NBA Insider with Ken Berger

Greenburgh, N.Y. – One more item from Knicks practice today and then I’ll leave you alone.

Isiah Thomas was asked how the current Celtics team compares to the great Bird-McHale-Parish teams that he competed against.

“They don’t,” Thomas said. “They’re not good enough to compare to those teams. Those three or four teams they had during that era … those are maybe in the top seven or eight teams to ever play in the history of the game.”

Interestingly, Thomas said the one player the Celtics can’t do without isn’t Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen or Paul Pierce. It’s their point guard, Rajon Rondo, who was widely viewed as the weak link on an otherwise solid championship contender heading into the season.

“He’s gone from being a question mark to, I think, their most important player,” Thomas said. “I think he makes it all work. With Garnett, Pierce and Allen, I think he has the proper attitude, the proper game. … He’s not out trying to prove people wrong. He’s out just playing the game. You thought he would get sucked into ‘he’s a guy who can’t make the outside shot,’ so therefore he’d start trying to prove that he can make the outside shot. But he just said, ‘OK, I’ll just keep taking layups until you stop me from taking layups.’ I think he’s the one guy they can’t do without. I think they can get by without having Garnett for a while. I think they can lose Pierce or Allen for a while. But I think if they lost him for any extended period of time, I think they’d be in trouble.”

Does that answer the question of which position Thomas thinks the Knicks have to change if they're ever going to emerge from their current state of dysfunction?