This is Christmas Day, so Isiah Thomas can put off what he has to do for another few hours, in the name of compassion and human fellowship. No coach, no matter how woefully overmatched or relentlessly incompetent, deserves a pink slip wrapped around a lump of coal in his stocking.
But tomorrow, the holiday truce is off.

So tomorrow - or any appropriate time that officially qualifies as "immediately" in the eyes of the Knicks' new czar - Thomas needs to do what the Knicks have been crying out for, in word and in deed, for more than two years.

He needs to put Don Chaney out of his misery. You know what Knick fans needed to hear yesterday? They needed to hear their coach say something like this yesterday:

"It sickened me, what happened on our court, in our house, in our city. It embarrasses me that not one of our players got in Sprewell's face and told him to go to hell. In my day, John Havlicek and Dave Cowens would have added Sprewell's scalp to the parquet floor if he tried something like that. Anyone who doesn't feel that way won't play for me ever again."

Instead, this is what Knick fans got from Coach Don Chaney:

"I'm concerned with my team and not the behavior of another player. He's not our teammate anymore. It's up to his teammates to control him. Not our guys."

Translated, he was saying: "Fire me at once. I don't have the heart to stay on the job even one second longer."