Rod Thorn keeping options open as he leaves Nets 'in very capable hands'
Published: Saturday, July 17, 2010, 7:00 AM
By Dave D'Alessandro/Star-Ledger Columnist The Star-Ledger
Mitsu Yasukawa/ The Star-Ledger'I think Avery’s going to do a really good job coaching,' says outgoing Nets president Rod Thorn, right, with new Nets coach Avery Johnson.
He came to work on his final day wearing blue sweats and a red tennis shirt containing the ubiquitous swoosh, apologizing for his attire because he had just come from shoulder rehab.
Rod Thorn was as casual as his shirt, moving seamlessly and cheerfully from one anecdote to another over 90 minutes, invoking a hundred names and re-telling a hundred memories that he had encountered and kept over his five decades in two leagues.
He laughed often — at times uproariously. His told tales about a life inside the NBA centrifuge, and it didn’t seem to bother him much that he was going to wake up today for the first time in about 45 years with nothing to do, at least in terms of basketball-related tasks.
He and his wife will go for a walk in the nature preserve behind his house in Westchester, Thorn figures. Maybe he’ll swim. And after that, he said, he’s open for anything.
“I’ve had some calls here in the last two or three weeks that have been interesting,” said the former Nets president, 69, who retired from the team Friday.
“But I want to see what kind of options I have, whether it’s to stay in (management) or maybe do something somewhere else. Right now I have some (offers, mostly in broadcasting), and we’ll see if any others come along.”
As untroubled as he is by his own prospects, he is very confident that the team he leaves behind is at the starting gate of what Pat Riley calls the “innocent climb” — that intangible, chemical reaction that triggers a significant move up the standings.
“I think it’s good,” Thorn said of the team’s future under Avery Johnson and Billy King. “I think Avery’s going to do a really good job coaching for them, and I think Billy’s going to do a really good job. And now, you have the wherewithal, if maybe there are some pieces that you need that’ll put you in the luxury tax, you just get them.”
Indeed, having a wealthy owner is what it’s all about in the NBA nowadays. That, Thorn admits, might be something he’ll come to regret, walking away at a time when they have a guy who is willing to pay the price of doing a billionaire’s business.
But what does Mikhail Prokhorov’s group not know about the NBA that might hurt them?
“Mikhail has owned a team in Europe,” Thorn said, referring to CSKA Moscow. “Mikhail was like the Yankees of European ball, in that we’re going to get all the best players. Here, with the salary cap, you have to go about it a little different way, and my advice as I gave it over the last two or three months is, you don’t get in the position the Nets are cap-wise but once about every 10 years. So take advantage of it. But, be prudent.”He has been preaching conservative management for years now. Some thought it was because of Bruce Ratner’s tight purse strings, but the truth is, Thorn was extremely cautious when it came to spending his owner’s money almost every step of the way over the past 10 years.
Only when he had a chance to elevate his team a notch or two or three — the Jason Kidd trade, the Vince Carter trade, their subsequent re-signings, the Alonzo Mourning deal of ’03, the futile free-agent pursuit of 2010 — did Thorn pull the trigger.
Those opportunities didn’t come around often, no matter how proactive an executive might be.
But now he has put King and Johnson in position to take the same kind of giant step, and it doesn’t bother him that he won’t be around to find out what happens next.
Thorn had but one regret in his valediction to a decade in East Rutherford: the awkward termination of Kiki Vandeweghe, which he admitted was an ownership decision.
“As we’re changing owners, owners come in, have certain ideas about how things were and how things weren’t, because they have people talk to them about things,” Thorn said. “I think that, had it been done a little bit differently, I think Kiki might have stayed on as GM.”
Virtually every Nets memory was a fond one, especially as he recalled Kidd (“You just had a special feeling for him”), Carter (“He saved us. He kept us competitive”), and Lawrence Frank (“Always prepared, working himself into exhaustion”).
“It’s been a heck of a tour here these last 10 years,” Thorn said. “It’s always hard to leave some place, particularly some place you put so much into. But I think we’re left in very capable hands, and I think the Nets have some good times ahead of them.”
By now, everyone has pretty much figured out why he’s leaving. There are about a dozen good reasons, none of them that really supercede Peggy Thorn’s desire to take more long walks.
“Sometimes it’s just a feeling that it’s time,” Thorn reiterated. “It’s going to be very interesting with the new ownership here. These guys, certainly on the surface, appear to be terrific. I may have second thoughts later about that part of it.
“But it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I just felt it was time. It was time for me and time for the Nets to move on in a different direction.”
Dave D'Alessandro: ddalessandro@starledger.com
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Most new owners change management. Kiki Vandeweigh was the GM, Thorn president.
