What the New York Knicks Are Getting with Tom Thibodeau
New York finally has their head coach, but what exactly does that mean for the ball club moving forward?
It’s official folks: he’s coming back home to New York.
ESPN reporter Adrian Wojnarowski broke the story yesterday afternoon that Tom Thibodeau and the Knicks are finalizing a five year deal that will make him the latest head coach for the team. This decision comes after long speculation that he would be the coach for the job after several interview processes and his ties to not only Leon Rose — the President of Basketball Operations and former agent to Thibodeau — but also to the Knicks since he served under former head coach Jeff Van Gundy as the associate head coach for the team from the mid to late 90s and early 2000s. There have been mostly positive responses after the hire with most analysts agreeing that it is best for the Knicks to hire a coach with pedigree and success after several years of subpar coaches who couldn’t accomplish a winning record with the team since Mike Woodson last coached the team back in 2013.
With Thibs coming back home to New York, the Knicks can cross one major need off their list. What exactly does this mean for the team going forward?
Knicks actually get a coach who specializes in player development
While I would have preferred Kenny Atkinson since he’s a coach who has an understanding of the modern NBA and did a good job of developing the young talent with the Brooklyn Nets, Thibs is no slouch either. He was instrumental in developing the young core talent in the Chicago Bulls like Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, Luol Deng, and Jimmy Butler. Rose became one of the best point guards in the NBA under Thibs watch and won the MVP in 2011. Noah became a pass first center and won Defensive Player of the Year in 2014. Deng was an effective defensive wing player who could space the floor with his three point shooting while playing hard nosed defense against the best in the league. Butler became an elite All Star after it was believed he would be nothing more than a decent wing player. All these players succeeded under Thibs watch and hold him to high regard even after they all left Chicago.
While Thibs tenure with the Minnesota Timberwolves wasn’t great, he still had a hand in making the team play hard and stay competitive. Andrew Wiggins became a (little bit) competent scorer and Karl Anthony Towns emerged as one of the better young big men in the League under Thibs. Heck, they went to the playoffs for the first time in the last 15 years and had more than 40 wins with him as the coach. If nothing else, Thibs can bring out the talent out of a young player and make sure he plays his best basketball.
The offense and defense will improve considerably
Fun fact: Thibs is actually a good offensive-minded coach. The Bulls Offensive Rating under Thibs was consistently in the top ten in the league, including fifth overall during his second season with the organization. With the Wolves, Thibodeau’s Offensive Rating was in the top ten during his first season, and they posted franchise-record 110.8 Offensive Rating which was the fourth best rating in the NBA in the 2017–18 season. It helps when you have definitive powerhouse scorers like Derrick Rose, Jimmy Butler, or Karl Anthony Towns but it would be disingenuous to say that Thibs didn’t understand how to utilize their skill sets to help the teams put up numbers and win games.
Now everybody knows that Thibs “bread and butter” is defense since he was a mantee to Jeff Van Gundy, a well-known defensive minded coach back in the day and was the defensive assistant coach during the Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen Era of the Boston Celtics when he worked under Doc Rivers as the head coach of the team. That said, his revolutionary ICE defensive schemes are not as effective in today’s NBA as they were back when he coached the Bulls. The Wolves ranked 27th in Defensive Efficiency during his tenure and he has failed to modernize that aspect of the game. Still, that doesn’t mean that the team won’t be competitive in terms of playing defense. Thibs demands accountability to players who don’t step up and the Knicks will have to show that they are willing to whatever it takes to win otherwise find themselves on the bench.
Load management is….concerning but misunderstood
Another factor that should be alarming to Knicks fans is that Thibodeau is notoriously known to be against minute restrictions. And considering that the NBA is encouraging staff to maintain “load management” to ensure that a player’s health is a top priority, dealing with a coach who doesn’t think that a player should held to play a certain amount of time is a real “eyebrow raiser.” That said there’s also nuance missing in the discussion of Thibs and his lack of minute restrictions for his players. People seem to forget the fact that guys like Butler, Deng, Noah, and even Taj Gibson (who’s now on the Knicks) wanted to play extensive minutes. If a player tells Thibs he can keep going, Thibs is going to let them keep going. Plus, he was supportive of Rose during his struggles when he was coming back after his ACL tear and wasn’t going to put the young guard through so much hassle if he personally felt he wasn’t ready to play.
So it’s not like he’s some sort of tyrant who’s going to bleed his players dry. Thibs expects the best out of his players but will not try to further harm them if he knows that they’re not 100%. Plus, if the roster is deep enough then you can be assured that Thibs will not be totally reliant on a specific core to play every single night to win games. The best players will always see the floor and that philosophy is the standard principle for any coach to uphold.
In the end, it’s going to come down to the roster
Thibodeau is a solid NBA head coach and he has a winning record under his belt but it’s unlikely that he’s going to see immediate success with his first season as a head coach with the Knicks. The roster — as of now — is still a mess. There’s a big question as to who is the most sustainable point guard on the team (Elfrid Payton, Frank Ntilikina, Dennis Smith Jr.). There are decisions to be made as to which young player should be let go and who should stay (Damyean Dotson, Kevin Knox). There are also questions as to whether or not if the only two solid picks can be definitive foundation pieces for the future (RJ Barrett, Mitchell Robinson). No one honestly knows what Leon Rose and his front office staff intend on doing for the foreseeable future. They will have to discuss with Thibs his thoughts on the players on the roster and who he would like to work with. Thibs has been reported to watch the 2019–2020 season of the Knicks extensively and is likely determining the talent on the roster. There’s no telling how he wants to run the team or who gets to stay and who gets to go. That’s up to Rose to make the calls.
Plus, the draft is coming up and the Knicks need to determine on who they want to bring in to the organization. They have been doing their homework so it’ll be interesting to see where they fall in the lottery and who they decide to pick up. Thibs will likely have to deal with a subpar roster in his first year but if he can make them respectable then it could give hope to fans who want to see this team succeed in the future. Considering the team hasn’t been to the postseason since the 2012–2013 season, this glimmer of something promising is all the fans could ask for.
*Additional information from ESPN, Bleacher Report, Basketball Reference, NY Post
