His title is NBA president of basketball operations — essentially, the No. 4 man in the league, replacing Stu Jackson — and his duties will be a bit different this go-round.
The reason is manpower and global reach: “When I left, we had maybe 11 or 12 people, and now … well, I haven’t counted them yet,” Thorn says. “But it involves all game operations, referees, scheduling, analytics and everything overseas, which has grown enormously. So it’s the same things, only a lot more of it.”
Yet, in some ways, it could be easier than the last time, when he spent hours a day watching videos of players gone wild, and being the arbiter in a daily game of crime and punishment.
“Nowadays,” Thorn says without amusement, “I think we have two or three people that just watch out for things like uniform violations.”
Reported by Dave D’Alessandro of the Newark Star-Ledger
