THE DIBS ON THIBS
As Tom smarts over Deng deal, Bulls’ coach may make Knick move
There are rumblings around the Chicago Bulls’ offices these days that Tom
Thibodeau already has a deal in place to coach the Knicks next season.
Well, Thibodeau is represented by CAA, the one and only firm that
Jim Dolan wants to deal with when it comes to players and coaches. But it’s extremely difficult to believe that an agreement has been struck with the former Knicks assistant to come back to New York, since he’s under contract to coach the Bulls through 2016-17.
You can just imagine the fallout if a Thibodeau-Knick deal were to be proven true. There wouldn’t be just a major tampering case here, but Thibodeau would face sanctions from the NBA, possibly preventing his move to the Garden.
But after this season, sure, Thibodeau has to be seen as a viable candidate for the Knicks’ job. As we saw with Doc Rivers’ departure from the Celtics last June to take over the L.A. Clippers, a coach under contract can still move on, for a price. In Rivers’ case it was an unprotected first-round pick that Boston will get in 2015.
By trading Luol Deng this past week for what amounted to major financial relief, the Bulls are preparing to rebuild and that certainly may influence whether Thibodeau wants to stay in Chicago or make a move to New York, if the Knicks say goodbye to Mike Woodson.
The Bulls’ front office tried to paint a picture that Thibodeau was on board with the Deng trade, but league sources say that he was kept in the dark about where they were shipping one of his all-time favorite players and about the timing of the deal. That’s the kind of maneuver that has always caused friction between the Bulls’ front-office honchos and their head coach.
At some point, we could see Thibodeau saying enough’s enough and looking to move on, with the Garden becoming a very viable landing spot. Aside from the CAA connection, Dolan might also have figured out by now that Thibodeau is one of the NBA’s top coaches. In fact, Dolan’s musical friends, the Eagles, probably have him ranked No. 1 on their all-time hits list.
WHAT A DEAL!
You can talk about the Buss family and their 10 NBA titles, but the
Silna brothers might have had the most lucrative run of any family in league history — without ever actually owning a team.
Daniel and Ozzie Silna have never put a team on the floor, but they stand to make at least $800 million.
As the New York Times reported this past week, the NBA and the Silnas are working on a deal that will end what has been called “the greatest sports deal of all time.” The Silnas once owned the ABA Spirits of St. Louis, but in 1976 were the odd men out, along with Kentucky Colonels owner John Y. Brown, when the NBA absorbed the Nets, Spurs, Pacers and Nuggets from the ABA.
Brown took the NBA’s offer of $3 million to fold his team, but the Silnas decided to negotiate their own deal and it was a doozy. It allowed them to receive a share of their former ABA partners’ TV rights — in perpetuity. Over the years, as TV revenue skyrocketed beyond David
Stern’s wildest dreams, the deal has brought them around $300 million.
With the league’s next TV deal coming up in 2016 and expected to be its richest ever, the NBA wants to stop paying Ozzie Silna, 80, and his brother Daniel, 69. The proposed deal to end their current arrangement is expected to pay them $500 million, but even then the NBA won’t be completely done with the Silnas. Under terms of the new agreement, they’re still going to get an undisclosed amount of TV revenue in the future. And here you thought the Buss family set the standard. . . . Jason Kidd loved the Knicks’ trip to London last season, mainly for one reason: It meant he had to play only one game in a week. Now Kidd is headed back to London, where his Nets play their only game over an eight-day period, against Atlanta. “Playing once in a week — that’s the way it should be for all of the older players in the league,” Kidd told me the other day. . . . The surprising Suns come into the Garden on Monday minus their top player, Eric Bled
soe, whose strong season came to a sudden halt when he had knee surger y this pa st week, putting him out until after the All-Star break. Jeff
Hornacek’s team is 16-8 with Bledsoe (18 ppg, 5.8 assists, 4.3 rebounds) and 5-6 without him. . . . It can’t be all Kevin
Love’s fault, but the Timberwolves are 0-10 in games decided by four points or less. We’re just thinking he could make a bigger difference. ... Rick Carlisle can do himself a world of good by no longer referring to the New York media as a “cesspool” and reminding Mark Cuban that one NBA title doesn’t make him the greatest owner in the history of professional sports. Nobody has been resting on his laurels more since the Mavs won it all in 2011 than their resident TV star. . . . Didn’t the Knicks know that they weren’t going to get another monster season out of J.R. Smith once he scored his new $18 million contract? Guys such as Dolan are always the last to know. . . . Toronto’s Dwane Casey didn’t want to hear it after his club lost in Indiana, two nights after fading badly in another “measuringstick game” in Miami. “Shooters’ legs, sea legs, whatever you want to call it, it was there,” he said. “We can have all the excuses but in a game like this, you’ve got to man-up and bring it.” Tough words, but so true.