The Knicks are parting ways with team president Steve Mills.
GM Scott Perry is taking over for Mills on an interim basis, as SNY's Ian Begley first reported. Begley added that Mills and Perry were at odds over certain things ahead of Thursday's trade deadline.
According to Begley, Knicks owner James Dolan will interview new candidates for the team presidency, with Masai Ujiri expected to be at the top of the list. The 49-year-old Ujiri is currently the president of basketball operations for the Raptors and could be hard to pry away.
Per SNY sources, members of the organization started to hear about Mills' firing early Tuesday morning.
Questions about the futures of Mills and Perry have been swirling since the Knicks' awful start to the season, with Begley reporting on Dec. 11 that several people in the Knicks organization expected Mills to lose his job if the team didn't turn things around, with Perry replacing him on an interim basis.
"Steve and I have come to the decision that it would be best for him to leave his role as president of the New York Knicks," Dolan said in a statement. "We thank Steve for his many years of service to our organization and look forward to continuing our relationship with him as part of our board."
The board Dolan is referring to is the MSG standalone sports company that will exist upon the pending completion of the proposed spin-off entertainment business.
Begley reported on Jan. 23 that Mills and Perry believed before the season that the Knicks were a playoff team "and anything less than that was a disappointment." Since then, head coach David Fizdale has been fired and replaced on an interim basis with Mike Miller as the team has continued to toil at the bottom of the Eastern Conference.
When it comes to the Knicks potentially landing Ujiri to replace Mills, Begley reports that Ujiri has told confidants in the past that he'd be open to considering the Knicks job if the circumstance is right. With Ujiri under contract in Toronto, the Knicks would have to compensate the Raptors in order to hire him away.
Mills, 60, became COO of Madison Square Garden in 2003 before eventually shifting his responsibilities to the Knicks. He was named executive vice president and GM on Sept. 26, 2013, and became team president on July 14, 2017 when the team hired Perry as GM.
The Knicks, who are on a modest two-game winning streak, are 15-36 and have a winning percentage better than only the Cavaliers, Hawks, and Warriors.
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