Interesting stuff from Ian Begley:
After taking over for David Fizdale, interim head coach Mike MIller coached the Knicks to a 17-27 record before their season was paused in mid-March and is now over. They were still under the .500 mark with Miller, but the team showed considerable improvement.
But now that Leon Rose is in control, it’s likely that he’ll look to bring in “his guy” to be the team’s head coach, whether that’s Tom Thibodeau or someone else.
So where does that leave Miller?
In response to a Knicks mailbag question, SNY’s Ian Begley explains that Miller is still expected to interview for the head coaching job, and even if he doesn’t land it, there are some in the organization who would like to see Miller stay with the team, either as an assistant coach or in a different front office role.
The video was a follow-up to an earlier mailbag where Begley disagreed with a reader who suggested hiring Miller just so that they could tank next season ahead of the much better 2021 Draft Class and then hire their coach of the future. Begley thinks that that wouldn’t work very well, as he thinks that the players wouldn’t respect a coach that they knew was a lame duck coach. However, I think he felt that he made it seem like Miller wasn’t a serious candidate for the job, so he issued this video to clarify.
So far, only Thibs, Atkinson, Miller and Mike Woodson have been announced as being interviewed for the Knicks coaching gig, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a fifth candidate was looked at, as well.