Mike Celizic

As president of the Knicks, Isiah Thomas has swung a lot of deals, spent a vault of money, generated scores of headlines and accomplished nothing. That’s not being unfair to a man who won two titles as a player and was one of the game’s best-ever point guards. It’s the truth.

Through all the inane statements and bad deals – this is the guy who traded away what turned out to be the number two overall pick in this year’s draft for a center with medical problems and then said he’d make the deal again – Thomas has enjoyed the unadulterated, and unmerited, approval and support of the team’s owner, James Dolan.

Thomas has been able to do that because he’s a b.s. artist without peer and has the ability to charm a rattlesnake out of its skin. He oozes confidence even when there is no reason to, and Dolan, a cable guy who made his bazillions with Cablevision, laps it up like a kitten with a saucer of milk.

It’s been a performance worthy of Al Pacino, but its run on Broadway is about to meet reality. Starting now, Thomas can’t rationalize away lousy results, can’t blame the coach or the media or anyone else for the team’s failures. He put this team together and now he’s got to coach it.

This is a classic case of being careful what you wish for, because you just may get it.

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A lot of people who have followed Thomas for years have held from the get-go that his intention and desire from the day he took his current job with the Knicks was to not just run the team but also to coach it. He denied that, and when he hired Larry Brown last year to work his customary magic with an underachieving team, it seemed as if Thomas was sincere. You don’t give somebody $50 million over five years if your intent is to have his job. At least that’s how it appeared.

But you could also say that Thomas, who could teach Machiavelli a thing or two about working in the shadows, played into his own hands when he wrote that contract. When he and Dolan fired Brown Thursday morning – they didn’t even call a press conference to do it; it was death by press release – they left themselves with a $40-million commitment to pay a coach not to work. Under the theory that even the Knicks have a limit on how much they can spend, it was easy for Thomas to take on the coaching job as a way to save money.

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Thomas has never had real success anywhere he’s gone as an executive. His most infamous performance was taking over the old Continental Basketball Association, the game’s minor league that had survived for decades, and destroying it virtually overnight.

With most people, results matter, but not with Thomas. Despite his poor track record, Dolan saw him as the most brilliant managerial mind on the face of the earth. Dolan gave  Thomas a budget that seems without limit, and Thomas has jacked up the payroll well beyond  $100 million. It’s not only the highest  payroll in the NBA, it would be the third or fourth highest payroll in baseball.