From Ian Begley:
An update on where things stand with the Knicks coaching search: per league sources familiar with the matter, New York is not in contract negotiations with any candidate and has not made a contract offer to any of the candidates it has interviewed.
The Knicks are continuing to do their due diligence and there is a strong likelihood that they will have conversations with multiple candidates next week, per SNY league sources.
It remains likely that the club will hire a coach by the end of the month, prior to the NBA resuming its regular season in Orlando.
“They’re still exploring their options,” a league source familiar with the Knicks’ process told SNY.
Agents and coaches with a vested interest in the Knicks’ search have long believed that Tom Thibodeau is the coach most likely to be hired by Knicks president Leon Rose. The Knicks have interviewed 11 candidates for the job. All candidates are believed to have interviewed twice over Zoom calls.
Sports Illustrated reported that Kenny Atkinson interviewed with the club on Monday. That was believed to be Atkinson’s second interview.
The idea that the Knicks haven’t made a contract offer to any candidate suggests that Thibodeau’s hire isn’t as much of a foregone conclusion as the coaches and agents referenced above thought. That they may be talking to candidates again next week also tells you the Knicks haven’t fully settled on Thibodeau.
This team is so weird.
None of this makes any sense.
If Thibs is, indeed, the automatic choice, how do you not even offer him a contract? If Thibs is not the choice, then why is it taking so long to offer one of these other dudes a contract? How can they possibly not know who they want to coach the team after multiple interviews with multiple candidates?
99 replies on “SNY.com: Sources: Knicks have not made contract offer to any head coaching candidates”
Maybe they’re stalling until there’s enough other NBA news to diminish the attention on the hire…
What odds do you think I can get on the Nets hiring Thibodeau while we dawdle, followed by us bypassing Atkinson to hire Jason Kidd?
Theories pulled mostly out of my rear end:
1)They have an under the table agreement with Thibs if he wants the job, but haven’t made anything official because it would look bad if the first major event of the Rose era was his handpicked coaching candidate turning them down.
2)Everything is in limbo because Rose promised Woj the exclusive and Woj is still suspended (a friend of mine suggested this, actually).
3)It really is a much more wide-open search than everyone is assuming, and/or one of the under-the-radar candidates pulled a Mike Tomlin and shook up the whole process with a spectacular interview. (Though based on the reporting, that would be Kidd, in which case… be afraid.)
4)???
5)Profit!
I, for one, would not be heartbroken if we missed out on Thibs.
I read the article and it didn’t mention Miller actually being one of the 11 candidates, although it did say the Knicks were impressed with him.
I really don’t think there are any special implications to the delay. Important personnel decisions are always slow, and there seems to be no reason for the Knicks to hurry. They have time.
I’d have to see what’s behind door #2 before cosigning.
Brian, I don’t know. Taking a long, careful look at all the candidates at this point in time seems totally sensible. I’ve been faced many times with a bunch of candidates for a position, each of which seems good from one angle and each of which have big flaws when I tilt my head to the other side. (And honestly, I’ve usually been disappointed with my final choice, although i think most of those were lose-lose situations where I would have been disappointed in a different way had I gone with another choice.) We’ve just spent the better part of this month (and earlier) arguing about the various flaws of each candidate, and a good many people seem to have landed on Thibs as “at least he’s not Mark Jackson.” It may well be that Knicks management (and there do seem to be a lot of them now) are having the same discussions. There’s no big deadline, so taking their time and being hyper-thorough is one of the least egregious things this team has done in recent years. I’ll eat these words when they go with Jackson (anyone named Jackson, including La Toya), but until then I’m frustrated as a fan but hopefully appreciative.
Yeah, if we miss out on Thibs for Atkinson or one of the hot assistants like Udoka, that’s an interesting outcome. If we miss out on Thibs because we think Kidd can get us a meeting with Giannis next year… [HeadDeskDotGif]
Oh sure, it’s more strange than it is bad. It is strange, though. Coaching searches definitely don’t normally take this long.
Teams also don’t usually have the entire field to themselves for an extended period of time. The Bulls are sticking with Boylen, and the other Delete Eight teams are happy with their coaches. So at least until the playoffs start, and possibly beyond that, there is no competition for any of these guys. (Though some of them like Thibs might opt to wait to see if a better job shakes loose in the fall.) So there’s not the degree of urgency that would ordinarily accompany a search.
What Alsep said. Also, if I had to back any of the utterly made-up hypotheses floating around, the one I think has the greater likelihood is that Thibs is indeed the first choice, but he’s making things difficult either by dragging his feet (e.g., hoping for something better) or asking for more autonomy/decision-making than management is comfortable with. So they’re going back to kick some of the other tires first.
I’d also suggest intimating that he wants way more money than is acceptable, but that hasn’t seemed to be a problem for this organization in the past…
I don’t get why…
With uncertain future revenues due to the pandemic, Jerry Krause probably does not want to pay two coaching salaries
I think Boylen still gets fired.
I mean, its fun to speculate but Rose said they would make the decision by the end of July and we still have a week before its the end of the month. There really isn’t any competition right now or need to hurry, so why not take their time and get it right. And it sounds like maybe part of it is them also trying to secure a couple of high profile assistants to be on the bench with Thibs and there is some negotiation over that?
Or maybe Rose just likes to set a deadline and stick with it. Maybe he has a big roll out planned once that coach is hired. He said the end of the month, so why not just take it at face value that is what he’s doing?
Not to be pedantic again but Jerry Krause is dead.
This is getting comical and smells of incompetence.
They should have interviewed 3 people seriously and given a courtesy single interview to a few others to help them out, to keep good relations around the league, and maybe to gain an insight or two.
1. Thibs because he’s the most experienced and best head coach available
2. Atkinson because he had a reputation as a good development coach going into Brooklyn and then did exactly that with their young players.
3. Miller because he’s already the coach, did a good enough job when he took over, and did an incredible job dealing with the NY media
These guys are all well known already. You listen to what they have to say about the Knicks players, how they would use them, what they think the team needs, and so on.
The only real incremental due diligence that needed to be done beyond basic first interview stuff was finding out why Atkinson was fired and Durant and Irving did not want to play for him. That suggests either a lack of confidence in his coaching based on what they saw or a personality issue that should also be considered the way people discuss the issue between Thibs and lazy ass no defense Towns.
It should have taken 2-3 weeks tops for a first interview and 3 follow ups.
Saying that he was going to make the decision at the end of July was weird, too.
Hopefully Rose and his crew have not sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules in their quest for the Golden Coaching Fleece…
🙂
Not pedantic. I should have said Jerry Reinsdorf ( ouch)
No problem, you’re still qualified to be president
or alternatively, take your time and get it wrong
Deeefense, I remember when it seemed to those were the three candidates, but then they opened it up to other candidates. I suspect they got pressure on the affirmative action front because those three are all white males. If they did that then they need a defensible process once they decide and that could take a while. Just because coaching searches can be done in two to three weeks doesn’t mean they have to be done that quickly. In this case, as I and others have pointed out, there is no hurry. And since there is a new management team and Rose is new to this type of job too, a long process is an opportunity for the management team to get to know each other. You seem contemptuous that they are taking so long, but that isn’t justified. Haste in decision making is rarely a good thing if you have time, even if we all are eager to know the outcome.
Looking forward to the Knicks hiring Woodson as an assistant before hiring a HC. It would be a funny outcome at least.
F it..just hand Ewing a blank check
What swift said, initially it was reported the Knicks were not gonna hire a new head coach until the end of July. There is still over a week left, what’s the big deal? If we are into the middle of August without a head coach then I could see reasons for concern and speculation but I honestly don’t care at all right now about no news on the new head coach. Heck if it wasn’t for the media reporting on all the different people possibly being interviewed we wouldn’t even be having this discussion, the media isn’t even on the same page on who exactly has been interviewed and how many times they’ve done so.
To me this is a total non-story right now.
“The Knicks should have arbitrarily limited their search” is certainly a take
Any hot takes on yesterday’s games beyond sneaker noise and Bol Chamberlain ? Here’s one: Paul George looked great.
Not to be pedantic again but Jerry Krause is dead.
macabre knickerblogger band name candidate
Macabreblogger has a nice ring.
With the Bulls a lot of the time is it’s just money. If you take a cold look at it they’re probably not going to be a contender next year even with a better coach and fans aren’t going to be going to games so there’s not a lot of financial reason to be good. The TV money is coming in no matter what, so maybe ownership doesn’t want to pay Boylen plus a new coach.
You mean they’re less amenable to lighting hundreds of millions on POBOs, GMs, coaches and players salaries on fire than Dolan has been?
Skinny Melo
Zach Collins looks really good. Nurkic too. The layoff did them well. Portland could be a tough out.
Speaking of money lit on fire…
three more hours until – play ball!!!
With Juan Soto having just tested positive for Covid. This will… not go well.
😉
I’ve said this before but it boggles my mind that the other leagues didn’t look at all the precautions the NBA is taking and think “huh, maybe we should do some of that”
Also re: Bol Bol, yes the sample size was very small, but all NCAA sample sizes are small and there was no reason to think he wasn’t going to keep dominating. He was an absolute man among boys at age 18, including against some good competition.
9 games of 28-13-4/36 with a .757 FT% and even 13/25 on 3PT shots is more than enough to justify a pick before 44.
It seems that for MLB the winning teams will be decided by which teams’ critical players hew towards low risk behavior.
I agree.
People want Wiseman going #1 overall and he played what 70 minutes? 50-60 minutes of which were against teams of laughable quality
Edit: I’m correct he played exactly 69 *giggles* minutes
Yeah but a big part of the concern with him is that he’s congenitally injury-prone and he had foot surgery already. That said, it is shocking that no one drafted him in the first round, not a single mock had him going that late and some had him in the late lottery. I would like to wait another season before judging whether going for Iggy rather than him was a mistake, but even if it was, it was far less of a mistake than made by others.
Difference is that Wiseman doesn’t have the same injury concerns. He’s a whole different kind of athlete.
The injury concerns are a black box of enormous questions for Bol Bol, but his numbers and skillset project him as one of the surest things coming out of college otherwise. There’s been plenty of other players drafted with the same injury concerns in the first round, ie., most of the 76ers process included those players.
Most late firsts and early seconds don’t even play in the NBA for any meaningful minutes, it’s hard to believe that Bol Bol didn’t represent better value than any of them even if he’s only healthy 10 games a season.
Moreover, injury isn’t that likely to limit a 7ft shooter from having NBA value
hezonja citing…
There are other concerns beyond injury about about Bol as well…he has an extremely high center of gravity, a low release on his shot, and lousy lateral movement. A 9’8″ wingspan makes up for a lot of things, though, so it really defies logic that no one drafted him earlier.
We essentially swapped picks and added cash to move up for Iggy. Denver gave up a future second, which had more theoretical value than our 55th pick. So it would have taken something better than the worst of Denver of Philly’s 2022 pick. Maybe this year’s 2nd rounder from Charlotte?
*~*~* I advocated to trade the #3 for 8/17/35, with Bol being the pick at #35 *~*~*
I stood about 3 feet away from him while he was in a walking boot, in the tunnel at a U of O game last year. He is TALL.
MLB has 900 active players on the Opening Day rosters since each team starts with 30 players. There are only a handful of players not on those rosters that would be because of covid, Chapman being one of them. 1 player being positive the day of Opening Day is not gonna change anything, if it was a no name reliever this wouldnt be news but because its Soto its a big deal and people want to stop the season.
People may not want to hear this but the MLB season is going to play no matter what, there is a reason each team has 60 players available when only 26 will need to be active in a month. A team can have a shitload of positive tests and its just gonna be next man up. It may seem messed up and wrong but thats how its gonna be.
there’s a bunch of phenomenal young players i’d like to pay closer attention to this season…juan soto is definitely one of them…hopefully he’s not super ill and can get back on the field in a couple of weeks…
not sure what the most hit by pitch numbers are for a team in a single season – i have a feeling the astros are gonna challenge that record in only 60 games…
cheating scum…
true dat…arrogant motherf*ckers
they stole from us…
plunk away…all season long…
maybe c.c. can come out of retirement for a game or two when the yanks play the astros…
I’m not really an “unwritten rules” guy, but I am a “written rules” guy when it comes to baseball. You cheat to win a championship? You get beaned. Bregman, Altuve and the rest of them ought to take it between the numbers.
Cronin understood what I was trying to say about Bol Bol. I was just saying you can’t say someone was historically good in college if he played sub 300 minutes, because that’s not a meaningful sample size. You can watch Bol Bol’s minutes and see he’s skilled for a guy that tall and he looks good shooting etc and watch his HS tape and realize he’s worth drafting before the 44th pick (setting aside his health problems)
This, exactly. The 2nd round is a place for two things, IMO:
(1) drafting injury-questionable players with very high upside, e.g. Bol, Michael Porter Jr. (I think the late firsts are fine for this as well)
(2) drafting four-year NCAA studs with “low ceilings” but proven play, who fail to shock the “measurables” crowd, e.g. Draymond
I didn’t realize how much I missed Boban
Dallas vs. LA is probably the only matchup that could get me to watch pre season basketball in the bubble.
Dallas is missing so many players due to injury or not showing up to the bubble, it’s kind of a shame we won’t get to see them play playoff basketball at close to 100%. They are nowhere near ready to compete at the highest level, but they were potent enough to scare some good teams.
I think the odds that it’s going to be Thibs or Atkinson were probably 98% before this even started. The rest of the interviews are for good will and to pick up some insights. Everyone and his mother, brother, sister, and father in law has reported that they like Miller and want to keep him in the organization. I don’t think either of those head coaching candidates would have a problem with that.
They know Thibs for many years.
The only due diligence that needs to be done is on Atkinson and why he was fired.
If they are getting push back because those guys are white, I’m going to have to call BS on that. No one in the NBA has been more open to hiring minorities to coach and run the Knicks than Dolan.
He just swished a 3. Dude is a phenomenon.
get ready to say this about your pet Porzingis for the rest of his career
What was our “future coach” doing at the Lakers bench ?
Maybe recruiting AD and LBJ after the Greek Freak!?!?!!!
Kristaps is nothing compared to Bolzingis
Bol Bol’s name reminds me of 3 endagered species:
The turtle living in Greece: caretta caretta
The Mediterranean seal: monachus monachus
and The Cretan wildgoat : kri kri
Kri Kri: that is great
I just read a book called the Ariadne Objective about Crete in WW2. Excellent.
Yeah! Very impressive animal as it seems in the pics.
And Crete’s fight during WW2 is legendary. Very brave and proud people.
Unfortunately for me i haven’t find the opportunity to visit this incredibly blessed island yet… It’s so big and exciting that you need many days to fully experience it as far as I’m advised to.
New York Basketball Team is my favorite team
Cretian goat’s threatened, but not endangered. That’s a formal status for wild species. The kri kri is just a feral goat, although been on the island a long time. Their going extinct would be a bit like all those cats living wild out by the barn getting eaten by coyotes.
A lot of European mammals got named with the same genus and species names. I’d rank the edible dormouse up there — its common name is kind of incredible on its own, and yes they were eaten, they get super fat just before hibernation; but their scientific name is Glis glis. Which is either cute, or could be the sound of a well-cooked one sliding down the gullet.
Glis Glis is a cool name for a mouse!
Almost DrJohnesque!
Threatened seems more accurate than endangered. You’re right.
Is it possible that Bol Bol is a rare kind of player threatened with extinction from this league?
I’m having flashbacks to due diligence before Fizdale’s hire. Which I thought was a good move.
100% down with New York Basketball Team.
There’s also the dik-dik, a species of small antelope.
Or is that a nickname for James Dolan?
too denigrating to penises
Begly says in a video that Knicks and Nets are “at least monitoring the situation of Zach Lavine and the Bulls,” but couches it in so many disclaimers that it doesn’t sound like anything. But just preparing everyone for one of the doomsday scenarios if monitoring turns into action down the road.
Zach Lavine for two unprotected firsts and Mitch would be the New York Basketball Teamsiest thing since Eddy Curry
Jowles was once afflicted with a terrible case of berriberri
better than Hollingitis
I would trade Randle for Lavine in a heartbeat
I’m not buying this new Daily New report that Jason Kidd is now the front runner for the head coaching job because contract negotiations with Thibs have stalled. If you ask me, KIDD IS part of the contract negotiations.
This explains what’s taking so long given no due diligence even had to be done with Thibs. Due diligence should have been limited to Atkinson.
Of course if I am wrong about the above, that means I am correct that they are idiots. Who would hire Kidd when Thibs and Atkinson are available?
Oh, Kidd would very much be Dolan’s Razor at work. Love this incredibly Knicksy passage:
Who will save the Knicks from themselves, though?
I won’t be saying it, but you probably will because you’ll still be undervaluing him using bad metrics.
I had that affliction for a period of time also. On some level the model made sense, but in practice you eventually realized they were measuring the usage/efficiency issue incorrectly and overvalued rebounds to at least some degree because they are partly a function of role. The whole thing starts unraveling and falling apart badly once you examine players with certain profiles.
Wages of Wins was one of the greatest examples of how cognitive biases can interfere with rational thinking I have ever seen (and I’ve been guilty of that flaw for decades at a time in another interest) .
People were getting bombarded with evidence and examples of players that went far beyond what a rational human being could accept, but the true believers just dug in harder and explained it away.
The never-ending Knick saga of the magnetic POBO, GM, or coach, who will draw elite free agents to the promised land of Knickdom.
The problem is with the math, not the smell test or cognitive biases. But we’re damn near a decade of you fundamentally misunderstanding basic statistics and using that misunderstanding to justify far-worse heuristics, so nothing new there.
Someone asked me this on Twitter: Has a relatively new coach ever actually attracted a significant NBA free agent? I assume the answer is no, but I wasn’t sure. LeBron went to Miami to play with his buddies (and because of the organization Riley had built over 15 years), went back to Cleveland to bring a title to his hometown, and went to LA to further his business interests. Clearly, Durant and Kyrie didn’t go to Brooklyn to play with Atkinson, and KD went to Golden State to join a pre-existing winner. Kawhi and Paul George went to a team whose coach has been there forever. Etc.
The strange thing about the article is that I came away with the impression that if it’s not Thibs or Kidd, Miller is next man up. It sound like Atkinson is out of the running. Maybe attracting “stars” is weighing heavily into their thinking and the Nets firing Atkinson who coached Durant/Irving disqualified him. As I said, the reason he was fired WAS the one thing you had to understand before hiring him.
Why don’t they put the coaching candidates to coach 3on3s ?
Who trusts interviews?
The level of cognitive bias at Wages of Wins was so monstrous it was amazing. It was laughable. They should have just accepted that there was a problem with their math and tried to fix it a decade ago. But they are still arguing the same nonsense.
When you are rating players that can’t even last in the NBA higher than players that are considered all-stars by all the hall of fame coaches and other players and they are key parts of winning teams, the stench of arrogance and bias is so strong only a fool wouldn’t take a better look at their thinking. But that’s just it. When you dig in mentally and especially in an adversarial way it’s hard to escape your own thinking.
Stats are monumentally important as a tool. I’m on your side there. But you are on your own when it comes to thinking all these broken one number models are doing a good job. They aren’t. They suck ass. I escaped that thinking just like I escaped Wages of Wins.
Yeah, but if they do that, wouldn’t whoever gets Kevin Knox be sure to win?
🙂
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results
yep, it would appear that one james lawrence dolan is truly mad…
“Yeah, but if they do that, wouldn’t whoever gets Kevin Knox be sure to win?
:-)”
If they’re smart enough to get that they probably deserve the job! Lol
That’s a great idea, and it works in the trade machine. The trade machine does say this would make Knicks one win better and the Bulls fifteen games worse. I think that disparity must reflect the Knicks having other big men, but the Bulls having no one to replace Levine. Nonetheless, the Bulls lose a little salary and gain flexibility in the summer of 2021 because Randle’s contract is shorter. We can hope.
Again, you’re using your 140-point system to discredit statistical analysis. That ain’t it, chief.
Wait a minute, this is more important than the Knicks coaching search or broken stats models.
A report in the NY Times is hinting that the US has possession of “off-world vehicles not made on this earth”.
I don’t have a NY Time subscription, but here’s another source.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ufo-pentagon-statement-findings-vehicle-research-a9636481.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1595603505
Lots of Knicks writers hearing lots of slightly different things. Here’s Macri, for instance:
I can easily see the sticking points with Thibs being other things than salary. He wouldn’t have wanted to be GM and coach if he didn’t want a lot of control. Things like assistant coaches would come into play here. The Knicks probably want some say over the assistants do they have a good backup coach in case they get disillusioned with him. And Thibs probably views the Knicks job as high risk and so wants a long term contract. The Knicks would probably rather gia shorter higher priced contract, but he may not want that.
That’s a great idea, and it works in the trade machine.
another great knickerblogger band name. keep ’em coming. but step away from the trade machine. zero chance in hell karnisovas swaps lavine for randle. if he trades lavine, which seems pretty possible, we don’t want to be on the other end of that zoom. we’d be left with a julius randle sized hole in our future assets and a note on the night table.
I’m not “paid” to generate ratings for all the players in the NBA and don’t think it would be worth it since I’m not putting millions of dollars through the windows on basketball in Vegas. But as a serious fan and occasional gambler, it helps if I value “a few players” or “situations” better than conventional wisdom to create opportunities for my occasional plunge.
I think the correct approach is to build a very detailed spreadsheet of all the skills needed to play championship caliber basketball and rate each player on each skill. I mean super detailed. Every single possible aspect of offense and defense and even intangibles should be evaluated.
Then you should try to maximize the “team level” output by putting complimentary pieces on the floor together while limiting overlap.
If you are a GM level guy and with a staff, scouts, an analytic’s team, video etc.. you can get incredibly detailed and cover the whole league.
At my level, I’m watching a LOT of games for fun and also looking for flaws in conventional thinking for “a handful” of individual players in case there is an injury or trade and the betting line doesn’t move the way I think it should. I am also looking for situations that occasionally present value, but those have mostly vanished as the stats guys started coming public with their research.
I usually more or less agree with conventional wisdom. The public models are usually more or less in sync with that consensus. Sometimes I disagree by enough to be a pain the ass on this forum, but I don’t have wildly detailed spreadsheets. I have enough to tempt me to wager.
I really hope this isn’t the reason why the new HC hasn’t been announced. I’m not gung ho for Thibs, but if the Knicks think he’s the guy then they should just hire him and let him choose the assistants. Maybe it’s the PTSD but this feels like Dolan/Rose trying to place their personal mole on the bench.
I’m not sure what you mean about an asset hole, As a potential trade asset, Levine is probably as good as Randle. And this forum has discussed many times that Randle doesn’t fit with Mitch. For all his warts, Levine can shoot threes and fits much better with the Knicks needs.
This bit where you restate what Jowles is saying at egregious length is definitely working. You should keep it up, people are almost convinced.
C’mon, even the Timecube guy put in the work.
I’m looking forward to where you accuse me of libel.