Three years after NBA hall of famer Isiah Thomas arrived at Florida International eager to revitalize the program and his own tarnished reputation, the school acknowledged the experiment was essentially a failure.
FIU fired Thomas on Friday with two years left on his contract, culminating a tenure in which the Panthers went 26-65 and failed to win more than 11 games in any single season. FIU executive director of sports entertainment Pete Garcia released a terse statement indicating that the school has "decided to take the program in a different direction," a decision Thomas apparently found stunning.
"This is the most surprising thing that has happened to me in basketball," Thomas told ESPN.com. "
(I've) never been fired before for basketball reasons. This is the first time.
"When I was in Toronto, I was trying to buy a team and I left. When I was in Indiana, Larry Bird told me that he liked what I was doing but he was closer to Rick Carlisle. The whole thing in New York was crazy. This is the first time someone told me that I was being fired for basketball reasons."
continued:
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaab-...204420501.html