Mike Fratello calls the hiring of Paul Silas "a good choice." His answer as to whether he had interest in the Cavs' job is to momentarily wonder whether that's a trick question before saying, "I would have interviewed there in a second, but obviously I wasn't a candidate."

Gordon Gund paid Fratello $5 million to save himself $10 million when he fired his head coach in 1999, three months short of the trigger date for guaranteeing the rest of Fratello's contract.

He understood business. He only had two parting complaints. One is that he says he never got a call from General Manager Jim Paxson. The other is that he left with a "style-of-play" stigma that still follows him four years later.