Stephen Silas knows about fathers, sons and basketball. So the fact that he will direct a one-day clinic today for about 30 pairs of fathers and sons inside the Charlotte Bobcats' practice facility makes sense.

Silas, the 37-year-old son of Charlotte coach Paul Silas, has long had an excellent relationship with his own father. Stephen left a good job as an assistant with the Golden State Warriors last season to work for Paul as the Bobcats' lead assistant coach.

One day it's quite conceivable that the younger Silas will take over the Bobcats' head-coaching job from his father - assuming the Bobcats show steady improvement and the elder Silas, 67, leaves while still in the good graces of team owner Michael Jordan.

"I'd probably like to do this for two or three more years if I can," said Paul Silas, who earned a one-year contract extension through the 2011-12 season in February. "I'd like to get this team where I want it to be. Then if Stephen could take over, that would just be a godsend."

"One day I really want to be an NBA head coach," Stephen Silas said. "That's the dream. The best preparation for that, though, is to be the best assistant I can possibly be."

The already-full clinic that Stephen Silas will conduct tonight - with his own dad in attendance - will undoubtedly wake some echoes. The two Silases have long bonded through the sport.

"Basketball has always been part of our lives," Stephen Silas said. "I was able to connect with Dad from an early age through basketball - either watching it or playing it. He wasn't around a lot because of his own NBA schedule, but when he was I always wanted him at my games."

The elder Silas was an NBA all-star and voracious 6-foot-7 rebounder who won three NBA championships as a player in a 16-year career. His son - four inches shorter and a whole lot thinner - saw his own basketball career max out playing Ivy League college ball at Brown.

Like many fathers and sons, the two men shot baskets together. Rather, Stephen shot and Paul rebounded.

"He was a bad shooter," Stephen said, flashing the contagious smile that he and his father share. "He didn't want two bad shooters in the family, so I just shot and he just rebounded, since that's what we were each good at."

After Stephen graduated from Brown, he worked for the NBA Retired Players Association until his father called with an offer for an entry-level scouting position with the old Charlotte Hornets (a team Paul also coached first on an interim and then on a permanent basis).

Stephen jumped at it. He ended up working for his father as an NBA assistant in Charlotte, New Orleans and Cleveland - where he helped mold a young rookie named LeBron James. At each stop, his outstanding work ethic eventually muted the "You Only Got Hired Because You're the Coach's Son" snickers.

Stephen was a scout for the Hornets on the darkest day of his father's career with the team, in 2000, when starting guard Bobby Phills died in Charlotte after speeding and losing control of his Porsche.

Kendall Phills, Bobby's widow, has a younger sister named Keryl. Stephen Silas met Keryl about six months after Bobby Phills' death and ended up marrying her. So had Bobby Phills lived, he would have been Stephen's brother-in-law.

Today's clinic is about fathers and sons and tailored more to Bobcats' VIPs. Silas plans two more community events for at-risk youth later this summer. And, trying not to leave anyone out, he also will run a father-daughter basketball clinic this summer as well.

"That's what I have, after all," Silas said, "two beautiful daughters, ages 6 and 3."

The girls don't see their father as much as they'd like, however. Silas is usually at a gym somewhere - watching film or working out players, often in individual sessions scheduled for the players' convenience.

Silas will help conduct voluntary workouts for the half-dozen or so Bobcats players who plan to be in Charlotte during June. And he is going to Italy later this month to work at a camp for draft-eligible European players, getting an inside look at some of the players the Bobcats may draft with picks No.9, 19 and 39 in the 2011 draft.

At Golden State, Silas helped improve some of the Warriors' young core, particularly guards Monta Ellis and Charlotte's own Stephen Curry.

"My coaching style is a lot like my dad as far as giving people confidence and letting them explore their game," Silas said. "I really like to make young guys better."

Silas is strong with the Xs and Os of basketball, has an encyclopedic memory for set plays and serves as the Bobcats' unofficial "offensive coordinator." But he also appreciates the intuitive way his father knows how to handle players. While Larry Brown's philosophy was something along the lines of "tear a player down before building him back up," Paul Silas has always been more of a "feel-good" coach. He can be blunt, but he also smiles a lot.

While Paul was out of the league and in semi-retirement in the Lake Norman area, Stephen was making his own way in the NBA. But when Paul got the Bobcats' job suddenly in December when Jordan fired Brown, he called his son and said, "Look, I need you."

Like a dutiful son, Stephen came back home.

"He had been in the league for five years while I wasn't there," Paul Silas said. "He knew everybody."

Now both Silases hope that Stephen will stay in Charlotte a long time - talking basketball, coaching the Bobcats and occasionally shooting around with each other.

But only if Paul promises to just get the rebounds.