Earlier this offseason, Phil Jackson saw his tenure as the president of basketball operations for the New York Knicks come to an end after three seasons.

It was nothing short of a bumpy run in that position for Jackson as the team missed the playoffs in each campaign while his relationship with the players, in particular, Carmelo Anthony, soured as time rolled on leading to his eventual departure.

In light of that, Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas recently spoke to Marc Berman of the New York Post where he stated that the way he remembers Jackson is what he did before joining the Knicks in the front office.

“There’ve been a lot of us who have come through New York that want to do well,’’ Thomas said in Las Vegas for the Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor bout and appearing on The MMA Hour radio show with Ariel Helwani. “For whatever reason we didn’t do well. I look at Phil before he got to New York – how he was respected in the game. And that’s the Phil Jackson I choose to remember. That’s on the real.”

Before that entire situation with the Knicks, Jackson had wrapped up a Hall of Fame coaching career where he won 11 NBA titles as the head coach of both the Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Bulls. He is arguably one of the most successful head coaches that the league has ever seen as he's the only coach to win at least 10 championships in any of the North American major professional sports.

However, it is hard to overlook his tenure with Knicks due to the way things unfolded. Beyond just the team struggling on the court under his helm with at least 50 losses in each campaign while holding an 80-166 overall record, there were off-the-court issues stemming between Jackson and Anthony that became the center of attention.

All of this became too large to overlook and was beginning to be the only storyline around the team that was only further clouding the future of the franchise. It was a situation that required both sides to part ways as the only solution.