NBA Insider with Ken Berger

Cablevision shareholders on Wednesday rejected the company’s $10.6 billion bid to go private, a serious blow to the Dolan family’s effort to escape public scrutiny in running the Long Island-based cable company that owns Madison Square Garden, the Knicks, and Rangers.

The company’s three largest outside investors had opposed the privatization bid, which offered shareholders $36.26 per share. Garden chairman James Dolan has made it clear that Cablevision wouldn’t sweeten the offer if shareholders rejected it and said he was prepared to keep the company public if that happened. That means Cablevision will have to remain publicly accountable for financial decisions such as, hypothetically, releasing Jerome James after signing him to a five-year, $29 million contract in 2005.

I was just watching ESPN First Take (yes, I’m the one) before heading to N.J. to check in with the Nets before the season starts.

Why was I watching, you ask? Not to see my pal, Bob Glauber, who is packing his bags to follow the Giants to London. To be honest, I really don’t know why I was watching. But I did note that LZ Granderson of ESPN The Magazine has hopped onto my Kobe-to-the-Knicks bandwagon.

Like me, LZ wasn’t saying that the Knicks are any more than a longshot in the Kobe sweepstakes. He was merely reiterating the points I made in my column in Sunday’s paper – that if Jerry Buss fails to get a comparable superstar for Kobe, the Knicks can give them a busload of players on rookie contracts, at least $30 million in contracts expiring in the next two years, plus two first-round picks – and thus, the assets they will need to make a free-agent run at LeBron or D-Wade in a couple of years.

Dozens of readers commented on the Web version of my column, most of them calling my bluff and calling me crazy. For the record, I spoke with an Eastern Conference GM this week who shares the opinion that I’m nuts. That GM doesn’t think the Lakers will trade Kobe, period, because he thinks it doesn’t make sense to give up the best player in the NBA for anything less than the best player in the NBA. And since Kobe can’t be traded for himself, there will be no trade, the GM said.

Here are a few other interesting items around the league before I make the trek to Jersey to see if J-Kidd, Vince Carter, and Richard Jefferson are ready to be more than so-so in the East:
· Suns GM Steve Kerr was among the hundreds of thousands of San Diego residents forced to evacuate their homes in the face of the horrifying wildfires.
· NBA GMs have weighed in with predictions in their annual preseason survey. The Spurs received 37 percent of the votes as the likely NBA champions, ahead of Phoenix (26 percent), and Dallas (15 percent). Detroit (7 percent) got the most votes among Eastern Conference teams. The GMs picked LeBron James as the league MVP with 30 percent of the votes, followed by Tim Duncan (22 percent), and Kobe Bryant (19 percent). Last year’s MVP, Dirk Nowitzki, didn’t receive a single vote.
· John Hollinger of The New York Sun is back with a sobering assessment of the Knicks’ mismanagement of assets under Isiah Thomas. The latest evidence Hollinger cites is something that Alan Hahn pointed out in Tuesday’s paper – the fact that the Knicks apparently will have to release second-round pick Demetris Nichols Friday after barely giving him a look in preseason.
* Sonics rookie Kevin Durant left a preseason game against Golden State on crutches after spraining his left ankle, but Gary Washburn blogs that he's OK and will likely be back for the regular season opener.
· David Stern will be available Thursday at the Board of Governors meeting in Manhattan, where he is expected to have something to say about fallout from the Tim Donaghy scandal and possible discipline for Thomas and/or James Dolan in the wake of the sexual harassment verdict against them.