Narrowing down all the mistakes former New York Knicks general manager Isiah Thomas has made in his career down to one or two can't be an easy task.
But when asked if there's anything he would like to have back during his time in the NBA on 106.7 the Fan in Washington D.C., the first thing that came to mind was signing center Jerome James after he put up a career-best 12.5 points per game and 6.8 rebounds per game in the 2005 NBA Playoffs for the Seattle Sonics' final playoff run in the Emerald City.
There definitely are some mistakes I made as a GM and probably the biggest mistakes I made was one of the signings. Jerome James came off a good playoff season with Seattle and he was talked about as one of the up-and-coming centers and we signed him to a long-term deal that didn’t pan out. He was injured most of the time, wasn’t in shape, and his health didn’t hold up, but most GM’s have one of those guys on their roster where if they could do it over they would take back.
As many NBA fans are well aware of, after getting a five-year, 30 million dollar contract from Thomas, James never matched that 2005 playoff production and ended up out of the league by 2009 without ever having completed a full 82 game season for the New York Knicks.
Sports Illustrated's Chris Mannix once wrote back in 2006 that, "James was a mistake before he ever took the court at Madison Square Garden. The day the Knicks announced his signing, they were universally panned by executives, experts, journalists -- really anyone with a voice box."
So that didn't work out so well for Thomas.