BREAKING: Tom Thibodeau Out as Knicks HC

Some thoughts on my head coach.

Good morning.

PSA: Barring any (more) breaking news, this will count as the newsletter for tomorrow, Wednesday, June 4. I will, however, be holding a subscriber chat tomorrow morning at 9:45 am. Be on the lookout for an email notification for when that gets started.

In a move that should not have come as a shock if you were paying careful attention, the Knicks relieved Tom Thibodeau of his coaching duties yesterday afternoon. The news was first reported by Shams.

The message from the organization was very clear: a new voice was needed. Reports emerged that this had been whispered as a possibility for some time, and that those whispers grew louder at various points during all three playoff rounds. It is quite clear that there were strong opinions within powerful corners of the organization that deviated from Thibodeau’s when it came to the rotation, lineups, and the general concept of flexibility. Leon Rose ultimately sided with those voices, although it is unclear how much of a role - if any - James Dolan had in the decision, especially given Ian Begley’s report that Dolan sat in on exit meetings with players.

The immediate aftermath of the dismissal contained two camps of opinions. On one hand, there were thoughts that the firing was a risky, reactionary and short-sided move by an organization who didn’t understand that winning at the highest level requires patience through both successful times and times of dissapointment. That camp saw a conference finals berth as all the proof necessary for Thibodeau to remain in his post. On the other hand, there are those who feel that it was time for a change even if Thibodeau may not have deserved this fate. To them, the question was less about deserving to be fired and more about whether he’d done enough to earn another shot. This year was anything but a smooth one, with questions abound about whether Thibs got the most out of what he was given.

Ultimately, the answer to whether or not this was the right move won’t be answered until the Knicks hire their next head coach. Perhaps they already have someone in mind, and that decision will come soon. Either way, this hire will be as big a decision as any Leon Rose has made since hiring Thibodeau five years ago.

In his wake, Thibs leaves behind one of the most successful coaching resumes in franchise history. He is 4th in wins, 5th in playoff wins, 4th in playoff winning percentage, 6th in overall winning percentage, and is the second longest tenured head coach since Red Holzman behind only his mentor, Jeff Van Gundy.

If nothing else, getting fired now ensures that Thibodeau’s legacy as Knicks head coach will be a positive one. Even his critics will appreciate and admire what he brought to a franchise that was in dire need of exactly his brand of coaching and culture-setting at the time he came aboard. He revolutionized expectations from his first day, and never relented on that lofty standard. While his stubbornness may have been his undoing, the Knicks would not be where they are today without it.

As for my thoughts on the matter…

Hopelessly Devoted to You

In the seven years that I’ve been doing Knicks Film School, there is no single figure people associate me with more than Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau.

Excuse me…former Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau.

That’s going to take some getting used to.

In any case, because of that association, I’m sure many of you assume that today is a sad day for me. To some extent, that assumption is correct, although not totally, and maybe not for the reasons you think. Give it a bit and you’ll understand what I mean.

First though, we have to go back in time…back to before my first KFS pod or newsletter, back to when I was merely a blogger for an online NBA rag, and back to when there was a different object of my obsession.

The year was 2017, the player was Frank Ntilikina, and the situation, almost from the outset, was dire.

Ntilikina, you may remember, was the second and final draft choice of team president Phil Jackson, who was fired parted ways with the organization a mere six days after drafting the French point guard. Jackson came into that job with a reputation as a basketball genius (and if you don’t believe that, just ask him). He left with his tail between his legs, but even as he departed, I refused to give up hope that the man knew what he was doing all along. Falling asleep in workouts and getting into online spats with the team’s best player was one thing, but forgetting how to assess basketball talent was another.

As such, when Ntilikina was drafted, I was all in. And I mean all in. If that young man took three dribbles without tripping over his shoelaces, I treated it like Michael Jordan’s game winner over Byron Russell. In my eyes, there was only upside, and any perceived downside was merely the growth process playing itself out.

In retrospect, this was all patently ridiculous. It was apparent pretty early on that whatever Frankie Smokes was going to be, an NBA superstar was not one of them. Phil had screwed up royally, and any chance Ntilikina had to be something other than a bust went out the window when Jackson left and took his mandated triangle offense with him.

I didn’t see any of that though. All I saw when I watched him was a player drafted by the same dude who coached 11 different teams to an NBA title. I had such immense respect for that pedigree that I engaged in death bouts on social media anytime someone had the audacity to question Ntilikina’s potential. Every time someone referred to him as trash, I dug my heels in even deeper.

Eventually, I got over my obsession, but it wasn’t until another figure with an immense reserve of basketball wisdom came along to change my mind.