Mike Celizic

All anyone asks of a coach in any sport is that he does the franchise proud. That covers everything: winning games, competing hard, playing clean, making good decisions, being fan-friendly, conducting himself with dignity and class.

On every one of those, Isiah Thomas has fallen short, and yet he has suffered no consequences. He got off scot-free again Monday when David Stern climbed into his seat of judgment and handed out the fines and suspensions for Saturday’s rumble in Madison Square Garden near the end of the Nuggets’ blowout win over the Knicks.

There shouldn’t be a lot of doubt about who gave the orders to Knicks’ rookie Mardy Collins to knock down the next guy who tried to throw down a slam in the game’s waning moments. In the Knicks’ previous game, another blowout loss (when writing of Knicks’ losses, that’s usually redundant), this time to the Pacers, Collins had delivered a flagrant foul in a similar situation. A player does that once, it might be his idea. He does it two games in a row, he’s only following orders.

Carmelo Anthony also told Stern that Thomas talked to him while free throws were being shot just 10 seconds or so before Collins threw a headlock on J.R. Smith and started Stern’s latest public relations nightmare.

Thomas had no reason to be talking to a member of the opposition during a game. That’s sin No. 1. But Anthony said — and lip readers think they can confirm — that Thomas warned him: “Don’t go in the paint.” You don’t need to be a cryptographer to decipher that bit of code. Something was going to happen, because Thomas had ordered  it, but if someone was going to be hurt, the Knicks’ coach and president didn’t want it to be one of the game’s premier players.

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Stern said he had no direct evidence that Thomas uttered those words. Thomas said that he was only asking Anthony what he and Marcus Camby were doing on the court late in a game that Thomas had already “surrendered.”

But you don’t need a tape recording to see what happened and who ordered it. Stern’s determination to make the NBA more squeaky clean than a Disney cartoon is laudable, but he can’t do that if he lets coaches such as Thomas get away with ordering mayhem.

Stern points to the $500,000 fines he slapped on the Knicks’ and Nuggets’ organizations as proof of his determination to send a message to teams as well as players. But I’m having a hard time understanding why both teams get the same fine. Thomas’ team started this. His team should be more heavily penalized.

Video: KNICKS-NUGGETS BRAWL 'I gotta live with it' Dec. 19: The Denver Nuggets' Carmelo Anthony and J.R. Smith talk about moving on after the big brawl Saturday. New basketbrawl is another PR headache Carmelo's image takes another big hit Nuggets coach Karl calls Isiah Thomas 'jackass' Celizic says Thomas should be suspended Is public overreacting to brawl? NBA suspends seven players for brawl Did Knicks coach Thomas spark brawl?

Among the players, there is no argument that Anthony earned every bit of the 15-game suspension Stern slapped on him. Anthony sucker-punched Collins after the initial fracas was just about over. It wasn’t the heat of the moment, which had already passed by. It was a punk sneaking in a punch then running away and relying on his teammates, security and the assistant coaches to keep anyone from retaliating.

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Anthony has made a concerted and, until Saturday, successful effort to live up to his superstar status. Just a few days before his lapse in judgment, he had presided at the opening of a youth center in his hometown of Baltimore for which he contributed about $1.5 million of his own money. In an apology issued through his agent, he sounded sincere in regretting the example he set for the kids he’s trying to help.

Thomas has offered no apologies. He’s tried to blame Nuggets’ coach George Karl, who still had four starters on the court with 90 seconds to play and a 19-point lead, saying Karl was running up the score, which made the Knicks’ short-tempered.