An Ode to Thibodeau

(a.k.a., one for me)

Good morning! I know, I know…I said on Saturday that you were getting a weekend edition of the newsletter in place of the usual Monday version. Well, I lied. You’re getting a Monday newsletter after all, but it comes with a caveat. Allow me to explain.

On The Ringer’s Rewatchables podcast, in which Bill Simmons & friends talk about their favorite old movies, they have a running bit called “one for us.” While almost every episode is about a movie that most people enjoy and consider a true rewatchable, every so often, they’ll do an episode about a movie that may not be very popular in the public consciousness, but that one or more of the hosts absolutely adore. So consider this newsletter “one for me,” as it covers a topic near and dear to my heart but which most people have little to no interest in. Thanks in advance for not minding.

Today is also significant for another reason, in that I’m proud to introduce, for the rest of this season and possibly beyond, a new sponsor for this newsletter: The Law Offices of Weiss & Rosenbloom. You’re already familiar with Weiss & Rosenbloom if you’ve listened to any recent episodes of the KFS Podcast, in which they (as personal injury attorneys, fittingly) have been sponsoring our Personal Injury Report. Well, they’re now doing the same thing here.

Aside from being a great attorney, Barry Weiss is also a huge Knicks fan. If you think you have a case, give him a call, but be ready to spend at least some time talking hoops in the process.

🗣 News & Notes ✍️

🏀 The Knicks officially guaranteed the contracts of both Ryan Arcidiacono and Svi Mykhailiuk for the remainder of the season. Both men originally signed with only partial guarantees, but now they will count as minimum salaries against the cap for the rest of the year.

Is this notable? Not really, other than that it shows the team clearly likes both guys. If they need to make a 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 trade where multiple players are coming back to New York in the deal, one or both can still be waived, with the only difference now being that more money will count against the books. With the Knicks nearly $8 million below the luxury tax, however, that isn’t really relevant.

🏙 Game Night 🏙

Who: Bucks

Where: MSG

When: 7:30 pm

Weiss & Rosenbloom Personal Injury Report: Some significant news on Sunday…for the first time in nearly two weeks, RJ Barrett has been upgraded from OUT, and is now listed as DOUBTFUL. It sounds like he’s getting close. Meanwhile, based on Tom Thibodeau’s comments yesterday, it seems like Obi Toppin may rejoin the rotation after being situational the last two games. If that’s the case, one figures that either Isaiah Hartenstein or Jericho Sims will be on the outside looking in. For Milwaukee, Khris Middleton is likely out.

TV: MSG

Halftime Zoom: Click here to enter.

An Ode to Thibodeau

On Friday night in Toronto, coaching the same team that played in the first ever professional basketball game in the same city where that game was played some 76 years ago, Tom Thibodeau got his 100th win as Knicks head coach.

There is an appropriateness in that cross-section of facts.

Throughout his coaching career, Thibodeau has been defined more than anything by a demeanor that can politely be called “old school.” I don’t know exactly how the game was coached 76 years ago, but my guess is that Thibs would have fit right in.

It also isn’t enough say he is a man from a different era. More accurately, he is a coach better suited for a different sport. From the outside looking in, Thibodeau seems far closer to Bear Bryant or Knute Rockne than Steve Kerr or Tyronn Lue. We’ve seen more recent coaches with that sort of demeanor win in New York, but again, Bill Parcells and Tom Coughlin dealt in helmets, not hightops.

With global superstars and smaller locker rooms filled with guys who all have their own handlers and hangers-on, basketball is different, and has been for some time now. Coaches still have to be hard-asses some of the time, but more seems to be required for ultimate success. Sure enough, the four NBA men who have won more than half of the league’s titles over the last four decades have done so by blending the traditionally demanding nature of coaching with other qualities. Phil Jackson is the Zen Master who found unique ways to get through to some of the greatest (and most egotistical) superstars ever. Pat Riley was a master motivator, showing his players he’d stop at nothing to win, once nearly drowning himself in front of his team to prove his point. Gregg Popovich could be the ultimate taskmaster one minute, harkening back to his days of active duty in the US Air Force, and then break bread and drink (very good) wine with his team the next. Steve Kerr once took a punch from Michael Jordan and lived to talk about, which gives his humble demeanor extra added weight.

Tom Thibodeau has never had any interest in going outside the box in these sorts of ways. His players have described him as very funny in private, but there is no mistaking his leadership style: direct and to the point, with no fat or filler around the edges. Whereas it’s easy to see Steph Curry or Tim Duncan having genuine love and affection for the men who helped lead them to rings, Thibodeau’s leadership style is much more transactional in nature. As Tony Soprano once told his nephew in a fit of rage as he tried desperately to maintain control over his operation, “You don’t gotta love me…but you will respect me.”

For Thibs, that respect is borne out of several places, but it starts here: his players know that no coach anywhere is more dedicated to their craft than he is. In that sense, the respect is mutual. It may be his way or the highway, but Thibodeau has historically received so much buy-in because his way so often leads to winning. His players know that at the end of the day, that is all the man cares about. Agree or disagree with his methods, there is nothing easier to respect than that.

And win he has, on a level not seen very often in NBA history. Entering tonight’s game, Tom Thibodeau is 42nd on the all time wins list with 452 victories, but less than half of the coaches ahead of him are as many games over .500 (56.0 and counting) a he is. If he keeps his job past this season and continues to win more games than he loses, he has a good chance to enter a fairly exclusive club of just 20 coaches who have at least 500 regular season victories while staying at least 50 games over .500. Of those 20, 11 are in the Hall of Fame, while four more active coaches - Pop, Doc Rivers, Erik Spoelstra and Rick Carlisle¹ - are locks to end up in Springfield as well. Ditto for the recently retired Mike D’Antoni. There’s also K.C. Jones, who, had he not already been inducted into the Hall as a player in 1989, would likely have gotten in as a coach after leading the Celtics to two titles in the 80’s and three other Finals appearances in his coaching career.

That’s 17 out of 20. There are also two other coaches well over 50 games above .500 and soon to be in the .500 wins club, Mike Budenholzer (451 wins) and Steve Kerr (449 wins). Kerr is a lock to make the Hall, and while Bud has his detractors, he’s also guided a team to a title and is a two-time Coach of the Year winner. Among the 10 multi-time winners of that award, four are in the Hall and two more (Pop and D’Antoni) are locks. Of the other four, two finished their careers under .500 (Gene Shue and Hubie Brown, at 38.5 games under and 35.5 games under, respectively) and have no titles. The ninth, Budenholzer, is 72 games over .500 with one chip already and maybe more coming. The 10th is Thibodeau.

At this moment, I’d wager that Thibs sticks around until next season and joins Bud and Kerr in the 500 wins / 50 games over .500 club, which would bring that group’s total to 23 men barring anything unforeseen. And yet, I wonder if he becomes just the fourth member of that group who doesn’t end up getting enshrined in Springfield, joining Mike Fratello, Stan Van Gundy and Scott Brooks.

Those are some darn good names. Fratello won COTY honors once, as did Brooks, who like Van Gundy led a team to the Finals. At the same time, none were ever revered as among the very best in their professions when they were active.

Thibodeau has never been seen in the same light as Pop, Kerr or Spo, but he is seen as perhaps the best floor-raiser in the sport. For more than a decade, the same refrain has followed him around: if nothing else, he’ll get you wins. It reads more like a backhanded compliment than anything else, as if the juice isn’t worth the squeeze in his particular case. The reasons for that are well-documented, and the list isn’t a short one.

Is that fair? Perhaps yes, perhaps no, but either way, it’s part of what makes this, his 11th season helming a team, so fascinating. Unlike years past, he is finally succeeding on the backs of young players, with seven of the nine players of his healthy rotation in their fifth year of service time or earlier. We’ll see whether that continues, but so far, this season has gone a long way to disrupting at least one long-held Thibodeau narrative.

To me though, the most impressive piece of his resume has nothing to do with who he plays or how many total wins he ends up with. It is that in a city where good coaches come to die, Thibs has not only survived, but arguably thrived in the face of long odds.

Courtesy of Basketball Reference, here’s a list of every Knicks head coach since Jeff Van Gundy with two sets of data: their resume in New York, and their resume at all other NBA coaching stops.

Of the 13 coaches on the list, 10 coached elsewhere in the league either before New York, after New York, or both. Of those 10, all but the inept Kurt Rambis carry non-Knicks winning percentages of at least 40 percent. Despite those accolades away from the Big Apple, only two of the 13 have come here and won more than they’ve lost: Thibs, and Mike Woodson.

Woodson is often brought up as a counterargument to anyone who says Thibs has overcome insurmountable odds to win here, in this city, and under this owner. And Woody, to be clear, did a wonderful job. He also inherited a veteran-laden team with an in-his-prime superstar. Perhaps just as notably, arguably his biggest coaching decision in New York was to take the formula that worked so well one season - playing Melo at the four - and completely upend it the next.

That wasn’t all his doing, but it certainly contributed to his undoing, and he hasn’t had an NBA head coaching job since despite being just 55 when he was let go.

As for everyone else on the list - a group that includes two Hall-of-Famers (three if you count D’Antoni) and four former Coaches of the Year - just take a look at the differences between their winning percentages here verses everywhere else. Some of the discrepancies are staggering.

Just like some of those failures were unavoidable based on the environments they entered, some of Thibodeau’s success here is due to the situation he came into. Leon Rose had just been hired and given full autonomy to run the organization, starting with his handpicked coach. Everyone was given the chance to start on the same page from day one. They also weren’t tethered to any bad contracts or disruptive personalities. Thibs had as clean a slate as you’ll find to lay down a foundation - his foundation as he saw fit.

But that foundation was laid for a team picked to finish with the fewest wins in basketball. He nearly doubled those expectations in year one, eventually fell just short of meeting them by the end of a tumultuous year-two, and is now well on his way to exceeding them by a decent margin once again.

And now, with 100 wins and a winning record in New York, he joins just four Knick coaches in the last 66 years who can make both of those claims: Red Holzman, Pat Riley, Jeff Van Gundy and Woodson. If he can stay above .500 for the rest of the season and make it to a fourth as head coach in New York, he has a good chance of getting up to 5th place on the franchise’s all time wins list, trailing only Holzman, Van Gundy, Riley and Joe Lapchick. Not terrible company.

Those four all led the Knicks to at least one Finals, of course. As of now, the smart money says that probably won’t happen for Thibs, although who the heck knows for sure. Since Jalen Brunson said these words…

Knicks Videos @sny_knicks

"I know he's going to get a lot of the blame. It's on us. We're the players out there battling. His job is to put us in positions, which he's done" - Jalen Brunson on Tom Thibodeau

…and put the onus on the players to do their jobs, the Knicks have the second best net rating in the NBA. Not bad for the Mid-Three & Co.

Alas, this roster is still missing that elusive superstar to put them in the championship conversation, which brings us back to the beginning of Thibodeau’s coaching journey, and the part that is always likely to define his career. While Pop had Duncan, Spo had LeBron and Kerr has Steph, Thibs inherited a young man who he helped becomes the youngest MVP in league history. Had Derrick Rose stayed healthy, we likely wouldn’t be having this conversation, as the Bulls would have spent the last decade competing for titles, and Thibs would be on his way to the Hall, no questions asked.

Therein lies either his ultimate misfortune or his ultimate irony. Which one depends on your viewpoint. Was Rose’s injury destined to occur given his frame and aerial style of play, or was it due to Thibodeau’s belief that you go all out, all the way, right up until the final buzzer sounds?

We’ll never know for sure. All that’s certain about Thibodeau is that he will never be everyone’s cup of tea. He engenders suspicion and loathing as much or more than he inspires admiration and gratitude, often at the same time.

But on this day, in celebration of the nice round number he just achieved, we (OK, I) thank him for his service, and dispense with the pitchforks and torches, if even just for a bit.

Tomorrow is a new day, after all.

🏀

That’s it for today! If you enjoy this newsletter and like the Mets, don’t forget to subscribe to JB’s Metropolitan, or his hockey newsletter, Isles Fix. See y’all soon! #BlackLivesMatter

1. I know what you’re thinking: Carlisle doesn’t feel like the same level of lock as the other three. The numbers say otherwise. He’s 14th all time in wins, and the only coach ahead of him who isn’t in the Hall (or a lock to get there, like Pop and Doc) is Dick Motta. Carlisle is 52 wins away from passing Motta, and unlike Dick, who retired 41 games under .500, Carlisle is 59.5 games over. He’s in.