In the months before his mysterious overdose, Isiah Thomas was steeped in sadness and loneliness, agonizing over his failed tenure as New York Knicks coach and dreaming that one day all those who chanted “Fire Isiah!” would be forced to eat their words.
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Thomas desperately clings to the belief that he will one day return to being an NBA general manager, according to a confidant.
He’s also holding on to hope that the players he picked for the current Knicks team will rally this year and vindicate his player-evaluation skills, forcing a reassessment of his troubled tenure.
Until then, Thomas, who remains a consultant to the organization, is left in a team-imposed solitary confinement, stewing over what he perceives as a million slights from the organization, both big and small.
In the wee hours of Friday morning, the Basketball Hall of Famer was found sprawled unconscious on the kitchen floor of his mansion in Purchase, Westchester County. Just days before, the team released its 2008-09 media guide, which gives recognition to every team towel boy and hanger-on, but doesn’t mention Thomas.
The lowly state of his career, the team’s continued failures, and the enduring embarrassment of a sexual-harassment lawsuit by former Knicks exec Anucha Browne Sanders – which the team settled last December – was increasingly wearing him down.
All these issues collided this past week with another problem in Thomas’ life – daughter Lauren’s hypoglycemia, which family and friends said causes her to occasionally suffer fainting spells.
She suffered a spell Thursday while she was at the Rye Country Day School, resulting in the 17-year-old being hospitalized in Greenwich, Conn.
Hours later, at about midnight Friday, the frustrated and overwrought Thomas started taking Lunesta sleeping pills, sources said, downing roughly 10.
Harrison Police Chief David Hall, taking care not to use Thomas’ name, yesterday gave the first detailed account of what his officers saw when they arrived at Thomas’ home Friday.
A man, identified by sources as Thomas, was found lying on the kitchen floor. There were two other people present. He was unconscious when rescue workers arrived and he was still passed out as he was taken by ambulance to White Plains Hospital Center.
Thomas, the center of attention on every team he’s worked since the age of 15, told a confidant in the months prior to the overdose that he was deeply hurt that the Knicks had forced him into a minor role since dropping him as coach.
The former point guard, who has three years and $18 million due on his contract with the club, felt that team officials seemed to bend over backward to distance themselves from him.
Shunned and isolated, he’s spent the days since his April demotion losing himself on the golf course, which Chuck Daly, his former coach when he starred for the Detroit Pistons, said had become an “addiction.”
“A guy like Isiah, who has such a big ego, for the first time in 30-something years he’s not going to be involved in basketball,” a friend said. “He must be very depressed.”
One of his former assistant coaches echoed the sentiments: “[At] a certain time of year, he’s been in a certain place – a basketball practice. It’s an adjustment.” The former coach added that he never saw Thomas travel with sleeping pills.
Regarding Friday’s incident, Thomas insisted in an exclusive interview Friday with The Post that nothing happened to him. Instead, he said it was his daughter who was having a medical issue and that it “wasn’t an overdose.”
But Hall yesterday insisted: “He’s trying to cover it all up. He’s not telling the truth.”
“It was a 47-year-old black man [taken from the home],” he added. “It wasn’t a female. My cops aren’t stupid.”
“It wasn’t his daughter,” Hall said. “And why they’re throwing her under the bus is beyond my ability to understand.
“These people should learn something from Richard Nixon – it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.”
Thomas could not be reached for comment yesterday and his attorney hung up the phone on a Post reporter.
Thomas’ son, Joshua, 20, a student at Indiana University, said he’s hearing a different story from his parents.
“I do not know where the sleeping pills came from,” he said. “My sister was admitted to the hospital because she fainted.”
“[Isiah] gets very worried about my sister. Whenever something happens, the natural paternal instincts kick in,” Joshua added.
He said that his dad and sister were “home and feeling great” yesterday.
A confidant said Thomas and his daughter have an extremely close relationship and have spent a lot of time visiting colleges where she might pursue her studies, including a recent tour of Tulane University in New Orleans.
Joshua said he was told police were called to tend to his sister, and that his dad was a given a glass of water by cops because he also appeared faint.
Knicks guard Stephon Marbury, who has been estranged from Thomas, sent his best wishes.
“I’m praying for him and his family in this trying time,” he told The Post.
Additional reporting by Perry Chiaramonte, Matthew Nestel, Mark Hale, Aliyah Shahidand the AP