The Business We've Chosen

After another bad showing against a top team, Tom Thibdodeau has to be held accountable.

Good morning. Are you having fun yet?

Game 57: Celtics 118, Knicks 105

• This game started like every other recent heavyweight bout, with New York looking woefully outmatched, eventually falling behind by 27 points in the third.

• Scoring outbursts by KAT and then Jalen closed the gap all the way down to four points early in the fourth quarter before things got away from the Knicks again and they went down by 20 before some meaningless garbage time buckets.

• Towns appeared to injure his knee midway through the fourth, but after briefly heading to the locker room, he returned and re-entered the game with 4:12 remaining and Boston up by 18.

Monty Williams. Frank Vogel. Kenny Atkinson. Steve Nash. Doc Rivers. Mike Budenholzer. Doc Rivers again. Frank Vogel again. Maybe, soon, Mike Budenholzer again as well. Nick Nurse might join him.

These are all men who have helmed teams that went “all in” for a title in recent years. All of them were fired, most after relatively brief stints. A few even won a title before they got their walking papers.

They all boast decorated head coaching resumes to varying degrees, to the point that the NBA’s game of musical chairs has seen many of them end up in a seat recently vacated by another on the same list. There’s no question these men can coach, and yet when given the unbearable weight of shepherding a roster that has been rejiggered to compete for a title in short order, they always seem to end up on the chopping block.

Almost every time one of them gets the axe, Tom Thibodeau is asked about it, and every time, he gives some version of the same line: that’s part of our business.

Couldn’t be truer if uttered by Hyman Roth himself.

Despite that nasty business, Thibs has thus far avoided a similar fate in New York. There have been iffy moments - 17 losses in 20 games during the disastrous ‘21-22 season and a 10-13 start the following year, most notably - but Thibodeau has persevered, and has now quietly become the sixth longest tenured head coach in the league.

Three of the men ahead of him - Pop, Spo, and Kerr - have won 11 combined titles and were all listed among the NBA’s 15 greatest head coaches during the league’s 75th anniversary celebration a few years ago. A fourth, Mike Malone, cooled off his own hot seat by winning the title in 2023. The fifth is Taylor Jenkins, who led Memphis to consecutive second seeds in the brutal west before injuries ravaged the Grizzlies last season. They are back in second now.

Lasting in one job as long as Thibs has isn’t easy in the NBA. It’s especially hard in New York. Regardless of where you are, stagnation in playoff progress is usually a death knell, and stagnation (or regression) after a series of big moves is a surer ticket out of town than anything they sell at Penn Station.

We’re a long way from any pink slips being issued here, but for the first time since very early in the Jalen Brunson era - when Thibs went into a Sunday game against the Cavs potentially coaching for his job and emerged with the first of eight consecutive victories - the security of his position is in doubt.

To some, that may seem like a wildly obvious and long overdue statement to appear in this overtly pro-Thibodeau publication. To others, it may seem like an overreaction to one horrendous weekend amidst the most successful season in decades.

Wherever you fall on that spectrum, here are a few relatively incontrovertible truths:

• In falling down by 27 points to the Celtics, the Knicks looked no closer to winning a game against Boston than they did on opening night.

• They continue to have stretches of helplessness against premier competition, with tentative offense and wet tissue paper defense characterized by Keystone Cops-level mistakes.

• The starting lineup grades out as thoroughly mediocre league-wide, and well below average in comparison to other top teams. In 35 minutes against Boston, they have been outscored by 21 points.

• There are decisions to question. According to NBA.com, Josh Hart has shared the floor with a non-spacing big - mostly Precious Achiuwa but occasionally Jericho Sims - for 43 minutes against the Celtics. The Knicks have been outscored by 50 points in the those 43 minutes. In the other 101 minutes against Boston, New York has been outscored by 13 points. On defense, we finally, mercifully, got KAT to switch, but those switches are still infrequent, while the other options continue to yield painful results.

• The Knicks came out like a team that either didn’t believe it could win or didn’t feel like it knew the path to victory.

The tough part in considering the causes of and solutions to all of the above is that both effort and execution continue to be lacking, but that’s a damning reality in its own right. How could a team with this much talent repeatedly appear so meek and uncertain? It’s hard to apply a band aide when you don’t know where the blood is coming from.

Its also hard to know where to go from here. Much like was the case on Friday night in Cleveland, there’s no question that the Knicks aren’t on the same level as the top two teams in the East. I spoke to Fred Katz before the All-Star break and we discussed how much championship equity New York owns in the current season. I spitballed eight percent. After these last two games, I’d keep the same number, but with a decimal point in front. Considering they’d likely need to beat both the Celts and Cavs to even make the Finals, I’d argue I’m being generous.

Is that fair? Like I wrote on Friday, the Knicks are not actually 40-whatever points worse than the Cavs. That statement looked downright prescient during an eight and a half minute stretch in the third and early fourth quarter yesterday when New York went on a 35-12 run. Boston eventually righted the shop and went back up 20 before some late garbage-time baskets made the score look respectable, but for one brief moment, there existed a glimmer of hope that the Knicks would be something more than roadkill come springtime.

For Tom Thibodeau’s sake, they better hope those eight and a half minutes are a sign of things to come.

I’m going to spend tomorrow’s newsletter breaking down what they did during that run and whether or not any of it is actually worth getting excited over as we peer into the near future. For right now though, it’s fair to wonder how a team that looked so good for most of three quarters in Oklahoma City has just one 8.5-minute stint of positive play on their ledger in their last 200+ minutes against the Thunder, Cavs and Celtics.

In other words, it’s fair to wonder if they’re being put in the best possible position to succeed.

Maybe this is all part of the process.

Maybe, as Jalen Brunson implied after the game, it took until now to reach a level of selflessness against Boston that they’d previous reached against other teams.

Maybe, as Karl-Anthony Towns said after the loss, the Knicks are still “a work in progress until the postseason, when you put all the chips and cards and see what the season taught you.”

Or maybe the roster inequities between these two teams are just so severe as to render all of these conversations moot, and until those issues are addressed, any talk of a coaching change will amount to a planned rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic. After all, for all the complaints currently being bandied about, most are steeped in frustration while few come with suggestions about how to eliminate the gap between New York and the upper crust.

But one does not eliminate a gap before first starting to close it, and that’s where the questions will persist.

This is, as Thibodeau would tell you himself, the reality of the business. It is a reality he has thus far avoided, because winning tends to put a shiny gloss on everything - even the absurdity of reinserting your clearly hobbled franchise center when the outcome of the game has been fully decided.

But when the stakes are raised and the results stagnate, the grim reaper has a funny way of finding your doorstep.

Much at stake, for all parties involved.

💫 Stars of the Game 💫

⭐️ Cam Payne: Had a nice little first half burst to keep Boston within arm’s reach, but Payne gets this spot out of principle because I could not in good conscience give it to Towns, whose defensive decisions and inattention remain largely baffling. It’s not all on him, but he’s the genesis of more breakdowns than anyone else.

⭐️ ⭐️ Jalen Brunson: Some high-level shotmaking spurred the comeback in the third quarter. Sometimes he seems like the only guy out there ready for these battles.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Landry Shamet: Landry’s reward for arguably his best five minutes as a Knick? A second half DNP-CD.

Final Thought

Considering the standings will probably be locked up for Boston and Cleveland the next time New York sees either team, it’s hard to imagine what the Knicks could do between now and mid-April to change our opinions on their chances of an upset.

Getting Mitch back (reportedly this week) and seeing what that looks like would be a start though.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”