Jim Dolan this week sat down with Mike Vaccaro of the New York Post for a rare one-on-one interview, which was published today. Their conversation included a couple of interesting tidbits (he’s hired McKinsey & Co. to look at both the Knicks and the Rangers, in order to “reprocess” them) and at least one amusing image (former Rangers coach John Tortorella complaining to Dolan about his cable service). But it also included some perfect Dolan quotes. Here are five of them.
On how great Madison Square Garden is:
“I’ve been traveling with the Eagles, I’ve seen 25 buildings the last four months, and nothing comes close to this.”
On whether he’s more patient than other owners:
“I really don’t compare myself with other owners. I’ll bet you I’m more patient than Mikhail [Prokhorov] is of his team.”
On why he thinks Isiah Thomas deserves another shot, but won’t hire him again:
“Do I think he deserves another shot? Yeah. It just can’t be here. And I think he’s talented. I think he’s particularly talented at finding basketball talent. But I think he’s probably dismayed at this point. But I don’t see him coming back to New York. I couldn’t do that to him, and I couldn’t do that to the organization. He would probably do it as my friend but I couldn’t do it to him or his family. And you know what the press would do here. We’re interested in getting better and that situation would be such a distraction that it would actually hinder our ability to get better.”
On which song he’d most like to perform with the Eagles:
“Whoa … I love so many Eagles songs …”
On his band:
“I don’t play any solo stuff in my band. I CAN solo. I can play the stuff and if you heard it you might think it’s OK, pretty good. But the other guitar players in my band — one of whom is my son [Aidan] — are much, much better guitar players than I am. To put the best sound out there, they play the solos.”
