finally crossed that line, stood completely alone. "No man is an island." Well, no man wants to be an island. Some are forced to be one due to circumstance or misfortune. Isiah is by no means a victim in all this; he played a very active role in his own downfall. But the power of public opinion and the power of the media likely weighed heavily on one of the most confident and proud (or arrogant, depending on how you see it) players to ever wear an NBA uniform in a league full of confident and proud players.

To really put things in perspective, I thought about this blog. Writing about the NBA is the biggest hobby I have these days; it plays a huge role in my life, in ways both direct and indirect. I like my writing and I think I'm pretty good at this gig. But what if the general public (the readers) came to a concensus that I was the single worst NBA blogger on the entire interwebs. That's a crushing blow in and of itself, enough to make anyone cave in upon themselves, crush their confidence, and seriously make them investigate who they are and where they're going. Then, tack on the fact that all of my peers, all of those around the basketball blogosphere, generally consider me a laughingstock, a disgrace, and a punchline. I would exist only as a cheap joke. Finally, you take both of those substantial ego bruises and you make them omnipresent. Everytime I turn on the TV, some smartass SportsCenter anchor is cracking a joke at my expense. I get in the car and the local sports talk radio stations are skewering me, ripping me apart sentence by sentence. I open up the paper every day and there are criticisms of my daily actions, my decisions, and my logic. Compound all of this with entire websites dedicated to just how bad I am at doing something I love and personally feel that I'm pretty decent at, and you start to comprehend the tip of Isiah's iceberg.

Isiah dug his own grave in more ways than any of us can possibly begin to imagine. But he's human. Somewhere underneath the fame and the disconnect this is a proud man who puts up with shit from the peanut gallery daily. Regardless of whether that entails petty, witty remarks or violent, ardent disdain, that kind of life wears you down and it pierces you.

Those in Thomas' family are denying the reports' validity outright, and most of the MSM outlets are still publishing conflicting reports about what exactly happened. Most are carefully tiptoeing around the term "suicide," and that's understandable. But if Thomas did indeed overdose on sleeping pills, I don't see how it was accidental. You don't accidentally pop ten Lunesta in your mouth and call it a night, even if your better judgment has repeatedly been questioned.

Even if the reports are found to be false, this incident has definitely had an effect on me, just as it should have an effect on all of you. These are people, people. They can take jokes and they can dish it out just like we can. But at the end of the day, the human psyche is a very fragile thing.