Like Sterling, Thomas wasted little time taking a mediocre team and transforming it into a bloated blueprint of how to build a loser, one terrible acquisition at a time.

Hired by the Knicks as president in December 2003, Thomas got right to work establishing a player personnel legacy that may never be surpassed. Vin Baker, Jerome James, Jared Jeffries, Eddy Curry, Steve Francis, Stephon Marbury, Jamal Crawford. Wow. It's simply staggering.

When the team that won 37 games the year before he arrived fell to 23 wins with the players he had assembled three years later, Thomas took over as head coach. He went 33-49 his first season, then fell back to 23-59 in his second season before being booed off stage in New York.

But Thomas's front office and sideline incompetence were trivial compared to the legal liability he exposed his employer to with his boorish behavior toward Browne-Sanders. Her testimony accusing him of impropriety was convincing. His testimony about the distinction between white men and black men calling black women bitches was jaw-dropping.

Still, nothing Zeke said in losing some of the Dolan family's walking-around money came close to the shock value of Sterling's testimony in his own lawsuit against Alexandra Castro.

Sterling was suing Castro over a Beverly Hills home he claimed belonged to him despite the title being in her name. Presumably in an effort to discredit her as a prostitute, Sterling held forth in amazing detail on the nature of their relationship.

According to a deposition obtained by the Smoking Gun, the married Sterling described Castro as a $500-a-trick "freak," listed the numerous places they had carnal relations and lauded Castro for "(bleeping) me all night long." (Hint: it's something the Clippers do almost every night.)

Sterling lost the suit.

And now he faces another one, brought by former GM Elgin Baylor who is suing the Clippers for what he deemed the systemic racism with which Sterling ran the franchise. Baylor claims that Sterling once told him that "he (Sterling) wanted the Clippers team to be composed of poor black boys from the South and a white head coach."

Baylor also contends that Sterling said of a contract negotiation with Danny Manning, "I'm offering a lot of money for a poor black kid." According to Baylor, that statement was heard by David Stern.

Considering the loyalty the Clippers showed to Baylor, whose 22-year run as Clippers GM was largely a disaster, it's tempting to dismiss his claims. But Sterling lost a judgment in a housing-discrimination case in 2005 after allegedly remarking that "black tenants smell and attract vermin." Sterling was forced to pay $5M for the plaintiffs' legal fees and made an undisclosed payout to the renters he had allegedly discriminated against.

Following that settlement Sterling went into public-relations overdrive, pledging to throw his weight behind a facility for the homeless in downtown Los Angeles. The P.R. part of that effort has been under way for years. The facility? Not so much.

Now Sterling might once again be looking for a way to tell the world, Hey, I'm no racist. And what better way than to hire African-American hoop legend Isiah Thomas? (Besides actually providing housing for poor minorities in Los Angeles.)

The reason for bringing Thomas to the Clippers might be cynical, but the pairing of Sterling and Thomas would be magical.

Never in sports history have two men so totally deserved each other.