Glen Grunwald did his best to pull a Houdini act on Rockets officials last week in Las Vegas.
According to a report in the Houston Chronicle, the Knicks general manager refused to either answer the door at his Mandarin Oriental hotel room or come to the front desk and accept the three-year, $25.1 million offer sheet Jeremy Lin had signed with the Rockets.
Houston also attempted to try to present it to Grunwald at either summer league practice or the Knicks’ game, but Grunwald wasn’t in attendance at either and declined to set up a meeting.
It got to the point where the Rockets eventually went to the league office to determine what to do next.
“We asked the league for help,” Rockets general manager Daryl Morey said in the report. “They gave us advice. We did what they suggested. They say they consider it a team-to-team issue.”
Eventually, the Rockets believed the offer sheet had been delivered by 11:59 p.m. on July 13, giving the Knicks until the same time last Tuesday to match.
The Knicks countered by acquiring Raymond Felton to replace Lin, and later declined to match the offer sheet and allowed Lin to head off to Houston. But Morey wasn’t convinced he would get Lin — whom the Knicks picked up off waivers after the Rockets cut him before last season began — until Grunwald called Lin and told him the Knicks wouldn’t match Houston’s offer.
“I had seen the reports, but the only thing I thought was concrete was when Glen told Jeremy,” Morey said. “I knew then they wouldn’t tell Jeremy unless it was done. That was the first time I really thought it.”