INDIANAPOLIS – If the Nets are indeed intrigued by Isiah Thomas for a front-office or coaching position, and they must be because they intend to talk with him, then they might want to make a move quickly. Although he is interested in the Nets, they are not alone in their interest.
“I’m clearly interested,” Thomas said of a position with the Nets, who became even more attractive Sunday when they landed the top pick in the draft. “I’ve had conversations but right now I’ve got a job. My gift is basketball and I’d like to exercise that gift.
“Clearly, any move [to an NBA team] would have to be to the right organization, one that is committed to winning philosophically,” said Thomas, who held brief discussions with Nets brass at the lottery. “So you have to pick the right spot.”
Like maybe the Nets with a talented roster and openings for a coach, president and the newly created director of basketball operations. Or the Pacers. The Pacers here have definite interest in the Hall of Fame-bound point guard as a coach with possible front-office duties. Thomas, a 12-time All-Star who was selected in 1996 as one of the league’s 50 greatest all-time players, has obvious ties to the state – he led Bobby Knight’s Indiana Hoosiers to the NCAA title in 1981. So Thomas is considered a great fit to succeed Larry Bird.
“I have interest in Isiah,” said Pacers president Donnie Walsh. “We haven’t made any decision because we’ll wait until the end of the year. But I’ve met with him as well as [Kings assistant and ex-Laker] Byron Scott and [Pacers assistant] Rick Carlisle. And those guys are the guys that are involved. I hope the timetable is appropriate. It may not be.”
The Kings have asked that any team interested in Scott make a move within the next three weeks. Should the Pacers advance past the Knicks, that could squash Scott coming to Indy. “It puts me under the gun,” conceded Walsh.
Much of it could be moot if one source close to a candidate hopeful of landing the Nets’ job is correct. That source insists that when the dust clears, the Nets will have John Thompson as director of basketball operations, Michael Jackson, who played for Thompson at Georgetown and who has strong ties to YankeeNets chairman Harvey Schiller, as the team president and Kenny Smith, who won two title rings with Houston, as the head coach.
Thompson and Smith both interviewed recently with the Nets and Jackson has been hired by YankeeNets for TV and marketing work.
If Thomas is headed to Indiana, then Thompson could make sense. Schiller and Katz both claimed they want the basketball operations guy in place quickly. Two candidates, the Lakers Mitch Kupchak and the Pacers’ David Kahn, remained obliged to their current teams in the playoffs.
Kahn, the Pacers’ GM who was a driving force in the planning and construction of Conseco Fieldhouse, also is under consideration by the Nets for a front-office post. He also has held preliminary talks.
“I’m going to sit and talk with them, I assume at some point after the playoffs,” Kahn said.