Skiles didn’t have a good relationship with Orlando forward Tobias Harris while they were together in Milwaukee. Harris is a restricted free agent this summer and could command a $12 million-$14 million annual salary on the market.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/sources--scott-skiles-the-frontrunner-to-become-magic-s-next-coach-165227943.html

Mentioning because Harris is one of those RFAs that has been linked to the Knicks and supposedly wants to play here.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/scott-skiles-milwaukee-bucks-agree-part-ways-effective-170538871--nba.html

Yahoo Sports
Ball Don't Lie
Scott Skiles, Milwaukee Bucks agree to ‘part ways’ effective immediately
Dan Devine By Dan Devine
Jan 8, 2013 12:00 PM
Ball Don't Lie

When Skiles was tapped to replace Danny Ainge with the 1999-00 Phoenix Suns, the team was 13-7; under Skiles, they clamped down on defense, ripped off a 40-22 finish to the season and bounced the San Antonio Spurs in the first round before falling to the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers. After going 91-53 and making the playoffs in his first two years in Phoenix before winding up with the short end of the Jason Kidd-for-Stephon Marbury stick after year 2, Skiles wore out his welcome and was fired after sputtering to a 25-26 start in 2001-02.
He took over a super-young Chicago Bulls team 16 games into the 2003-04 season, suffered through a 19-47 finish and, thanks in part to a sterling rookie class headlined by Ben Gordon and Luol Deng, led a 24-game turnaround in his first full season that began a string of three straight playoff berths. Again, though, by year five, Skiles had worn out his welcome in the Bulls locker room, and he was let go following a 9-16 start to the '07-'08 season.

After a year away, Skiles was hired to take the reins of a Bucks team that had performed poorly under coaches Terry Stotts and Larry Krystowiak over the previous two seasons, and again, sparked a notable improvement, dragging the team from the bottom of the league in defensive efficiency to the middle of the NBA pack and coaxing out an eight-game jump in the standings despite losing emerging star center Andrew Bogut for more than half the season. The following year, with Bogut back to man the middle and rookie point guard Jennings at the controls, the team rose to send in points allowed per 100 possessions, finished 46-36 — 20 games better than the year before Skiles arrived — and returned to the playoffs for the first time in four years, taking the Atlanta Hawks to seven games in the first round.

The Bucks faltered over the next two seasons, though, continuing to play meat-grinder defense that made opponents sweat but consistently turning in abysmal offensive showings of their own, ranking among the league's least potent offensive units thanks to Jennings' sub-40 percent shooting, Bogut's depreciating post game and disappearing free-throw stroke after injuring his right elbow late in the 2010 season, the absence of injured past-years floor-spacer Michael Redd, and a lot of shots taken by dudes like Corey Maggette and Drew Gooden. The bottom-of-the-league O outweighed the top-of-the-league D, bringing the Bucks back under .500 and out of playoff contention.

This prompted last season's big trade that shipped Bogut and Stephen Jackson to the Golden State Warriors in exchange for Ellis, Ekpe Udoh and Kwame Brown, a deal aimed at kickstarting the team's offense. It worked, but also resulted in a defensive drop-off whenever Ellis and Jennings shared the floor, and Milwaukee went 12-9 after the deal to miss the playoffs for the second straight season. The 2012-13 season started off better, with the Bucks opening up 6-2 through the season's first two weeks while both scoring and defending like one of the league's dozen best teams. Their fortunes soon turned, though, as the Bucks went 2-7 over their next nine games, six of which were on the road, to fall back to earth.

More damningly, as SB Nation's Tom Ziller notes, while the Ellis/Jennings backcourt is putting up nice volume stats, combining for 37.2 points and 11.4 assists per game, their dual shot-jacking (34.5 field-goal attempts per game total, with both shooting exactly 40 percent) has scuttled any hope of an efficient offense, making Milwaukee a feast-or-famine, fits-and-starts team for much of the season dependent on ramped-up D to compete. The result — after the team's current four-game slide, capped by a 15-point loss to the division rival Indiana Pacers on Saturday in Skiles' final game on the Bucks bench — is a 16-16 record, the league's ninth-best defense and its fourth-worst offense. In other words, ostensibly more of the same, despite some different faces in different places.

The endpoint of Skiles' malaise in Milwaukee was captured well on Tuesday morning by Jeremy Schmidt at Bucksketball:

Less than a month ago, I asked Skiles if he could do anything other than hope his best players would start making shots when they were having a bad game. He asked if I had any suggestions and then simply said no. Does that sound like a team you’d want to coach? Or a coach that seems like he’s going to be able to get something more out of his two best players?
No, it really doesn't. For Bucks fans' sake, here's hoping that Jim Boylan's able to come up with a couple of answers over the next 50 games; if he can't, Milwaukee could find itself moving from the fringes of postseason contention to the outside looking in once again.

But, yeah, I don't think Skiles makes sense for that Orlando roster. If I were Orlando, I would've checked in with Thibs.

smackeddog wrote:It's kind of annoying that the position we seem to have most available options for (Harris, Carroll, Winslow), is the only position where we are actually set (Melo, Early)

The way the game is being played in the NBA today is positionless for the most part. Its all about having 5 guys who are multi-skilled on offense and have good lateral quickness on defense. In todays NBA, Harris, Winslow and Melo can all play together at the sametime si long as you have a primary ball handler to run the point.

Knicks1969 wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

smackeddog wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:Magic just named Skiles coach. If the past is any indication they will get off to a hot start, then crash and burn in short order.

I wonder why they didn't just wait a few days and try and land Thibs

Might have to do with Thibs relationship with Bulls mgmt. That and his willingness to ride his starters until the wheels come off. Damned good coach but very set in his ways.

That old school style is not going to do Thib well.

And yet the Bulls have done well the past 5 years.

Every year or so a certain team or two does well, and everyone starts saying: "oh, you have to become more like that team- it's the new way to be". Then the next year or so a different type of team has success and suddenly everyone starts insisting thats the new way and thats how you need to be. Remember when it was 3 stars (The KG, Pierce, Allen Celtics era), then it was the no stars era (the Pistons), then it was the 3 stars era (The Heat), etc etc-