NEW YORK — Isiah "Let's Get Physical" Thomas is rapidly unravelin'.

Making a move on Anucha Browne Sanders in private was damaging enough. Making a move toward Quentin Richardson during an ignominious Knicks loss at Charlotte last Friday, and having to be restrained by assistant Herb Williams, is a blinking red neon sign the coach is beggin' to be put out of his misery.

When players embarrass their coach by allowing the 29th-worst offensive NBA team to score 67 points in the first half and a coach embarrasses his players by yanking them in the first couple of minutes of the third quarter clearly, they have no use for each other, no matter how both parties tried to compound out the scuff marks after taking verbal shots at each other.

"You'll almost never see Isiah blow a fuse when players make the team look bad. But he'll turn on you in a split second the moment he thinks you're making him look bad," stresses someone who possesses first-hand knowledge of Thomas' violent temper.

To be perfectly fair, Thomas isn't remotely the first coach to yank players off the floor after one mistake of commission or omission. Happens all the time. (Paul Silas and Eric Snow got into it several years ago in Cleveland; for example, the player got suspended one game, the coach got liquidated soon after.)

Still, the last thing a coach should want is to show up a player, particularly a veteran.

Unless that's exactly what the coach wants to do in order to send a callous message to the rest of the players.

Knowing this unstable group, they're more apt than most to take it the wrong way. Nobody takes it well, trust me.

Evidently Thomas' agenda was to let 'em know nobody is above being publicly demeaned. At the same time, it's not as if he singled out Richardson; he also fork-lifted Eddy Curry.

Not surprisingly, Richardson, an hombre from the same serrated streets as Thomas, took it to heart and exchanged some invective ("That's how we do it in Chi-town") with his hostile homey.

Again, coaches and players talk dirty and sell woof tickets to each other all the time. Has there ever been a season when Jerry Sloan didn't get into it on the bench or in the locker room with a player?

And sometimes his name wasn't even Greg Ostertag. Last season it was Andrei Kirilenko. This season it's Gordon Giricek.

But Sloan's 15-14 Jazz — though losers in nine of their last 11 — attained the Western Conference Finals last May. He's been around long enough to treat or mistreat players any way he pleases.

Same goes for Phil Jackson and Pat Riley and Gregg Popovich, that's about it; Don Nelson isn't even in position to degrade and defrock anymore.

No way a coach can get away with challenging players to combat, expressly not one whose team is 8-19 and has been a perennial stumblebum in the four years since James Dolan and Steve Mills chug-a-lugged the Kool-aid.

Either Dolan is in a torture mode of Thomas, or he fails to understand, honestly, that entrusting the Knicks' restoration to an unqualified executive might not have been the best idea he's ever hatched.

In the meantime, this is the longest wake on record. Unless you count the King Tut tour that's staging a revival after 30 years.

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Within the space of moments and a switch of NBATV channels, I got to see Dwayne Wade and Andre Iguodala drain buzzer-beating, game-winning jumpers for the Heat and 76ers on Saturday.

Later I had the privilege of witnessing Steve Nash, in the midst of three red Raptors jerseys, snatch an offensive rebound off a teammates' missed jumper, casually turn and dribble toward the 3-point line and suddenly find Leandro Barbosa with a lefty around-the-back-no-look pass for a trey to put the Suns up 98-79 late in the third quarter.

So, Michael Jordan practiced a bit with the Bobcats the other day; teaching them some of his tricks, no doubt.

I can just hear the players, "Yeah, that's cool, but the refs call traveling when we take extra steps, jump into the air, land and then shoot.

"And, yo, boss, when I shove the guy who's guarding me to create space, I always seem to hear a whistle."

Peter Vecsey covers the NBA for the New York Post