MIAMI — On the sun-soaked campus of Florida International University, Isiah Thomas is a world away from the troubles of his past.

Here, he’s the Hall of Fame basketball player who led the Detroit Pistons to NBA championships in 1989 and ‘90 — the big name who, after a series of public missteps, has arrived to coach FIU’s decidedly small-time basketball program. In the process, Thomas, 48, seeks to build a sports legacy — and remove some of the tarnish from recent years.

Here, the bad times seem distant: his failed attempt at running the Continental Basketball Association, his 41/2 years in the New York Knicks’ front office — which included battles with players, losing records and sexual harassment accusations against him — and last fall’s accidental overdose of sleeping pills.

As FIU began practice earlier this month for the 2009-10 season, Thomas is setting out to rebuild his reputation and rejuvenate a squad that went 13-20 last season and averaged 681 fans.

“My goal is to one day build a top-25 program,” said Thomas, who coached the Indiana Pacers for three seasons.

In Division I basketball, there are three tiers of schools: high-major, mid-major and low-major. FIU, which opened in 1972, has never climbed out of the basement, save for its lone NCAA Tournament appearance in 1995.

“I like getting my hands dirty,” Thomas said. “I’ve never taken an easy job. If you were to apply business terminology, I’m into start-ups and turnarounds. This is a program that is very young and really hasn’t established itself. But it has a major opportunity.”

He will try to do at FIU what he failed to do as president and later coach of the Knicks: win.

“My one regret about New York was they never got to see me at my best, because there was so much other stuff going on,” he said.

While he was with the Knicks in September 2007, a federal jury determined that he sexually harassed former Knicks executive Anucha Browne Sanders, though Thomas was not held liable for the $11.6 million in punitive damages awarded her. Madison Square Garden, which owns the Knicks, was held financially responsible for creating a hostile work environment and firing her unfairly. Thomas still denies wrongdoing.

The case took its toll. Thomas went on to coach the Knicks as they tied a franchise record with 59 losses, his last of two seasons as coach before being reassigned as a consultant.

In October 2008, he was hospitalized after accidentally overdosing on sleeping pills. Thomas said a year of sleepless nights over the lawsuit and the Knicks’ struggles led him to turn to sleep medicine. When one pill didn’t suffice, he took more. He doesn’t say how many.

“If you put anybody in that position and you send them through what I went through in that year, if they tell you they’re sleeping well, they’re lying,” he said.

‘You should take the job’

His mentors, Thomas said, encouraged him to take the plunge into the college game. The advisers included former Pistons coach Chuck Daly, who died from cancer about a month after Thomas took the FIU job in April.

He also turned to Bob Knight, his coach at Indiana when the Hoosiers won the 1981 NCAA championship, as well as his high school coach Gene Pingatore. Longtime friend Mike Krzyzewski, the Duke and U.S. Olympic coach, gave moral support.

“I was getting great advice from all of them,” Thomas said. "They were all saying, ‘You should take the job.’ "

Asked whether the sexual harassment suit gave him pause on hiring Thomas, FIU athletic director Pete Garcia said: "I was asked in a press conference, ‘How much research did you do?’ Well, we did some, but I didn’t have to do as much because it was like, ’I’m hiring someone I know.’ "

Thomas, who signed a five-year deal worth $1.25 million, wanted to show he didn’t take this post for the money and donated his first year’s pay (about $250,000) to the school.

Often under fire

Sam Smith, a writer who covered the NBA for 25 years for the Chicago Tribune, noted that Thomas’ contemporaries, among them Michael Jordan and the Celtics’ Kevin McHale, have been unsuccessful in managing NBA teams.

But it’s Thomas who “has a scarlet letter around him,” Smith said.

Thomas coached the Pacers from 2000-03, making the playoffs three years in a row, but was fired after one-time rival Larry Bird became president. Had he been allowed to stay, Thomas believes he would have won an NBA championship.

“That one hurt because you basically got fired for personal reasons,” he said.

To coach the Pacers, Thomas had to relinquish ownership of the CBA, which he had from 1998 to 2000. He put the CBA in a blind trust and it folded.

“It just died a natural death,” he said.

Garcia said Thomas wants to leave a legacy at FIU the way Knight did at Indiana and Krzyzewski has at Duke.

“They built those programs . . . from nothing,” Garcia said. “Isiah’s legacy in the basketball world is still to be continued. He sees what he can do here, building from scratch. And this will be Isiah Thomas’ program. There’s no doubt about it.”