Greenburgh, NY, 6/6--Larry Brown had "a close call" this afternoon when his brakes "failed" as he approached reporters near the Knicks practice facility from which the reporters had been banned.

Brown's "brakes had been cut," said a source with the Greenburgh police, leaving Brown immediately to speculate whether James Dolan, the team's president, might be involved.

"You gotta wonder," he said. "You gotta ask yourself, could it be? Could it be him? Who else would want this? You gotta ask that question."

Both Dolan and Isiah Thomas, the team's president, have recently made a spectacle of their wish to see Brown gone, although neither will publicly admit it. Thomas is widely expected to coach the team next season, his formal introduction merely awaiting Dolan's solution to the problem of Brown's hefty contract.

"Larry's death would be convenient," Dolan wrote in a secret diary, portions of which were stolen by, and excerpted in, last week's New York Post. "I want him out [of the organization]. But I don't want to pay him the full amount of his contract. I wish he'd somehow just die, like conveniently in an accident."

Dolan remains a "person of interest" in two attempts to "poison" Lenny Wilkins two years ago, when Wilkins was the Knicks head coach and the team was underachieving. Dolan has rejected this innuendo, and, instead, has steered investigators toward Thomas, who, at the time, was "twice seen, smiling," depositing "unknown substances" in Wilkins' beverages, according to witness testimony from, among others, Anucha Browne Sanders, who has a pending suit against Thomas for sexual harassment and unfair dismissal.

Dolan was asked if he'd had a hand in the sabotaging of Brown's car. "Uh, where's the motive? Where's the, uh, motive?"

Brown said he'll let investigators figure out "how this happened," but that, for now, he's the team's head coach, has no plans to step down, and intends to "survive further assassination attempts."