If Isiah Thomas talked much about his job as head coach at FIU basketball during his interview with Fox Sports' Bill Ritter it didn't make the copy. Instead Ritter paints a picture of a man in a situation he doesn't want to be in desperately hoping to one day soon leave Golden Panthers behind for another shot at NBA redemption.
Thomas, once an all-star player and coach and general manager of the New York Knicks, one of the NBA's most storied franchises in the country's biggest market, now coaches college basketball in a town where the sport is overshadowed by college football at a school that's overshadowed by the University of Miami.
Ritter asks Thomas if he thinks it will always be this way, if he'll always be on the outside of the NBA looking.
"I hope that's not the case, but..." is all Thomas says.
Ritter delves little into Thomas' experience at FIU, and only notes the fact that his team is 18-44 in his two years there.
Though, elsewhere he paints his life in Miami as exile. When he attends Heat games he's never seen court side, but rather kept out of view in a luxury box. He lives in Coconut Grove and sits at curbside bistros in relative obscurity.
While it's clear that Thomas is trying to prove himself worthy of working himself back into the NBA in some official capacity through his work at FIU, it seems the man's eventual aspiration lay much further than the Sun Belt Conference.
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