James Borrego is next to speak with the Knicks about their vacancy.
The Pelicans assistant, who served as head coach of the Hornets for four non-playoff seasons, received permission from his team to interview with the Knicks, a source confirmed.
Borrego, 47, is a client of CAA, the agency with close ties to Knicks front office leaders Leon Rose and William Wesley.
He’ll become at least the fourth candidate to interview for the job left open by the surprising dismissal of Tom Thibodeau, who was canned soon after leading the franchise to its first conference finals in 25 years.
Other interviewees include two coaches fired last season – Taylor Jenkins, also a CAA client, and Mike Brown, who guided the Kings.
Timberwolves assistant Micah Nori also conducted a formal interview.
Borrego – like Brown – derives from the Gregg Popovich coaching tree, starting as a Spurs assistant video coordinator in 2003. He was also an assistant with the Hornets and Magic.
Borrego got his big break in 2018 when named the head coach at Charlotte, where he finished with a 138-163 record. His tenure spanned Kemba Walker, Terry Rozier, LaMelo Ball and Gordon Hayward.
The Knicks tried unsuccessfully to pry multiple head coaches under contract, getting rejections from other teams to interview Jason Kidd, Billy Donovan, Chris Finch, Quin Snyder and Ime Udoka.
Kidd remains a possibility since he’s angling for an extension with the Mavericks that hasn’t gained traction. A source said the Mavericks’ front office informed Kidd it wants to address his contract later in the offseason.
The Mavericks’ coaching staff is in flux with Kidd’s lead assistant Sean Sweeney leaving for the Spurs and two others – Jared Dudley and God Shammgod – drawing interest from other teams.
“I don’t know what they’re going to do with their coaching staff,” Andy Miller, an agent for Klutch Sports who represents all three of the aforementioned assistants, said on SiriusXM NBA Radio.“And I don’t know, again, this goes back to philosophically, with regard to Jason, I don’t really know where Jason is in his process with the Knicks, because I don’t really know what the process is with the Knicks — not because I don’t know, but I don’t know if the Knicks even know what the process is.
“So, it’s really hard to tell.”
Miller, a veteran agent who once represented Kevin Garnett, Chauncey Billups and Kristaps Porzingis, said the Knicks have “created an enormous amount of resentment between general managers” for trying to poach head coaches under contract.
The requests from the Knicks compelled other teams to negotiate extensions with their coaches, including Udoka in Houston.
“There’s a fake brotherhood that goes on where they’re all one happy family and they’re all friendly with each other, but they’re all competing with each other,” Miller said. “And there is an absolute resentment that is created by the way that they’ve handled this process. Even in Houston as an example, I’m confident in saying Ime would have and deserved to get a new contract, so they were probably going down that path anyway, but when called for permission to interview with New York he got even greater leverage and he probably got an even better deal than Houston wanted to present to him at that point.”
