Kenny Atkinson and Mark Daigneault have to feel a little uneasy on Tuesday afternoon. News of Tom Thibodeau’s firing in New York will raise lots of questions about the future of the Knicks. But it also underlines the fungible nature of the coaching business in the NBA.
Thibodeau, the NBA Coach of the Year in 2021, becomes the latest top-coach recipient to be fired within four years of winning the award. Actually, of the seven winners between 2016-17 and 2022-23, Thibodeau lasted the longest, getting four seasons worth of grace period before he was removed from his position. It’s the same short runway Mike Budenholzer enjoyed after winning the award with the Bucks in 2019 — and winning a title in 2021.
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The Coach of the Year curse is very much alive. Thibodeau, Budenholzer, Mike D’Antoni, Nick Nurse, Monty Williams and Mike Brown never saw as much as a fifth season with their teams after winning the award. Some, like Brown and Williams, were axed before seeing even a third.
When Thibodeau took over a 21-45 team in 2019-2020, a deliriously optimistic Knicks fan (and there are many) would have been laughed at if he or she envisioned a pathway to getting two wins away from the NBA Finals in less than a five-year span. But Thibodeau helped do just that. Along with the acquisitions by president of basketball operations Leon Rose, Thibodeau led the Knicks to back-to-back 50-win seasons, the first time since 1994-95 the organization has accomplished that feat.
Despite the ending, Tom Thibodeau had a good run with the Knicks. (Photo by Dustin Satloff/Getty Images)
(Dustin Satloff via Getty Images)
Those who believe Thibodeau deserved better can’t be dismissed outright. Thibodeau’s well-chronicled reliance on structure and discipline were some of the very reasons why the Knicks were able to get to title contention quickly. But accelerating a timeline can create an own-goal of raised expectations. This preseason, oddsmakers set the over/under on the Knicks’ regular-season win count to 53.5, and the Knicks won “only” 51 games in the East. It’s hard to see how this season could be viewed as a disappointment, considering they reached the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2000.
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But star newcomer Karl-Anthony Towns never quite gelled with OG Anunoby, who signed the largest contract in Knicks history, along with Villanova teammates Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart. Thibodeau played that lineup to an extreme degree, but most of the time couldn’t get the results he wanted.
For the season, that five-man group played 940 minutes, more than twice as many as any other Eastern Conference lineup per NBA.com data, but it never quite clicked. After a hot start, the offense fizzled and too often got bogged down into Brunson dribble fests. The defense routinely provided little resistance. Despite all the extreme minutes, the starting lineup ranked in the 51st percentile in point differential this season, according to Cleaning The Glass tracking.
From that standpoint, the whole was not greater than the sum of its parts. It’s understandable why Thibodeau was let go. Thibodeau waited until Game 3 of the East finals before he bailed on the underwhelming starting lineup and waited too long to lengthen his bench to more than two guys. Remarkably, the Knicks’ top seven players played 93% of the team’s minutes in the postseason, far more than the conference champs OKC (82%) and Indiana (80%).
Given Bridges’ chatter about too many minutes and the lack of Towns’ defensive impact, I’d be surprised if we didn’t hear more about certain college coaches who have experience leading some of these men to championships.
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Where do the Knicks go from here? Here are four candidates to watch:
John Calipari
There’s a man who knows how to win with Karl-Anthony Towns. This man also won an NBA Coach of the Year award and also happens to know what it’s like to hold an NBA coaching job in the Tri-State area. Step right up, John Calipari!
It’s also true that over the years no coach has been closer to Rose and his No. 2 in the Knicks front office, William Wesley, than the Arkansas coach who coached Towns with both the University of Kentucky and the Dominican Republic national team. Calipari was the head coach for the New Jersey Nets for two and a half seasons, earning one playoff appearance in 1997-98 (he was swept). When Rose got the job to run the Knicks, Calipari spoke glowingly about Rose and his future in New York. (He was right that Rose would turn it around.)
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Calipari reportedly has four years remaining on his five-year pact with the Razorbacks, who gave him an annual pay cut from his gig at Kentucky. If the Knicks came calling and offered him a job with a competitive salary, I’m sure he’d pick up the phone. As for college coaches in the NBA, the track record hasn’t been overwhelmingly strong. Of the 13 coaches that made the jump, none has made it to the NBA Finals — something that eluded both Billy Donovan and Brad Stevens despite their successes.
A Calipari hire would indicate the Knicks believe in Towns’ long-term viability in New York. It also wouldn’t be the only high-profile college legend who might be in the running.
Jay Wright
Calipari was two wins away from a championship with a current Knick, but Wright has cut down the net multiple times with future Knicks. Wright stepped away from Villanova in 2022 after an immensely successful run with the Wildcats, winning the 2016 and 2018 NCAA tournaments with Brunson, Hart and Bridges helping along the way.
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At 63 years old, Wright would find himself on the older end of the NBA coaching ranks, but he wouldn’t be an outlier. Heck, Rick Carlisle is two years older than Wright and he’s coaching one of the NBA’s youngest teams in the NBA Finals. Unlike Calipari, Wright has never been on an NBA bench, and it’s unclear if he’d have any interest in a pro gig. But having already coached Brunson, Bridges and Hart — all of whom are under contract next season — and taken them all the way, it isn’t far-fetched to imagine he might consider the job.
As Rick Pitino found out the hard way in Boston, though, coaching former college players isn’t as easy as it looks.
Michael Malone
Watching ESPN broadcasts during the playoffs, I felt like Malone was a natural on TV. But I don’t think he wants to be there long.
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The coaching lifer is the son of former longtime Knicks assistant head coach Brendan Malone. He also has one bullet on his résumé that Thibodeau and the rest of the names on this list do not: head coach of an NBA champion.
Even though he lost the locker room in Denver, which eventually cost him his job, I’d be shocked if Malone isn’t coaching somewhere next season. Considering Thibodeau was ousted just days after losing Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals, it seems like the Knicks already have a coach in mind. Malone could be that target now that he’s a free agent. Also working in Malone’s favor is that he’s a CAA client, which bodes well considering the Rose-led Knicks are already so intertwined with that agency.
Jeff Van Gundy
I would make the call. Who knows if Van Gundy would entertain a reunion with Knicks owner James Dolan and the Knicks. But he’s the last coach who took the Knicks to the NBA Finals and few names garner as much respect around the league as JVG.
As Tyronn Lue’s lead assistant this season, Van Gundy helped turn the Los Angeles Clippers into a top-three defense even without Kawhi Leonard for half the season. He knows what it takes to win in New York and still has a firm grasp on the modern NBA. Though the Clippers stumbled to the finish line this season, Van Gundy could be rejuvenated by a much younger roster in New York than the one that starred in the Intuit Dome.
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