Isiah's Love Child Has Two Words for Him

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. - Isiah Thomas' secret love child broke his silence yesterday - revealing how his famous Knicks-boss dad has never once tried to contact him, and even ignored recent messages he left with his secretary.

Marc Edward Thomas Dones, 19, told The [NY] Post that he couldn't care less about the embattled Knicks president, who stands accused of sexually harassing a former team executive.

"I don't care about what's going on with him now - that's his concern," the aspiring writer told The Post yesterday while walking his dogs outside his suburban Detroit home. "Our lives are separate. He lives his and I live mine."

"He hasn't been a good dad to me. He's never returned my calls - that's just him."

Dones, whose arched eyebrows and high forehead make him the spitting image of his dad, said he'd left at least three messages for Thomas in the past month in hopes of speaking to the absent pop before his birthday Feb. 6.

"I rang because, you know, I'm turning 20," Dones said. "I think I deserve two words from him - 'hi' and 'goodbye,' something like that."

Last week, former Knicks executive Anucha Browne Sanders, 43, filed a scathing federal lawsuit against Thomas, accusing him of calling her crude names and asking for sex.

Sanders says she was fired from her job as VP for the team's marketing and business operations after she rebuffed his romantic advances in the sensational lawsuit.

The Post revealed Sunday that Thomas had a love child more than 19 years ago after a reported two-month affair with another woman while he was engaged to be married.

A spokesman for Madison Square Garden yesterday said Thomas did not wish to comment on his son's allegations, or the sexual-harassment or paternity suits.

Yesterday, Dones described how his mom, Jenni, whose last name he took, was a strong single parent who provided all the support he needed.

His mother had made sure he knew about his father as soon as he was old enough to understand.

"She's a strong woman," he said. "She told me as soon as I was cognizant. I've learned to live with it. My friends know and don't care. Those that care aren't my friends."

Jenni Dones never married and has lived with her son in a two-story town house abutting a golf course.

The woman filed a paternity suit against Thomas when she was six months pregnant in December 1985, just four months after the then-Pistons star married his wife, Lynn Kendall.

"I think they went out for a couple of months while he was engaged," Dones said. "I don't know if my mother knew about [Kendall]."

Thomas - who has two children with Kendall - settled the suit in 1987, agreeing to pay about $52,000 and provide $2,764.78 a month until Dones turned 18.

At that age, he was supposed to receive a lump-sum payment of $100,000.

Dones said he had gotten used to his absent father's fame after spending a lifetime reading about him - and his other family - in the press.

"I read about him and his kids, and I don't even think that they really know about me," he said.

He said Thomas' family had not even acknowledged him when they lived nearby.

"I suppose it hurts to see how he's treating them and how he's treating me," he said. "I am just as much his child as his other kids are."

While Dones' half-brother, Josh Thomas, 17, rushed to his father's defense over the sexual-harassment claims, Dones had no such words of comfort.

"I think he should just be a good dad," said Dones.

He said he has taken a different path from his sports-hero dad.

"We're different people," he said. "We have different lives. I'm a writer. I'm not into sports. The concept of pushing a ball around is foreign to me."

Dones said he had deferred his university plans until fall but hoped to be accepted to the University of Michigan.

"I've traveled a lot and don't plan to live in Michigan for the rest of my life," he said. "Who knows where I'll end up?"

Dones said he was trying to get work at a library, so he could be around books.

In the future, he hopes his memoir will be on those shelves. The determined author already has an agent in New York for the tell-all tale that would include details of his father's refusal to acknowledge him.

In the meantime, the aspiring author says he has penned many poems. One is dedicated to his high-school boyfriend, Ethan.

"I like poetry because it's free," Isiah Thomas once said. "You are not restricted or confined in any way."

His estranged son, however, pointed out yesterday that poetry doesn't pay the bills.

When asked what was the one thing he would say to the dad he has known only through the news, Dones yesterday declined to answer.

"What I have to say to him I'm not going to say through someone else," he said. "He's never been a part of my life. My mother and I are strong people. There's no reason to be upset about it."

From NY Daily News:- Isiah Thomas' teenage love child said yesterday he's long ached to meet his famous father - but the embattled Knick boss has denied him a shot.

Speaking out for the first time, Marc Dones, 19, an aspiring writer whose mom had a brief affair with a then-engaged Thomas two decades ago, said he still pines for an opportunity to get to know the father he's only seen on TV.

"People should be parents. That's it," Dones said. "By the time I turn 20, I should get to say two words to my father: 'Hello. Goodbye.' If that's it, then I should get those two."

Dones said he's called Thomas twice, but never got a response.

"I'd like to speak to him. I'd like to know him," said the dreadlocked young poet. "But that's not the situation I'm in."

Dones broke his silence just days after Thomas, a married father of two, was accused in a federal lawsuit of sexually harassing Anucha Browne Sanders, a Knicks executive.

Thomas, 44, has denied the allegations.

"I don't know anything about any of this. It has nothing to do with me," Dones said. "I don't have an opinion about what kind of person he is. I don't know him."

But the well-spoken teenager, who wore jeans and a T-shirt and held a cigarette as he stood outside his family's townhouse in suburban Detroit, had plenty else to say - and revealed planning to write a memoir about his unique family life.

Dones is 5-foot-10 and has an athletic build, but said he's not interested in being a star athlete like his Hall of Fame dad.

"It's just chasing a ball," he said of basketball, the sport that made his father rich and famous. "I don't know why you'd do that."

A talented poet and writer, Marc Dones went to the Roeper School, an elite private academy outside Detroit. He plans to attend the New School University in New York this fall.

His mother, Jenni Dones, got pregnant during a 1985 affair with Thomas, just two months before the then-NBA superstar player married his current wife, Lynn.

Jenni Dones has claimed she had a three- or four-month relationship with the Detroit Pistons All-Star, but her lawyer agreed with Thomas' version that it was a one-night stand.

After Marc Dones was born in 1986, Thomas admitted being the father and agreed to pay $52,000, plus $2,764.78 per month until Marc turned 18 - and then a lump sum of $100,000 to the youth.

Jenni Dones later sued for more support, claiming that her lawyer had failed to get a good enough deal from Thomas.

Again, the NBA star agreed to fork over more dough to support his child.

"He acted honorably, as far as I'm concerned," said Elbert Hatchett, the lawyer who represented Jenni Dones and was later sued by her.

Jenni Dones, who was at a family funeral yesterday, was not reachable for comment.

Kevin Mintzer, a spokesman for Sanders, declined to comment yesterday as did Raynor Grossman, a spokeswoman for Thomas.

No one answered the door at the Westchester mansion where Thomas lives with his wife and their two teenage children.

Jenni Dones' mother, Edwynna Anderson, was a prominent lawyer, a trailblazing black journalist in Michigan and a Detroit prosecutor.

Jenni Dones, a single mom, went on to have another child, now 13. She once ran a program in the urban studies center at Wayne State University in Detroit but apparently no longer works there.

She filed twice for bankruptcy protection, most recently in December, legal records show.

But Marc Dones called his mom a "very strong woman" who had long since moved on from the affair with Thomas.

"My mom doesn't believe in regret, which is shaping a lot of my dealing with it," he said. "There's no point. It happened. It's over."

"She's more than capable of dealing with my father, for one, and dealing with the world, for two," he added.

Even without a father, the teenager says he's had a good life and is resigned that he might never get to know his dad, who is running the struggling Knicks.

"We've never had a relationship," Dones said of Thomas. "I don't think we will. ... My life is completely separate."

He's already had work published on TheDetroiter.com, an artsy Web site in the Motor City.

"What amazes me, for his age, is his grasp of poetry," said Eric Novack, the site's literary editor. "He is an incredible young man."

Despite Thomas' refusal to have any contact with him, Dones said he won't allow himself to be eaten up with bitterness.

"That's my life - there's nothing I can do about it," he said. "It doesn't upset me. When I was younger, yes. Having known it no other way, there's no reason to be bitter about it.

"I don't hold him any malice. I don't have any ill will," he added as he hustled the family's dog, Charlie, a black Labrador retriever and Shih Tzu mix, into the backyard.

"It's hard to have any ill will toward someone who you don't have a relationship with."