Tom Thibodeau is gone, fired by the Knicks’ executive leadership team on Tuesday after a five-year tenure as their head coach.
The 67 year old, who ended this season as the NBA’s oldest head coach when the San Antonio Spurs’ 76-year-old, five-time league champion Gregg Popovich officially retired in May due to health issues, grew up in New Britain, Connecticut as an avid Knicks fan.
Thibodeau, a Knicks assistant coach from 1996 to 2003, was instrumental in reinventing the franchise when he was hired as their head coach in July 2020 from a dysfunctional source of frustration for its ardent supporters to a perennial playoff contender which ascended to the upper tier of the league.
Under the man commonly known as Thibs, the Knicks made the playoffs four of his five seasons with them, including the last three. He guided the Knicks to the third-most postseason wins in the league over the past three seasons (23), trailing only the Boston Celtics and Denver Nuggets during that span. His 24 playoff wins (24-23 overall) are 17 more than the Knicks’ previous 13 coaches combined.
But that wasn’t enough for team owner James Dolan and Knicks president of basketball operations Leon Rose, to bring Thibodeau back for a sixth season. As was put forth on the pages of this publication by this writer before the Knicks opened the playoffs versus the Detroit Pistons on April 19, there was chatter among credible sources that Thibodeau was aware the Knicks higher ups were considering moving on from him.
Logically, it wasn’t so much his aforementioned results but philosophical differences with members of the Knicks’ front office, namely Rose and William Wesley, the latter the team’s executive vice president – senior basketball advisor, when it came to issues including player usage, player development, lineups and system structure.
Rose and Wesley, who deserve effusive praise for raising the Knicks from the depths of the standings when they were hired by Dolan in March 2020 to replace former team president Steve Mills, are near mute in speaking with the media and merely released a statement upon terminating Thibodeau which in part read:
“Our organization is singularly focused on winning a championship for our fans. This pursuit led us to the difficult decision to inform Tom Thibodeau that we’ve decided to move in another direction.”
It might be a long time before Rose or Thibodeau publicly discuss granular details why a coaching change was made. That public discussion may never be had. Because of Rose’s CIA operative-like silence, maddening to many members of the press, names being mentioned on sports talk shows, in print and on social media as candidates to be the Knicks’ new head coach are just speculation and agents lobbying for their clients.
What is a fact is that Thibodeau was the right man at the right time for the Knicks. The success and shortcomings of the team are equally shared by him, Rose and the players who did not deliver when the opportunities presented themselves. And whoever follows Thibs must at minimum exceed his accomplishments to justify his jarring yet foreseeable ending with the team.
Three weeks ago, on a comfortably warm spring night in Midtown Manhattan, the atmosphere outside Madison Square Garden was simultaneously euphoric, chaotic, contrived and reckless.
The sidewalks and streets directly surrounding MSG were flooded with fans outfitted in New York Knicks apparel. Revelers occupying Seventh and Eighth Avenues shouted and chanted. Some climbing up poles and standing on automobiles that had come to a virtual standstill as horns and music emanating from the vehicles blared loudly. Reverberations of “Let’s go Knicks” were deafening.
The celebration was a result of the team’s 119-81 thumping of the Boston Celtics in Game 6 of their best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinals series, earning the Knicks 4-2 win and their first appearance in the conference finals since 2000. Right now, that May 16 evening seems so long ago after palpable optimism and justified hope among millions of ardent fans that the Knicks would be playing in the NBA Finals which begins tonight (Thursday).
It dissipated with a 4-2 series loss in the Indiana Pacers in the conference finals last Saturday. Now uncertainty hovers over the Knicks again.