Well, at least there’s one New York City native who doesn’t think the Knicks hiring back Isiah Thomas is such a disaster.
Brooklyn’s Marvin Roberts, who was Thomas’ leading scorer at Florida International this past season, called his experience playing for the NBA Hall of Famer “special.”
“He does get a bad rap,” Roberts said yesterday after a streetball game in the Hoops in the Sun summer league in The Bronx. “Before I went there, I heard a couple of bad things about him. But I’m the type of person, I like to experience things on my own. I like to make my own mistakes and learn from them. And by going there and meeting him and playing for him, it was not a mistake. It’s probably one of the best things that has happened in my basketball career and my life.”
Roberts describes Thomas as “humble.” The 6-foot-5 rising senior swingman said he thinks that Knicks fans and pundits bash Thomas because they don’t know him.
“He’s always there [for his players],” said Roberts, who averaged 15.6 points per game. “He talks to us all the time, teaches us new things. All he wants us to do is work hard, play hard on defense and win games. . . . He spends a lot of time with us in the gym. He gets shots up with us.”
Though Thomas took a job as a Knicks consultant, Roberts does not think that means he’ll neglect his players at FIU. He owed the team’s poor season — the Panthers went 7-25 — to Thomas getting the job late and not being able to do enough recruiting.
“Besides the things you hear about him, he’s a real good guy,” Roberts said. “He knows how to separate his businesses. He’s a businessman.”