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391 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.06.04)”
Has Z-Man been able to figure out the difference yet between “a basketball decision made for basketball reasons by basketball people” and “a decision made by James Dolan for gods know what reasons after talking for an hour with a couple players”?
As we sit here now, there isn’t an iota of a scintilla of evidence of any succession plan. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out why.
Which doesn’t mean that Leon can’t rescue this; he certainly can. But “well, maybe we can get another team’s coach” doesn’t exactly engender confidence.
The floor here is Calipari or lower. It’s very low.
that is a negative way to start a day
Only if you think E has some idea of what he’s talking about.
Yeah, crazy the Knicks don’t have a new coach 4 days after their season ended and 18 hours after firing the old one.
God forbid they do a coaching search and evaluate multiple candidates to find the best one.
E, you were literally begging for Thibs to be axed. Then you made up something in your head about the process for how it happened so you have something else to harp on. We all have Knicks/Dolan PTSD. We are here to help you, man. There’s no way that Dolan did this on some sort of whim against Leon’s wishes. That makes no sense. Obviously the vibes in the locker room were way less than immaculate. Let’s see how it plays out.
Per aggregators, Marc Stein says the Knicks don’t have a concrete predetermined plan (ie. they didn’t have their next coach in the bag before firing Thibs) — not surprising given the season just ended 4 days ago. But that Johnnie Bryant and Jay Wright are presumed to be top candidates. Interesting that he didn’t appear to mention Dan Hurley at all, and the Athletic piece on potential candidates also did not mention Hurley. I get the idea that you might not want a college coach to come into this situation, but I would imagine Hurley has to at least be interviewed?
FWIW – Jay wright seems a good candidate but is it really a good idea to chase a guy who hasn’t coached anything in 3 years?
I think Leon told Thibs to widen his rotation when he did. And the writing was on the wall at that point.
Maybe Hurley doesn’t want to be interviewed.
Also, I’ve been waiting to share since the threads were so busy, but I finished my apprenticeship and am now a Journeyman Wireman! (Electrician). Making real money is cool. 4 years went fast!
Congratulations, bidiong!
Congratulations Bidiong!
The only move Leon has made that people saw coming was signing Jalen Brunson. Every other move he’s made – OG trade, KAT trade, Josh hart trade, bridges trade….no one saw coming.
So we shouldn’t assume at all that just bc this came out of nowhere that somehow Dolan was involved. And we shouldn’t assume there is t a plan just bc we haven’t been privy to it. There’s a good chance Leon is going to hire someone none of us see coming.
Nice! Stack that cash!
That’s because they didn’t expect to be doing a coaching search.
“Leon didn’t resign in protest, therefore it was his decision” bears zero resemblance to the actual white collar world of org charts, bosses, owners, shareholders, personnel decisions, and paychecks. It’s not a thing. It doesn’t bear any resemblance to a thing. I’d advise immediate Knickerblogger disabusement of such.
Nice! Congrats.
People aren’t “assuming” that Dolan was involved for that or any other reason. People are concluding that Dolan was involved because two high-level reporters have reported that Dolan was involved, with details.
E saw what Pags has been up to the last few months and decided to reclaim his title as the KB poster who will most relentlessly commit to a bit, no matter what. Bravo.
Any factual disagreement, Alan?
There’s no evidence that they were preparing for a coaching search and massive evidence that they weren’t. No names leaked, nothing but dart-throwing speculation by the NBA fraternity, wild musings about getting another team’s coach currently under contract, etc. No indication of any succession plan.
By a team owned by an owner who has pulled this kind of thing numerous times.
Usually when you fire a high-level employee, you have some idea of potential replacements. And then you let the world subtly or not so subtly know who those are.
If you want to be confident and optimistic, be confident and optimistic.
There were others on a smaller scale. Drafting Obi, for one. Some of his other FA signings or re-signings, etc., were reported as likely well before he did them. Even this one had been implied to varying degrees throughout the playoffs. When Begley was on Zach Lowe’s podcast on Monday, he went out of his way — twice! unprompted both times! — to note that Thibs’ job still wasn’t secure, there were internal evaluations going on, etc. If you’ve been following Ian long enough to know that 1)He is by far the most plugged-in beat reporter, and 2)He is incredibly careful about what he says and when and how he says it, you could read between the lines on that.
But, yes, there have been a lot of seismic transactions that came out of nowhere, where the Woj or Shams tweet was the first anyone outside the organization knew it was happening.
I can’t disagree with the relative absence of facts in your posts, E, no. You’ve got me.
Oh, there are plenty of facts.
In terms of Begley, yes, but again the salient fact isn’t the level of “surprise” people have; the salient fact is that Dolan’s fingerprints are all over the decision. The rumblings Begley was probably hearing just mean that Thibs hadn’t yet met the “Dolan test.”
Ian’s most recent piece doesn’t really give any clues about anything. Udoka and Jason Kidd of all people don’t seem like actual possibilities since they are under contract with other teams.
It’ll be interesting to see if Johnnie Bryant pulls his name out of the Phoenix search – that job sucks – saddled with Bradley Beal’s unmovable contract, Durant aging and likely to be traded, and capped out / out of picks.
https://sny.tv/articles/knicks-tom-thibodeau-firing-next-coach-candidates
I’m afraid it does make a little sense, cgreene.
We know the #1 thing Dolan hates is disharmony and conflict. He can be magnanimous when it comes to incompetence and losing but if people don’t get along he’ll fire the culprit.
He’s also a starfucker who would bend over backwards to appease his players instead of supporting someone he likely views as a fungible middle manager.
Currently all signs point to Leon making a smart decision based on sound basketball reasons. But I don’t think we can completely rule out a Dolan intervention if the exit interviews were full of player griping, as reported.
My confidence that it was Leon is probably 90%, leaving open a 10% likelihood of a frightening Dolan intervention. Maybe that’s “Knicks PTSD”, I don’t know.
At the end of the day, though, no matter who made the decision, it seems like it was the right one. That’s all that matters.
I really don’t get the people here. For years — not days, weeks, or even months — folks have been relentlessly criticizing Thibs’ coaching decisions, from the preseason all the way through the playoffs. A big part of those complaints was that Leon Rose refused to step in or make any changes. Now that he finally does exactly what they said he should’ve done, it’s suddenly a sign of organizational dysfunction and Dolan meddling? Make it make sense.
Two reporters (*) have already said Dolan was involved in the nuts and bolts of the process that culminated in the firing. That’s no longer even a point of contention and there’s no reason to keep re-litigating it.
We don’t know the give and take between Dolan and Leon, but having been through this kind of thing dozens of times over the past couple decades, when your boss sits in on your evaluation meetings with your direct reports, that’s a sign in and of itself of storm clouds, and if you get wind that your boss wants one of your direct reports out — which if you have any savvy is easy to do — you either line up behind it or quit and give up your paycheck. No one does the latter.(**) Leon was never going to.
Most likely, once Leon got wind that Dolan wanted to meet with him and some players, he knew Thibs was on very thin ice.
(For those conjuring up the notion that Leon invited Dolan, no, no one does that. Evaluating your underlings is your job, and you never open yourself up to the bosses wondering why you’re asking them to help you with your job — and not just because it might then make them ask what they’re paying you for.)
(*) I’m going on the KB report that Begley said it but didn’t actually see or hear him say it. I explicitly heard Shams say it.
(**) Depending on your personal rapport with said boss, you may be more or less open about your actual thoughts, but that’s beside the current point.
Maybe it’s the PTSD talking, but I don’t think E’s totally crazy.
Maybe it was Dolan’s call, but if it was Leon’s, that’s quite a bit of hubris after your guy gets you 50 wins and beats the Defending Champion Arch-Rival MFing Boston Celtics to get to the ECF. And sure, the Indy series was a letdown, but the Pacers played exceptional ball, and we were literally a few bounces away from a totally different series.
Even if the next coach is amazing (what are the chances?), it takes time to build out a system and get everyone on the same page, and this core is looking at the wrong side of 30 very soon.
Thibs had his fairly obvious faults, but he also had some legit excuses for this season (centerpiece KAT arrives days before game 1, the Mitch injury, etc.)
I just think everything will have to go perfect with this next hire for the Knicks to even get back to the ECF before the Brunson window closes, when, in the end, the issue just might be that we don’t have SGA, Jokic, or Giannis on the team.
Well done bidiong!
That is a positive way to start a day 😉
ding dong the witch is dead…who cares who’s house fell on her…
outstanding bidiong, I imagine that was a grind to get accomplished, very cool 😎
Here’s a thought: maybe the organization — from players to management to even (gasp) ownership — had honest conversations after a promising but ultimately failed championship run and concluded that the coach who mismanaged the team into a series loss needed to be replaced. No conspiracy. No interference. Maybe, just maybe, this was actually a well-reasoned basketball decision.
When Magic Johnson got Paul Westhead fired and replaced him with Pat Riley, the only “dysfunction” people noticed was how fast the Lakers started winning titles. Sometimes, tough decisions lead to better outcomes.
Congrats, Bidiong!
Yeah, congrats, Bidiong! I’m jealous of your earning “power”.
And ras, maybe you’re right. Hopefully we have already scouted our Thibs successor, and he or she is amazing and a perfect fit. But Leon has made enough mistakes over his tenure (despite an overall nice job!) that it’s fair to be worried at this point.
Even though all indications are that Leon wasn’t prepping to do a coaching search, he has plenty of time to gather and do a solid one. Since he traded away all his draft picks for an uber-fungible wing, they don’t really have to do much for the draft and training camp doesn’t start for months. Someone on staff can do summer league, which is how it works all the time anyway.
All we can do now is hope he does a good one and that Dolan is relatively uninvolved. But now Leon’s looking over his shoulder and knows he’s gonna have to sell Dolan and that remains a wild card. (Assuming Dolan doesn’t make his own “suggestion” at some point.)
At the very least, most of us can agree on one thing: for the team to move forward, Thibs had to be let go. Leon saw the same writing on the wall we all did after the Eastern Conference Finals. What comes next is anyone’s guess—but this was the right decision, even if we can’t yet say whether the next one will be.
We have a winner! Thanks Geo, exactly my thoughts. Thibs is out, whoever made the call. Now we see what the next coach can do with this group of players
I’m not going to get in a big long argument about it, but you have literally zero idea whether this is true. (*) The null hypothesis that it’s completely false isn’t remotely disproven.
(*) And to jump ahead, even if Leon says words to that effect down the road, it still might not be true. Leon is going to line up behind the “team’s” decision and part of that is rationalizing and justifying it down the road.
Congrats, bidiong, especially impressive given you doing it while looking at Knicks games and posting here!
Fair enough, but that cuts both ways. You also have zero idea that it isn’t true. At some point, we all draw inferences from what we see—patterns, decisions, timing. You don’t need a press release to recognize when a team decides it’s hit its ceiling under a coach. That’s not conspiracy, that’s NBA basketball.
Sure, Leon could be spinning it down the line. But that’s always a possibility with any public statement from any front office. If we’re going to treat every explanation as potentially dishonest, then what’s even left to evaluate? At some point, you’ve got to judge the move based on context, timing, and performance. Thibs got outcoached in a winnable series. That doesn’t require a hidden agenda or a smoking gun—just accountability.
+1000 Geo
I’m not worried the decision on the next coach is “late” or “slow”, I’m worried it’s a good one.
Fingers crossed.
We know Dolan was involved, and we know Dolan is (way) senior to Leon on the org chart and has ultimate decision-making authority.(*)
But, yes, none of us know Leon’s actual true subjective thoughts about it. Absolutely right. We’ll never know.
And, yes, in basketball terms it was the “right” decision. Absolutely. Bad process, good result is still kinda bad, though.
(*) And I guess technically we know Leon didn’t resign in protest. At least not yet. Took Donnie Walsh some time before he did.
Congrats Bidiong! Changing careers is a huge accomplishment.
Ian Begley in his SNY interview yesterday right after the firing said that Thibs has been on the hot seat at least twice before. Dolan gave Leon the green light to fire Thibs both times, and both times Leon chose not to do it.
I’d be surprised if it happened a different way this time.
Um—but Dolan being “involved” doesn’t automatically mean this was a top-down power play. He’s the owner; should be looped in on major decisions like firing a head coach. Assuming it’s a power play without evidence is just speculation dressed up as analysis.
It doesn’t matter who fired Thibs, it matters who we hire.
The facts are that Dolan sat in on the meetings. There have been no other facts presented. We can editorialize this all day and still not have a conclusion. (See, generally Teague-ology). I, for one, would like to know why my company was firing man after the most successful season in 25 years while I’m still on the hook for $30M.
Again, it does not matter. If you didn’t like Thibs, you’re happy. If you did like Thibs, you’re not happy.
Congrats Bidiong!
When coaches get fired unexpectedly it may be because of people issues, not because of wins and losses. You can’t expect reporting to be able to discern all those issues, but often Management is correct even if the reasons aren’t in the press. Two recent cases are Malone being fired from the Nuggets and Griffin being fired by the Bucks. The reasons for Malone’s firing came out in the press (at least some of them) but Griffin’s did not (and he had a 30-13 record!). Nonetheless, I believe they were there and reasonable, because reporters who coukd know suggest this is the case. The Nuggets did fine without Malone, the Bucks not so well without Griffin. But the Bucks might have badly anyway, and Doc wasn’t an inspired choice for a replacement either.
Donnie, as the biggest Pacers fan outside the state of Indiana, I want to know if you think your team would be in the NBA finals right now if they were a slow, plodding halfcourt team that didn’t run any plays for a player other than Halliburton, and whose defense did not fit their personnel (i.e. instead of the relentless full court pressure of Nesmith and McConnell, they simply ran back and got set in drop coverage).
In addition, assume they found Obi Toppin unplayable like Thibs did, and they didn’t have access to Nembhardt and Sheppard bc they were unheralded draft picks who had to earn their time in practice for two years like Deuce.
They’d still be good bc there’s a lot of talent there, but that doesn’t strike me as a team that’s getting past the second round.
Maybe day-to-day coaching decisions don’t amount to a hill of beans but organizational philosophy is pretty significant.
There have been though: The meetings included players.
This was not a “Leon decides, then makes a recommendation to the owner, who accepts the recommendation” situation. (Obviously, getting owner signoff on a move like this is a typical requirement even in well-run organizations. That’s not in dispute.)
Or Leon wanted Dolan in the meetings so Dolan — who would have to eat $30 million if he agreed to let Leon fire the coach — could hear directly from the players that Thibs had become a problem.
To quote Gene Krantz, let’s work the problem(*), people. Let’s not make things worse by guessing.
(*) The problem is finding the next coach, and hoping it’s not either a guy who will be similar to Thibs, or a guy who will turn out to be a fraud like Fizdale.
Thanks guys! Starting at my new job tomorrow and I’ll be doing extremely well. Can’t wait to pay my vehicle off I just bought in November by the end of the year!
Per Begley:
Thankfully, everyone here who thought otherwise is a good-faith discourse participant who will say something to the tune of “ah, okay, I thought Dolan made the decision but this piece of definitive reporting from the most tuned-in Knicks reporter there is shows I was incorrect,” and move on.
No one here is so grating as to refuse to concede an opinion they once held has been proven incorrect by further reporting and/or empirics. No siree, we are on the clear on this one.
Congratulations, Bidiong! Union strong!
I wish I knew enough to have an opinion on who should be the next Knicks coach. I hope that they become the second member of the Red Holzman Club. (JVG & Riley knocked on the door, but were denied admission).
“What am I paying you for, son?”
In no way, shape, or form does it “tell you” that. It’s a laughably naive (*) interpretation. Return to sender.
(*) And binary.
Congrats bidiong! Without straying too far off topic, that strikes me as a genuinely excellent, secure career path in a moment where so many others are threatened, or already gobbled up, by AI. I suppose anything’s possible but I think it’ll be a looooooong time before the robots can safely and competently interact with complex electrical systems.
E, do you think the decision to fire Thibs was wrong, yes or no?
Last night’s close reading of Jeff Teague was classic Knickerblogger.
Oh, well clearly this must be a smokescreen. I mean, just because multiple reports now confirm it was Rose’s call and that Dolan merely supported the decision doesn’t mean we should abandon our well-crafted conspiracy theories. Obviously, Leon is a helpless puppet, silently fuming as he ruthlessly fires a coach he loves, all while drafting his resignation letter with invisible ink.
Just as I predicted, no one here would dare plug their ears and shout “fake news” at iron clad reporting that is inconsistent their priors.
This is not “reporting,” much less “iron-clad.”
And the deduction Begley’s making is the actual “fake news.” Laughably so.
This is getting to the point where it’s being sold so much that it’s becoming oversold and when it becomes oversold, that’s the tell. (“The lady doth protest too much.”)
Congratulations Bidiong!!!!!!!!
E’s pretty pretty good at serial monotany. Makes you feel alive. Like a when you scratch crust away from your eye in the morning. Still alive. Still excreting fluid that dries.
Begley also brought that up. Apparently the first time Thibs was on the hot seat was during that losing streak in December 2022, before Thibs changed the starting lineup and turned the season around. Dolan was considering firing Thibs and left the final say to Leon.
According to Begley, Leon supported Thibs. If Dolan had forced Leon to fire him, Leon would have resigned in protest immediately.
That Leon has not resigned in protest is good evidence that the decision was not forced on him.
I don’t think Leon is the type to “quiet quit.”
I know the syllogism Begley set up is completely false, from decades of experience and the obvious facts of humanity. You should think that, too — and you yourself probably do, but I can’t tell for sure — but people are free to think what they want.
In terms of the decision: Bad process/good result. We’ll see if Leon can rescue it. Hopefully he can.
He’s not quiet quitting, or doing any kind of quitting. He’s continuing in the job he makes good money to do — and why wouldn’t he? (*) That’s what people do in the actual real world.
Real life isn’t the movies.
(*) Because his boss made a personnel decision he disagreed with or interfered too much in said decision? Lol. Sure.
E is right about one thing: this is a ridiculous argument.
It’s also an unsourced theory being presented as a report, and as such it reduces Begley’s credibility.
At this point, it honestly feels less like a debate and more like performance. No one can be this willfully dense unless they’re actively trying to provoke. Either engage with the facts in good faith or just admit it’s about sticking to the bit.
Why don’t you think Leon would want to fire Thibs?
And if anyone would know it’s the guy who suggested Aaron Judge is a bum less than 24 hours ago.
Way to go, Sparky!
[Note for the uninitiated: at least back in the day, that’s what electricians would jokingly call one another…said my gramps]
The “bad process” is Dolan’s hands-on involvement and looping players in with Leon. Like I said above, we’ll never know Leon’s true subjective thoughts on the matter. It’s possible he saw what we saw and wanted him out; it’s possible he thought Thibs was the perfect coach for the team.
Though I will say that I’m not sure I’d want to be walking into my bosses’ offices less than a year out from recommending a $30 million contract extension and recommending his firing. That reflects very badly on me and my competence, all else equal.
(Which isn’t to say it didn’t happen, we don’t really know what Leon knows and has been able to intuit about Dolan’s feelings about money. Or what the discussions were about the contract extension.)
1.) I would know.
2.) I didn’t suggest it. But even if I had, it was only refering to his atrocious playoff performances.
Moving on from all the bad-faith silliness, Macri’s doing a live chat right now on his Substack, and here’s what he had to say when someone asked about Johnny Bryant:
FWIW, he is not one of the people I’ve heard about Bryant from, but reading between the lines here supports what I’ve been told about his Fizdale-ian qualities.
Also in the interests of having productive conversations, let’s do our first Question of the Day in a while:
Leaving aside specific names, which type of coach would you prefer we hire: 1)Veteran who’s a known quantity, for good or bad? 2)Rising young assistant, who might be Mosley or might be Fizdale? 3)College coach who might or might not be able to make his stuff work in the pros?
A $30M severance for a key executive in an $8BN company is not a sign of incompetence. It’s a mistake, but the cost of doing business.
Leon actually should have made this decision last year instead of giving Thibs the extension. The writing was on the wall already after Thibs coached us out of a legitimate opportunity to win the championship. At that point Thibs had three miserable postseason failures in a row on his resumé; it was silly to think he wouldn’t add one more to the ledger.
The extension was a bad decision. If you have the stones to fire Thibs now you should have had the stones not to give him the extension in the first place. People are comparing this to the Warriors but the Warriors didn’t let Mark Jackson fail four times before they fired him.
Fact is we were late on this. We might have even been better off doing what Denver did. But it’s the right call.
i think that i lean towards a college coach but i do not feel very strongly about that i just want someone innovative
I agree, but wouldn’t want to run the risk of the boss not agreeing.
In terms of what went down, I’d like to think that there were rumblings under the surface and that the potshots and public criticisms of KAT by the lesser lights in the operation reflected on the ship Thibs was running and put things over the edge for both Dolan and Leon. I’d say there’s a decent chance that was the precipitating factor. Probably my leader in the clubhouse.
In terms of the next coach, has to be someone creative, particularly on the defensive end. Has to be comfortable with 5-out, has to have proven ability in coaching around poor defenders at the 1 and 5 and not much POA defense. Has to be comfortable winning by outscoring the other team. (Thibs never, ever was.)
Can be a veteran or an assistant.
agree that we probably should not have given thibs the extension in the first place given his track record at the time much prefer that we had inked ihart for an extra year instead yes i know its not the same bucket of cash
I don’t have a strong preference for a particular archetype so much as I’d like to see someone who is willing to risk some incredibly minor embarrassment in the regular season for the sake of experimentation, is generally adaptive, and has a clear vision for the roster.
I could see someone like Budenholzer fitting this description, but I could also see a more up-and-coming type like Quinn fitting it.
I guess I have a small preference for trying to unearth the next true gem, and to do that you do have to roll the dice a bit. If Spo trusts Quinn, and he sure seems to, that’s a very good indicator. So as of now he’s probably my top choice.
I don’t personally have anything against Bryant but I do trust both Alan and Macri, and will also note that: 1) we didn’t seem to skip a beat when he left and 2) if someone has the up-and-coming-inevitable-future-head-coach reputation but can’t seem to snag one of the many opportunities that arise while they have that reputation, I view that as a relevant datapoint.
If nothing else, Bryant seemed to have good people skills. Spida loves him, and Julius and other Knicks here talked about how he supported them emotionally through tough times — as if he was playing Good Cop to Thibs’ Grouchy Cop.
The ideal fit is a veteran head coach who has both playoff success and tactical ability. Spo, Tyronn Lue. The cream of the crop of option #1. But they’re not going to be available barring a miraculous stroke of luck.
I’m going with #2, the rising young assistant. Giving a highly regarded coaching prospect his first HC gig seems to be the meta now. Pop choosing his lead assistant, Mitch Johnson, as his successor over anyone else in his coaching tree says a lot to me. Joe Mazzulla, Mark Daigneault. (Even Will Hardy in Utah is compromising their tank because he can’t help but win games with their terrible roster.)
i used to get mild road rage. then i started pretending that driving was a game and the entire point of the game was to piss you off, with deep blue programmed to control all the other cars with the sole intention of fucking with you. deep blue itself of course didn’t know it was doing this in any meaningful sense but simply existed in a narrow combinatorial loop walled in by the teleology of provocation. it actually worked.
I don’t want (3), because I think NBA is too different from college, and success might not translate. In particular, I would not get a veteran college coach, as they would be less adaptable. Among (1) and (2), I would get (1), specifically because I think we are attractive enough (team / money / city) to be able to choose among the good veteran NBA coaches. I think that (2), although it could be more rewarding, is way riskier.
This is maybe the least interesting controversy in the history of this site.
First you have Josh Hart’s “agenda” comments.
Then Mikal Bridges openly complaining about minutes.
Then PJ Tucker, unplayable in the NBA, was given a roster spot to be a “vibes” guy.
Then Game 1 of Indiana happens. Then OG and KAT visibly beef on the bench.
Then the players only meeting.
Then Deuce McBride has some shit to say.
The writing was on the wall. We won two rounds in the playoffs despite all of this, but that wasn’t enough to save Thibs’ job. The locker room issues, clearly related to basketball issues, became too much. There was plenty of smoke before the fire.
Some of these events happened quite recently. It’d be kind of unseemly if it leaked out DURING THE PLAYOFFS that the Knicks were conducting a coaching search, while their season was ongoing.
I don’t see how else this was supposed to play out. The fact that the Knicks haven’t announced a new coach yet means nothing to me.
I am open to any of the three archetypes. I care more about the name.
If the veteran coach is Mike Malone, no. If it’s Mike Budenholzer, ok.
If the college coach is Jay Wright, hell no. If it’s Dan Hurley, ok.
And I’m even ok with the rising young assistant as long you do it the way Boston did and support him with a senior coaching consultant like JVG. That’s probably the riskiest route, though, and my least favorite option.
If Bryant is a player’s coach, we should go with someone else. This team’s top priority is a tactical overhaul.
IOW, a born second fiddle — which is probably the essence of what you’re hearing and what Macri said.
if college…i would say Hurley or the guy who just won the title with Florida…there might be one or two up and comer Brad Stevens types that they could kick the tires on….
I generally am adverse to any retread, i.e., malone, bud (living here in phx the past year and a half…he just seems like a variant of thibs that has a better offensive mind but something seems off with him)…and i don’t see us prying away any of the good ones from another team (spo, lue, finch, etc)…
if we can find the next daigneault…then for sure…
They all have risk but you know what they say about taking no risk…
Macri now also mentioning Chris Quinn as a name he heard a few weeks back.
Also notable from his chat, when someone asked if this was less a Thibs vs. KAT choice than a Thibs vs. Bridges choice:
I also would not be surprised if more bombs drop. I could see Leon firing Thibs because he wants a new voice with this same group, thinking a new approach/philosophy will maximize this team’s potential.
But I could also see KAT, Mikal, Hart and even Mitch and Deuce being traded this summer to completely reconfigure the team. I think Brunson and OG are the only safe ones on the team right now.
And with that, we’re finally getting somewhere.
I’d be on board with Quinn.
I don’t think there needs to be a young vs experienced dichotomy. Yes, ideally you would get a hot young coach that delivers, but there are obvious risks. But you also have the Carlisles of the world – old guys who can implement quite innovative ideas at times. Even Atkinson was not on his first stint when hired by the Cavs. You can get creative minds that are not completely untested.
I hope they run a process and ask stuff like: how would you increase the team’s 3PAr? How would you respond to the wing-at-KAT defense? How do you maximize Bridges? How do you build a defense with KAT and Brunson on the court? And then see who has a good plan.
I spit my coffee a little bit.
Leaving aside specific names, which type of coach would you prefer we hire
I don’t know. But this coaching search is especially valuable because they can quiz the candidates about a very specific set of players and how he (or she) could get them to the next level, or alternatively, what players need to be moved and why. It’s less about finding the next great coach than the best coach for where the Knicks are right now. I know the roster has flaws but Boston game 6 hints there is another level or two.
again innovative is the key word i would like to keep this group together and in order to do so the new coach will have to come in with some new ideas and different tactics to try until it works which might be as soon as by christmas day #startbrunsontownsanunobyrobinsonmcbride #superbenchhartbridgeswrightshamet #keyreserveshukportikolek
I’m not sure I agree with that.
I think everyone knew OG and Bridges were targets, but a lot people here presumed a deal would not get done because we were having legal issues with Toronto and the Nets were a local rival.
Even a Towns deal was speculated on a few times. I even remember suggesting a Randle for Towns swap (whch I was in favor of).
What was suprising in every case was that there were no leaks that a deal was imminent or heating up. We just woke up one day and there was deal. Leon runs a quiet ship.
If you want to throw one more name out there, Jaren Jackson Jr. was a another name they were supposedly interested in.
As far as a new coach goes, imo there’s a 0% chance this was sudden decision because we lost to the Pacers. Thibs has been on the hot seat for awhile for all the same reasons skeptical fans have been discussing. The loss (and more importantly the way it happened) and discussions with key players were just the last boxes to check before letting him go. I can almost guarantee they have a plan A, B and C for who’s next and have already had some conversations and put out feelers with agents.
I don’t know what went wrong, but I thought Monty Williams did a good job in Phoenix. If he is motivated, I would consider him.
I know that Brunson is probably not the happiest that Thibs is gone, but it has allowed everyone to move forward without really discussing what was probably the team’s #1 problem this postseason – his defense.
I’d like number two. But I’d also like a coach who is more flexible in the x’s and o’s too. And we also need a player’s coach. But this all put together is a lot to ask.
But I have no suggestions of names. I thought J J Redick was an off the wall choice for the Lakers and he proved me wrong. So I’m happy to hear other suggestions but won’t make my own.
yes i used to like monty williams for sure he did a great job with the suns but at the safe time was pretty horrific with the pellies and the pistons overall not a great record
it is ok that it is a lot to ask we will be paying a kings ransom for all of those services
Alan, I’m with Hubert on this one, is not the “group-profile”, it’s the name and known, or preceived, “reputation”.
Alas pipe dreams like Spo and Ty Lue would be perfect, but they are just dreams (and I’m sure they have their flaws and quirks too, like any coach… or human being).
I’m with Noble on the coaching description. I’m less enamored with a college coach, as NBA multi-millionaires and the game is just different, and I see too many ways that could go sideways quickly. But I’m not a coach of coaches, so I can only talk about what I want as a result, as per Noble’s description.
I was quite convinced that E’s posts yesterday, noxious puffs of evil conjecture, coming with astonishing regularity, slowly but surely infected the entire thread like malware. Go back and read the degeneration of both thought and behavior from most posters. So that’s MY conspiracy hypothesis.
Another question for Donnie and the folks who think coaching doesn’t matter:
Anyone ever seen two next actions on a Knicks offensive possession that looked planned and difficult to stop?
The media support for Thibs is pretty surprising to me. Rather a classic flip flop. Just last year people were ripping Thibs as the cause of all the injuries in last year’s playoffs, playing starters too much, not enough of an inventive offense/lack of adjustments. This year, same issues again but we were relatively healthy.
He’s a floor coach, not a ceiling coach – always has been. Alan Hahn says this fire was player-driven. Guess what? This is now a players league. But beyond that Thibs’ game plans were stale and easily countered. We won this year because of talent, not because our coach made the right moves
“Has Z-Man been able to figure out the difference yet between “a basketball decision made for basketball reasons by basketball people” and “a decision made by James Dolan for gods know what reasons after talking for an hour with a couple players”?”
Well, I’ve figured out the difference between a poster who has opinions grounded in facts and a poster who pulls shit out of his ass and calls them facts. You have a long history of being in the second category, and Z-man is not alone in recognizing that very clear distinction.
“We don’t know the give and take between Dolan and Leon…”
See, this is the point where you should have just shut the fuck up. But you didn’t because you are a blowhard know-it-all who just cant help but make shit up about that very give and take that you admittedly don’t know anything about.
“Like I said above, we’ll never know Leon’s true subjective thoughts on the matter…”
So let’s just pull stuff out of our asses as if we did know because it’s so much fun to do that!
“He’s not quiet quitting, or doing any kind of quitting. He’s continuing in the job he makes good money to do — and why wouldn’t he? (*) That’s what people do in the actual real world.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/nyregion/eric-adams-prosecutors-resign.html
Can we stop this argument about who made the decision? Decisions in real life aren’t always made by one person. Sometimes a group comes to a joint decision. The Knicks are now actually a pretty good organization and this was probably a group decision, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Kind of interesting how much Kristaps Porzingis ended up being such a large part of the Knicks’ narrative this season.
KP was probably the single worst player to see significant floor time in the NBA playoffs this year. Had a .430 TS% and a -4.0 BPM. Was a massive negative just about every time he stepped on the floor, on both ends.
A normal, healthy Porzingis would have been a difference maker in that series. Three of our four wins went down to extremely high leverage possessions at the end of very close games. If he hadn’t completely stunk out the joint, they probably beat us and this whole conversation looks completely different.
Anyway, thanks KP. You finally came through for us.
The 180° reverse made by many media pundits is really annoying.
Just a couple of weeks ago they were clowning him for his short rotations, days ago they were banging him because he wasn’t playing his best lineups and now all of a sudden he’s a saint and his firing was a huge mistake.
Only a few people are keeping steady with their previous opinions (Duncan and Leroux for instance), the others are just buffoons.
What facts were “I know more about how Thibs interacts with his players than a guy who played 1.5 years for him” grounded in?
I think part of the reason Leon fired Thibs is tied to the moves he needs to make going forward.
The Knicks don’t have the cap space to pay bench role players top dollar, so they’ll need to attract them with the pitch: “Come to New York on a one-year deal, contend for a title, and if you perform well in the league’s biggest market, you’ll set yourself up for a big contract.” But that’s a harder sell when the Knicks rank dead last in bench minutes and Thibs—fairly or not—has a reputation for not playing his bench. It’s tough to convince role players to take less money and risk not seeing the floor.
Brunson’s defense is definitely an issue, but far from the #1 problem for the Knicks. He’s not responsible for the endless leak outs for easy buckets in transition, nor is it his fault that we couldn’t stop Siakam.
And I’m pretty sure he wasn’t guarding Nesmith when he went nuclear in game 1.
Sounds like the answer is, “No.”
Sports punditry is complete garbage. It’s one of the reasons this site endures. The conversations here are a million times more intelligent than what you can find anywhere else.
haven’t seen his name mentioned and he’s very young and green to be thrown into the cauldron of a nyk playoff team, but a recent nyk assistant i thought had potential was scott king. he was video coordinator here and a player development coach until he went to coach the austin spurs this season. and won g league coach of the year. you might remember him from julius briefly interning as his laptop caretaker.
You win NBA titles by having better players than the other teams, the floor ceiling coach shit is so stupid. Frank Vogel won an NBA title, he beat Erik Spolestra. Mike Malone won an NBA title, he also beat Erik Spolestra. Erik Spolestra won 2 titles coaching Lebron James and 0 coaching guys not named Lebron James. Yes, it would help the Knicks if they hire another good coach, one either better at coaching than Thibs, or more suited for this roster than Thibs. But to get a better chance at winning a title they need to figure out how to improve the roster
scott king would require too much of a step up for me personally
I think the real reason E is upset is because now he can’t use the term hustle bunny anymore.
figure out how to improve the roster or use our current one better and more efficiently
#startbrunsontownsanunobyrobinsonmcbride #superbenchhartbridgeswrightshamet #keyreserveshukportikolek
This is why I think there’s a very real possibility that some big trades are going down this summer.
Leon might have looked at this team and realized that we both needed a new coach AND needed to change the personnel.
Ha! That would be funny.
I think the lack of an internal coaching pipeline is a pretty severe failure of Leon. Guys like Joe Mazzulla and Mark Daigneault didn’t come out of nowhere, they were part of the organization for years. Same with Spoelstra. Rose has been here 5 years and there’s not one single current employee likely to make the short list of candidates. Much like the draft, there doesn’t seem to be an organizational commitment to grooming.
i am not sure i see how potential use of the term hustlebunny has been in any way diminished by the departure of thibs
This argument leans too hard on a false binary—either players win titles, or coaching doesn’t matter. The truth is more nuanced: while elite talent is the most important factor, coaching often determines how far that talent goes.
Yes, Frank Vogel and Mike Malone beat Erik Spoelstra in the Finals—but those weren’t coaching mismatches; they were roster mismatches. It’s not an indictment of Spoelstra’s coaching that he lost to teams with peak LeBron or Jokic. And Spoelstra dragging underdog teams to the Finals at all is a testament to how much good coaching matters.
Thibs is a good coach in many respects, but his known shortcomings—like short rotations, over-reliance on starters, and rigidity—can actively limit how far a well-built team goes. A better-suited coach doesn’t just make marginal upgrades in tactics; he can extend your stars, develop your bench, adjust mid-series, and elevate the roster you do have. In a tight seven-game series, that’s not “floor/ceiling” nonsense—it’s the difference between going home and moving on.
Yes, the Knicks will always need to keep improving the roster if for no other reason than you’re either getting better or worse in a competitive professional sports environment. But dismissing the coaching component as “stupid” undercuts decades of NBA history where great coaches—think Popovich, Kerr, Carlisle, Nurse—were the difference between talent plateauing or peaking.
So you think Josh Hart was lying when he talked about what makes the Pacers so hard to defend?
And you think the Pacers would be in the NBA Finals today with Thibs as their coach running a slow, plodding halfcourt offense with only one action? And without the services of Nembhardt, Sheppard, and Obi, guys who likely wouldn’t even be on the team if he were there?
I find that hard to believe.
The hustlebunny bit died the second E decided that he loved Josh Hart, and that OG was The One True Hustlebunny. (A rare case of E not committing to the original idea of the bit quite hard enough.)
Broken record but …. because they didn’t expect to be doing a coaching search.
(I agree entirely with your broader point. Thibs is partly to blame as well.)
I prefer #1 for a team (like the Knicks) that are in the “win now” mode. Either #2 (rising assistant) or #3 (college coach) have a learning curve to become a NBA head coach. For the rising assistant, the physical move might be less than 2′ on the bench, but the mental journey to being where the buck stops is huge. For the college coach, it is literally a different game with different rules.
Having said all of that, I trust Leon Rose to make a good hire. By “trust”, I mean that I believe he will make a better decision than I would make, not that he is infallible.
Because the term was always meant to connote Thibs’s blind spots and not the actual characteristics of players.
i guess i have reconsidered my earlier initial choice of getting an innovative college coach to getting an innovative experienced nba head coach based on what ephus wrote about where we are on the win curve etc.
Congrats Bidiong! Running wires is going to be a very useful profession for a long time. You are in Australia right? Can never remember where people are from. But rebuilding the grid is going to occupy the next 30 years just about everywhere.
Serial monotony, I like that.
No one knows who Mark Daigneault is or how to spell his name and he is about to be the coach of an NBA Champion. So, and this is one of my oldest opinions, I don’t think the coach matters much.
That said, the text I sent people about why this might actually be good was so easy to write. We didn’t take enough threes. We didn’t use enough players. We didn’t use our best players enough (Deuce). We didn’t use our best players well together. We didn’t use our best players in the way they should be used. And apparently a lot of the players didn’t like him.
I am fine with it.
And hey, 500 comments between the last two threads. Mike can re-furnish his condo in San Remo. Didn’t expect this much action in a traditional quiet period.
I do appreciate your commitment to the bit of perpetually moving the rhetorical goal posts, E. Thank you for providing some constants in an ever-more turbulent world.
Not sure what all the huff-and-puff-and-stuff is about who made the decision. If nearly everyone on this site believed Thibs was not maximizing this roster, why wouldn’t the guy who actually assembled it think so too? I mean, duh.
Leon had every reason to fire Thibs. He believes KAT/Mikal/OG are the win now moves. He’s out of draft picks. He can’t coach them, so he’s gonna find the guy who can.
Vet or novice, Leon’s coaching search is simply gonna be, “How would you win with the guys I brought here? Can you teach them to pass the ball?”
PS — the odd man traded out after this (IMO) might actually be Josh Hart.
PPS – congrats Bidiong!
I’d like someone innovative, but pretty much everyone is more innovative than Thibs. Do we need a first time coach for that? I’d say probably not.
At minimum, we need a coach who fits the skill sets of our players. Thibs was great with Mitch/iHart/Nerlens. He’s not great with KAT. His offense worked pretty well when we dominated the possession battle. OG and Mikal are capable scorers and shooters, but not those kinds of rebounders.
constants of moving things is an interesting irony
my road rage finally subsided when I noticed that one person whom I got in to some weird death duel while 2 lanes were turning in to 1 had not only a passenger in the car, but also a small child in the back…
changed my perspective on the whole every day is like a grand theft auto driving experience…
you seem way too chill to get into death duels or grand theft auto real life driving stuff
Coaching absolutely matters. The 2010 Mavericks beat a team with prime Lebron, DWade and Bosh.
Also coached by Carlisle. Yes they had a HOF in Dirk and a lot of GREAT players but they had a deep team and Carlisle used that team masterfully. I mean he had JJ Barea guard Lebron at one point!
That is absolutely an example of a team’s coach elevating the team to beat another team with more superstar talent.
Playing devil’s advocate here:
Leon wanted to fire Thibs. Dolan likes Thibs, sees him as a loyal employee who just took his team to the ECF, and he just signed him to a $30 million extension. He’s not against firing him, but wanted more intel.
So in order to get clarity, Dolan sits with Leon in the exit interviews. They hear from some disgruntled players. Leon makes a final pitch. Dolan agrees that letting Thibs go (and the $30 million) is the right course of action.
Not saying I believe this, but it’s another way of looking at it.
The Pacers are loaded with hustlebunnies, ironically.
Steveoh, I love this theory and think it makes a bunch of sense.
I wonder whether Thibs took any lessons (or paid any price) with regard to his disdain for Obi Toppin’s game. While Obi was in NY, Thibs would not play him for significant minutes and would not pair him with Randle as the 4/5. He stated that he did not believe that an Obi/Randle pair could defend adequately. Well, Obi just was part of a defense that stifled the Knicks for extended periods of play. Obi was a big part of the Pacers’ ability to run fastbreak in virtually all situations.
If Obi were the automatic glaring weakness that Thibs treated him as, the Knicks should have been able to score on the Pacers easily whenever Obi was on the floor.
Even if Thibs did not see that he may have been mistaken, I can imagine Leon Rose (who was an Obi-backer) putting it into the mix of whether Thibs should return. Bottom line: Thibs does not value players like Obi, and consequently does not create solutions to maximize their value. I’d argue that KAT and Brunson both fall into this bucket.
He’s a great sell high candidate. I think the best trade we can make this summer is Josh for a PF and a pick in this draft.
But since ptmilo is already raging against AI generated traffic I will spare y’all my latest production of trade porn.
Dick Vermeil would like to have a word with you 🙂
@Steveoh, that sounds like a sane club Pres dealing with his boss in a well-functioning organization. Unfamiliar to all of us, but I agree it makes sense.
@ephus, +1
That was (terrifyingly) 15 years ago. I don’t think coaching doesn’t matter, I think once you have a coach who isn’t doing things like telling Klay Thompson to post up more it’s a lot less important than roster construction.
ephus raises an interesting point. While I’m not sure I’d overly defend Obi (he may have just gotten better in the intervening years), it’s interesting to look at Thibs’ failure as one of optimization. He definitely optimized Jalen (shoot all the time because you’re really good at it), and sort of Hart (be on the floor all the time to be able to make hustle-bunny plays). Although an argument is there that those moves didn’t optimize the rest of the team for various reasons.
But most of us seem to agree he didn’t optimize KAT. I don’t think he did so with OG or Bridges, either, although I’m honestly clueless how that might actually occur (and why I’m not on the short list as a Thibs replacement). He clearly didn’t optimize Deuce. Mitch, maybe, but the rest of the bench wasn’t optimized as they didn’t get enough run and combinations weren’t tried (until the ECF for god’s sake!).
For what its worth Fred Katz when talking to Macri about the article published right after the Knicks got eliminated mentioned that the locker room issues were strictly basketball related. Not that it matters but it seems like the players all do like each other and play for each other, even mentioned how everybody loves KAT as a person despite having issues with his defensive acumen.
Coaches are not only calling plays and deciding rotations but also their demeanor plays a big part on their roster’s overall performance via psychology.
Just think of the different approach of a coach after Obi losing fast break dunks and you’ll get the picture.
Congrats to bidiong!
I like Thibs AND I’m also Happy
Josh Hart led the NBA in minutes per game. He should probably be playing like 25% fewer minutes.
He had a nice season, and was valuable for the Knicks, but he’s also limited in important ways— he does a PF’s rebounding job but is too small to guard 4’s, and of course he can’t and won’t shoot from the perimeter. He’s really a sui generis kind of player and has a place on a winning team, but he shouldn’t be a guy who basically never leaves the floor.
Was that the only reason we lost in last year’s playoffs? Asking for a friend.
That’s why you shouldn’t put Josh on a team where he’s the only guy who isn’t a center who can get rebounds.
I think he has definitely not optimized Jalen. We haven’t even scratched the surface of what an offense with Jalen Brunson can do. We only use Brunson as a ball handler. Brunson as a screener is still virgin earth. So is Brunson moving off the ball for Towns like a poor man’s Murray and Jokic (Towns isn’t Jokic but he’s a very good passer). Hell we haven’t even varied the players who set screens for Brunson very much. It was pretty much all KAT for half the year then all Josh Hart for the second half.
No just the biggest.
Is Obi notably improved since he’s been in Indy? I don’t see much of a difference in playstyle or his stats. His offensive EPM is pretty similar and his defensive EPM has fallen off a cliff. I don’t think Thibs is good at optimizing the roster but I don’t think that Obi is an example of that.
Lol
World be risky AF, but the kind of “new ideas” hire that could work
Come on Hubie, I’m as anti-Thibs as anyone but he was not the reason we lost to Indy last year.
If you’re blaming him for all the injuries last year, then it’s only fair to credit him for us being at full health this time.
Come on, Hubert, that’s bad faith. Julius was out because of an injury that had nothing to do with Thibs. Mitch got hurt again because of an injury that had nothing to do with Thibs. Hart tore an abdominal muscle. Brunson broke his hand. You can maybe blame OG pulling a hammy on overuse, but overall, it was not a coaching failure – it was a lack of players.
I agree with this, though
He’s not the only guy who can get a rebound, at least when Mitch is healthy. And as much as I appreciate Hart and his rebounding, rebounding is only one facet of the game.
As for Obi, he looked like the same player to me. Hurt us on leak-outs and a few threes, a huge problem on defense that we exploited regularly. Still, a good change-of-pace big off the bench, but the issue was that we didn’t want to pay him for that. Fundamentally correct, imo.
Mitch is also a Center, and the qualifier was ‘guy who isn’t a Center who can get rebounds.’
It is legitimately true that every player outside of Mitch and Towns is a shitty rebounder. I just don’t think it matters nearly as much as Thibs thought.
That makes no sense. He didn’t do in this year’s playoffs what he did in last year’s (whether bc he learned his lesson or bc he was ordered to by a new medical staff remains unclear).
There is no greater indicator that Thibs’ malpractice in last year’s postseason likely contributed to our glut of injuries than the fact that he didn’t do it again this year with an even thinner roster.
In the first two minutes of Game 5, Jalen Brunson was moving off of the ball and get free for three open shots. That clearly was a coaching choice by Thibs, and it worked. After those possessions, the Knicks did not go back to setting off-ball screens for Brunson in Game 5 or Game 6. I think that was also a coaching choice.
I do not observe the game well enough to spot if the Pacers changed their defense in a way that negated the ability of the Knicks to have Brunson move off of the ball to get free. If they did, good on Carlisle. If they did not, Thibs should have kept doing it.
The thing with Josh — I love the guy — but, assuming a healthy KAT and Mitch, we don’t need a dedicated (short) rebounder. We need a shooter who can ideally guard the point of attack and slide Bridges, OG into their right spots, i.e. we need Deuce or better. IMO Josh’s minutes were like Thibs’s security blanket that he wouldn’t give up to daddy Leon.
And — I didn’t really follow when Thibs and KAT were together once before, but that didn’t work out, right? So there may/must have been some exasperation on both sides after his trade to NY.
Imo Coaches are like Conductors.
Some are Top for Beethoven while others are Better for Stravinsky.
They’re also like Drivers.
Some are good at snow, others are good at rain, some are top in F1 and others in MotoGP or indy 500.
Now see, with respect to me, I don’t believe that in the least. I don’t believe for one second that if I had access to the information that he does and could hire a staff and an organization carte blanche, that he would make better decisions than YT. (*)
He’s already got two probably fatal disadvantages — one, the guy he has to manage up, Mr. Dolan; and two, his conflict of interests with respect to his CAA ties and whatever he’s doing there.
He might make a good decision, he might not. I see no reason to be inherently deferential.
A lot of times in life, people are in positions just because they’re there. Nothing more to it than that.
(*) The Hard Knocks on the NY Football Giants was a good documentary on how the front office sausage gets made. Nothing intimidating there in the least. And football is way more complicated than basketball. Find the right people, empower them, listen to them and ignore the dolts or don’t hire them in the first place and you’re 80% of the way there.
Right, but when Mitch is healthy Kat should be playing both the 4 and 5.
Fair response, but I think it misses a nuance. Obi is playing a lot more in Indiana than he did in New York.
Here is the link to his Basketball Reference page: https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/t/toppiob01.html
Obi only averaged 14.7 mpg in New York (with a lot of DNP-CDs). He has averaged over 20 mpg in Indiana.
Obi has not transformed to become a good defensive player. His “per 36” scoring is basically unchanged. He is still just a “change of pace” Big. But, Carlisle feels comfortable playing him, while Thibs never got there. Carlisle finds ways to make it work.
Obi might not be worth his salary as a 14 mpg guy (who only plays 65 games per season). He is worth his salary as a 20 mpg who plays every night.
Not Expecting or Wanting specific hiring by LRose.
I am waiting patiently to be Pleasantly Surprised!
So it’s hard to tell — are we still in favor of trading a 1 for Josh Hart?
Is the follow-up question how do you solve the Kobayashi Maru or Fermat’s Conjecture?
Since I rarely give a “hot take”, here’s mine on Josh Hart. He should be our backup PG next year (unless there is an upgrade on the roster). As I’ve previously written, Josh Hart is a lesser version of prime Russell Westbrook. He plays with energy, attacks the rim, distributes the ball and can defend anyone from 1 – 4. He also is bad outside shooter who will turn the ball over.
Owen, I’m actually in Tennessee now. We’re going to start building mini nuke powerplants down here to power all the changes coming. I’m cool with mini nukes, they aren’t cooled with heavy water and don’t melt. Lol
For now I’m building data plant buildings. I had been building battery plants for GM and LG.
I wonder whether Thibs took any lessons (or paid any price) with regard to his disdain for Obi Toppin’s game. While Obi was in NY, Thibs would not play him for significant minutes and would not pair him with Randle as the 4/5. He stated that he did not believe that an Obi/Randle pair could defend adequately. Well, Obi just was part of a defense that stifled the Knicks for extended periods of play. Obi was a big part of the Pacers’ ability to run fastbreak in virtually all situations.
tho a card carrying dissenter of the donnie super theory that coaching is irrelevant but also that firing the coach was a terrible decision, there is no way in hell i count this as an effective point against thibs. from my seat obi is overwhelmingly who he always was on defense, and that is to say, pretty shitty at it. he admittedly had some nice moments in our series (ofc he also has some nice defensive moments for us to against the cavs). but he also had some terrible ones that didn’t get a ton of play for understandable reasons given the overall plotline.
all year indy has looked way worse on defense with obi in the game and the playoffs were no different; a good stint or two should not budge you more than half a step from the base camp of the mountains of bayesian evidence supporting thibs’ concern that a randle obi 4/5 would anchor a five hole colander. carlisle played obi only modestly more than thibs did in the playoffs and he has like eleven injured backup 5s. the minutes where obi has been paired without a true 5 (siakam or bryant) have overall been really poor defensively in the playoffs. i think hali is generally a key part of why obi has in his own way made pretty good and when he doesn’t have hali to run with the obi lineups have looked meh overall.
I am hard pressed to imagine this roster winning less than 50 games, just on talent alone.
Look at the difference between: The 2022-23 roster (pythag 48 wins, actual 47) and the roster this year (pythag 51, actual 51).
I recognize the NBA is zero sum and the challenge of accumulating wins isn’t static, but the roster transformation is worthy of more than an increase of 4 wins (3 pythag) vs. 2022-23. To me, it’s less that Thibs is “dragging” this team to 50 wins, and more that he’s driving with the parking brake on. Our schemes are making it harder on the team than it needs to be.
I saw someone put Chris Paul out there as a name. I think we could do a lot worse than having a coaching brain trust with a recent player as our coach and a Tex Winter/JVG/Pete Carril type to assist.
Speaking of Pete Carril, how fun would this exact team be with KAT at the top of a Princeton offense with OG and (at most two of) the Nova guys cutting?
Trivia question:
Who was the second best rebounder on the Warriors original death lineup of Curry-Klay-Iggy-Barnes-Green?
Answer will be about 4 posts down.
The 23rd pick in the 2023 NBA draft for Josh Hart is one of the best ROIs any team has gotten on the trade market in the last few years, so yeah. Josh has his flaws but we wouldn’t be in a better place with Kris Murray.
Stop making me imagine good things 😉
The bigger point is that Carlisle didn’t look at Obi and say “Young guy, can’t play defense, reject.”
After all was said and done, all the young guys Thibs was given, save Deuce, are no longer here.
Every. Single. One.
And that doesn’t even count the lottery picks traded, the first rounders Incinerated, and all the rest.
Speaks volumes. Some will troll and nitpick and cavil and say “There’s no PROOF they’re gone because of Thibs,” but when I go to sleep at 10 pm with no snow on the ground and wake up at 8 am and there’s six inches of snow on the ground, I’m quite comfortable concluding that it snowed when I was sleeping.
You mean “17th pick,” right?
Sources: Suns hiring Cavs assistant Jordan Ott as head coach.
The plot thickens.
I fully trust the reporting. No interest in Bryant.
The question isn’t would they be in the finals, but have been in the ECF, which is where Thibs’ team got to. It doesn’t require any projection or theoretical exercise. Thibs’s team made the final four, despite all of that failure you outlined above. Something had to have been done right.
Answer: Steph Curry
The Warriors death lineup — the one with a 15.8 net rating — had a DReb% of 64.1%.
They ranked 98th out of 100 lineups with a minimum of 20 minutes played.
The 30th ranked team in the league that year had a DReb% of 71.6%.
No one is saying the Knicks are the Curry Warriors, but the idea that you need two rebounders on the floor to win has been out the window for a long time now.
I was always Obi curious and I enjoyed the dunking but the proof that Thibs isn’t using Deuce right isn’t that Obi is in Indiana….
For a variety of reasons, almost all noted here long ago, he blew himself up. The only question is whether they should have wasted the time waiting for the inevitable. I was a “No” from the get-go, not being a time waster; others were “Yes,” and there’s without question something to be said for “Yes.” They did some decent things in the interim.
He was overmatched in the playoffs every year. Not in every series, by every coach, but it started in his very first playoff series and kept rolling all the way through his last. Every single year with him at the helm, save the one in which he didn’t make the playoffs, wound up in the same way — him whiffing to a lower seed. That continued a trend that started long before he got here.
If you take the team at its word, they too got sick of falling back on beating up on the Pelicans on February Wednesday nights and want more. Absolutely the right call. (If you take the team at its word.)
Obi played just about as many minutes for thibs as he does for Indy, the difference is he’s on a team with a PG who is great in transition. The system in indy is built to maximize Haliburton not Obi, he’s a dependent player. You shouldn’t look at Jalen Brunson and say how can we set up this team to maximize the scoring ability of a rotation player
Doug Moe is still alive 🙂
Hart played like crap this series. He’s still a very good player. He should probably stay coming off the bench.
Looking through the post 23rd picks of that draft, they all kinda seem like garbage. So for those consequentialists out there, Hart seems like an excellent pickup.
Yes. It was Thibs that made the Celtics chuck 100 threes in G1-2 and miss 75 of them. He also infected KP with Porziphilis so that he would be the worst rotation player in the 2025 playoffs, then he snuck into Jayson Tatum’s bedroom and sawed halfway through his Achilles tendon while he slept.
He played like crap in the Miami series, too.
I don’t want to rip on the guy, though. He’s everything you want in a pro. It’s not his fault his coach can’t see through hustlebunny.
Back when our offense was actually good at the beginning of the year, OG and Mikal were scoring on cuts pretty frequently with KAT holding the ball at the top of the key.
These pretty much disappeared in the second half of the season. I assume this was also due to Cs starting to camp in the paint against Hart instead of covering Towns at the 3pt line.
Yes. (Still) love Josh Hart. Want to see him sub in, and run end to end past the second units of other teams over and over and over again.
If you aren’t saying the Knicks are the curry warriors than why are you saying they can do what they did if they just played deuce McBride instead of Josh hart? Is there a long list of NBA champions who were bad at defense and couldn’t rebound? The warriors aren’t on it
“Back when our offense was actually good at the beginning of the year, OG and Mikal were scoring on cuts pretty frequently with KAT holding the ball at the top of the key. ”
There was a time earlier in the season where KAT looked like Magic Johnson as a passer for massive stretches of time.
And then it just …. stopped.
Also want to add that there were some very effective Hart lineups. The starting unit was particularly terrible in the playoffs and meh at best in the regular season.
At pbp Hart and Brunson’s net ratings were both over +7 when not playing with the other vs +1.5 when together.
In the playoffs, they were a -2 together. Brunson was +1.5 alone. Hart was actually +10 net rating without Brunson.
Secretly, Hart isn’t that great of a defender. I won’t say he’s bad, plus his rebounding goes a long way, but he’s kind of average.
Perhaps the problem is not Brunson/KAT but the triumvirate of Brunson/Hart/KAT playing together.
#startbrunsontownsanunobyrobinsonmcbride #superbenchhartbridgeswrightshamet #keyreserveshukportikolek #82forpags
In the playoffs, Deuce had a .533 TS% on 13.8 USG, minus-1.9 OBPM.
Not sure I want to know the question he’s the answer to.
I guess, “Is he a better defender than Mikal?” is a fair question, but the answer to that one is obvious.
That’s probably the source of the mental image.
As for it’s being stymied, I would say being tactically adept/game-planning is 30% of the job of being an NBA coach. The other components are playing the right players (30%), managing personalities/motivating (30%), and media relations (10%). I’m just making this up now, so it might easily be missing something big.
Either way, I don’t care how many brick walls your guys will run through. If you scheme the way Bart plays rock-paper-scissors, the league will eventually figure out they just need to play paper.
[Omitting the part where you moved the goal post.]
You might want to look at the defensive rebounding statistics of the Pacers starting lineup that has a net rating of 16.4 in 249 mins. It would rank dead last in the NBA this year.
Surprisingly, so would the Thunder’s starting lineup. (In fact the Thunder’s best lineups all have some of the worst rebounding numbers not just in these playoffs but as far back as lineup data goes.)
Bottom line: if in 2025 you’re playing lineups that get consistently outscored bc you’re afraid to get out rebounded, the game passed you by a long time ago.
Hart’s a really good player, we all love him, but he’s got flaws, and is best served coming off the bench as a sparkplug of energy and grittiness. Even Josh Hart admitted that! Josh Hart is a very important piece of this basketball team.
And yet, Thibs played him the most minutes per game this season at 37.6 minutes because rebounding and toughness.
That should never ever happen. And it was gonna happen again next year.
The Suns hired Jordan Ott. That (and Alan’s comment yesterday) makes me wonder if Bryant failed background checks.
I don’t want Chris Paul as our head coach but I’d take him as our backup PG next season.
I thought the “GOAT PG can become great coach” thing had been retired with Steve Nash.
+1. Especially if we want to add Mitch. As much as we’re trying to get away with two negative defenders, we prolly can’t get away with two guys who can’t shoot.
PS – I asked about Nash in the previous thread. Was he so terrible? I didn’t pay attention. He’s known Jalen since Brunson was a toddler, right?
The top, indispensible priority of the new coach is that he have a modern 2025 basketball mind and philosophy (*). Thibs did not, in any way.
(It would have been nice to have gotten that before all the young players and draft picks and time were squandered, but nothing can be done about that now.)
(*) And then is able to teach and sell it.
I do not get this line at all. What time was “squandered” under thibs? We went from non-playoff team, to playoff team, to second round team to conference finals team under Thibs in 5 seasons. This is a perfectly normal progression for a team to go through on their way to a championship. What time was squandered, exactly? Were we supposed to instantly win a title within his first few years?
Like, enjoy the ride, man. Life’s a journey, not a destination.
I’m sorry do you not remember yesterday? My argument is the deuce death lineup looks like it can’t defend or rebound. The warriors and OKC were very good defensive teams
[Omitting the “draft picks and young players” left out of the cite]
The time between him being hired and him inevitably blowing himself up amidst playoff underachievement and team/player dissension. All squandered.
I def wanted Thibs fired, but I am SO grateful that we had him to make our franchise relevant again.
A lot of Thibs’s rah rah stuff I completely enjoyed and believe was the correct thing to do at the time. I mean any comparison to his predecessors? I’m already laughing.
Honestly, I think Leon’s (gift) extension to Thibs was negotiated in part to reward all that good work. As if to say, maybe Tom will get us to the top, but, if not, he got us 3/4 of the way there, and he deserves his envelope. I actually think Dolan might agree. I do.
Leon’s a smart guy — just not quite David Stearns-level smart. But I have faith he’ll figure it out. Maybe he can even hire David Stearns — guy is a genius.
Players win and coaches lose is the fruit that lays on the ground getting eaten by worms and maggots. But if you look up in the tree, you might see some stuff worth reaching for.
Your argument today was that Josh Hart had to lead the league in minutes per game because “he’s the only guy who isn’t a center who can get rebounds.”
Yeah because we don’t have lineups without Josh that play great offense and great defense.
The question isn’t whether Thibs helped us get here — he did. The real question is whether he can take us where we want to go: to an NBA championship. And to me, the answer is no.
We don’t have any lineups with Josh that play great offense and great defense, either.
There was no good reason for Josh Hart to lead the NBA in mpg.
I forgot he was a head coach. He has a great winning percentage, but when you have KD & Kyrie, you should have a great winning percentage.
Pringles and Ime Udoka were his assistants, so I’m not sure how much coaching he really needed to do.
What an incredibly depressing way to look at life.
But the realistic goal for this year was to make the ECF, which they did. If you really think this roster is A+ and should win the chip next year, fine, make the change. But a lot of posters here seemed resigned to the fact that the stars of the team weren’t very good defenders and the players made dumb mistakes all the time, and closed their eyes for all the important moments, and a lot of you all thought you’d lose to the Pistons back in April. So, I am unconvinced.
He was so much the same player he was with us that he even missed an open-floor dunk!
Sure, Donnie, making the ECF was a reasonable goal before the playoffs started. But once we were two wins from the Finals with home court advantage and the bracket breaking in our favor, the bar moved — as it should.
You can’t have it both ways: say the players are flawed, then turn around and credit the coach for maximizing them — but only up to a certain point. If Thibs gets praise for getting us to the ECF, he should also get held accountable for how poorly the final series was managed.
No one’s saying this roster is perfect. But when the margins are that thin, coaching matters. And that’s where we fell short.
that is the second time today i have read that steve nash has known brunson since he was a toddler i believe that it is rj barrett who nash has known all his life in fact he is his godfather maybe he has also known brunson since toddlerhood but i have never heard that before today
I don’t know that Chris Paul is the perfect answer, or that he is likely to get the job, but I would not necessarily equate Chris Paul and Steve Nash as players or personalities.
Chris Paul also has some off-court bonafides as president of the NBAPA for 8 years, that’s not insignificant experience.
Not if the term “squandered” is properly defined.
They didn’t progress towards winning a championship because you can’t win one with him and he did a bunch of things antithetical to doing so. Those things had long been established as part of his coaching DNA.
So if your goal is winning a title and he can’t win one, the time was (almost by definition) “squandered.”
The time watching the games and talking/debating them and enjoying them obviously wasn’t squandered — that would indeed be a depressing take.
He was a caretaker coach, not massively different from an interim. To the extent the ball moved on the roster side, it didn’t have anything to do with him and he was almost certainly a negative on that side of things and pretty clearly had no interest in staying in his lane. There’s no question the regular season marginal wins in years like his first year and third year were counterproductive to the championship mission.
That’s a goal. It wasn’t the ONLY goal when Leon took over. When he took over we were the laughing stock of the NBA. Thibs helped us achieve multiple goals early on.
I’m sorry but your worldview fucking sucks.
So then you disagree with the statement to the contrary in the press release yesterday?
Yeah, digging a bit more on Nash, maybe not “toddler.”
In any case both Nash and Chris Paul are Brunson’s first mentions when talking about guys he looks up to:
Thibs wasn’t on the court at the end of Game 1.
When Riley resigned in ‘95 nobody said “good, he let Reggie Miller score 8 points in 7 seconds. Get a college coach or a retread to replace him so we can win a championship next year.” Instead everybody called him a Bennedict [sic].
Firing a coach whose team overachieves is a bad look, but it happened to Jenkins, and Malone won a chip and was fired a few days before the playoffs, so it’s obviously just the way things are going. But it does indicate that coaches don’t matter cause none of those teams did much better despite the drastic measures.
That’s the goal now. Keep up.
MOVING FORWARD
We should all try to agree to avoid engaging with E. He is poison. Engaging with him is drinking the poison, and then spitting it out onto the rest of us.
So then they hired Thibs *not* with the goal of winning a title?
Like I said, squandered time.
Such bonhomie!!
Neither were the players that buillt a 14 point lead.
If coaches don’t matter then Nobody would pay them that much or caring if Popovic or Spoelstra or Riley will stay or go.
The Roster matters too.
If Thibs had OKC roster we wouldn’t talk trash about his ability to get a chip imo
My problem with Thibs this year is that he lost control of the team and that was his end here
Only if you look at life as a binary choice between 100 percent failure and 100 percent success. Thibs achieved many of the goals they set out for the franchise when he first came here. Leon doesn’t think he’s able to achieve the final goal, which is the hardest one of all, and one that every team except one, fails to achieve every year.
This is like saying that my time spent working a certain job when I’m starting out my career was a waste of my time because it wasn’t my dream job but if I did not have this other job, I would not have gained the experience and knowledge to eventually land that dream job.
perfect response about the players who built the lead in game 1 no longer being on the court i find it so ironic that one of the main things we wanted thibs to do was tinker a little bit and in that one moment where we had the game in hand and we would have liked for him to leave things as they were he had to go and change things up exasperating
That was just code for saying it was acceptable to be runner up to what many thought was an unbeatable Celtics team. Once Boston imploded, it all changed.
The Nuggets took OKC to 7 games. Pretty sure changing the coach had as much a positive effect as you could in like 3 weeks.
Where would one go to find a statement of those goals? And why would a coach unable to win a title be any less able to accomplish them?
It’s not like that because experience by itself has no value on the floors of the NBA or fields of the NFL. And in any event, it can be gained just as easily via a coach capable of winning a title.(*)
There was no goal worth accomplishing that warranted a coach you couldn’t win with.
(*) And of course part of the fun of being in our 20s came solely from being in our 20s and can’t be replicated — but that’s outside the current scope.
Donnie, with all due respect, saying “Thibs wasn’t on the court” at the end of Game 1 misses the point. No, he didn’t miss the rebounds or commit the turnovers — but he chose to abandon the rotation that had stumped the Pacers in favor of the same rigid starting unit he was determined to ride with, no matter what.
Also, the Riley comparison doesn’t really hold. Riley had already won a title and taken multiple teams to the Finals. Thibs has never even been to one. And no one’s calling for a retread or a college coach here — we’re saying: we hit a ceiling with Thibs, and now it’s time to find someone who can break through it.
Yes, it’s true that coaches get fired even after solid seasons. That doesn’t mean coaching doesn’t matter — it means expectations evolve. Thibs helped raise the bar in New York. But once you raise it, you’re judged by the new standard because you have to maximize your team’s window no matter how open, while it is open.
He got us close. Now we need someone who can take us the rest of the way.
Given the clownshoes this place was, you could *maybe* justify a caretaker to change the culture a bit and assure all stakeholders the clownshoes was over.
The expiration date for that passed in the spring of 2022.
And … broken record warning … you can end the clownshoes with a title-capable coach just as easily.
This was what Dolan said when he hired Leon in March of 2020. No mention of winning a championship. He mentions long term success and building a winning organization.
And here’s the first think Leon said to the press when he was hired:
Im having a hard time finding articles with Leon’s statements when he actually hired Thibs. But from what I found above, it doesn’t look like Leon was making championship or bust statements way back in 2020 when he hired Thibs and we hadn’t sniffed the playoffs in almost a decade.
OK, E, genius. Who should we have hired in 2020? Who was going to come here when we sucked and our most promising player was rookie RJ Barrett?
Kenny Atkinson would have been a far better choice. I’m sure others can be found but it isn’t worth the effort to roll back the sands of time.
Nor should we necessarily act as if Thibs’s act wasn’t pretty accurately pegged early on in various scattered Knickerblogger precincts.
There was no need for five years of caretaker and lane-invader, then the inevitable collapse. Two, maybe.
If we had last year’s roster, with Hartenstein and Randle and DDV, and that roster was fully healthy (as this year’s roster was), that team would have beaten Indiana and gone to the Finals, and would be a live underdog against OKC.
That team was far, far better suited to Thibs’ coaching style, because it could play credible drop defense for 48 minutes. He might have been able to coach THAT team to a chip.
This team? No way. Personnel doesn’t suit his coaching style.
I’m curious as to how big of a championship window Leon Rose thinks we have, and how that informs the talent pool we’re diving into for our coach.
These are the only coaches to win an NBA championship in their first year as a head coach:
Eddie Gottlieb – Philadelphia Warriors, 1947
Paul Westhead – Los Angeles Lakers, 1980
Pat Riley – Los Angeles Lakers, 1982
Tyronn Lue – Cleveland Cavaliers, 2016
Nick Nurse – Toronto Raptors, 2019
Steve Kerr – Golden State Warriors, 2015
That’s a pretty elite list, but hiring a rookie coach and expecting him to win a championship that first year is rare.
BTW, Eddie Gottlieb has a really interesting wiki.
Kenny Atkinson is a fraud bc he lost to the Pacers, at least according to DRed, Z-Man, and BBA two weeks ago.
Just stop reading his posts, Swift. You’re taking the bait. He switched back into troll mode as soon as the playoffs were over.
Maybe, but there is an inherent downside in that firing a guy after a remarkable run of success that culminates in the team’s best season in a quarter century makes the job kind of unattractive to potential replacements. Spo, Pop, and Kerr aren’t going to look at their situations and think “that’s my dream job”. Which leaves you with everybody else in the world, and, according to the fans of all those other teams, those coaches are all terrible failures and should never work again.
Same. The coaching move suggests Leon even thought we blew a good chance this year after we eliminated Boston, favorite in the East.
Next year, especially with Tatum out, I suspect Leon thinks we should be the elite of the East, and he prolly wants someone to close the deal (and also at least one more new guy on the roster to help).
He won 51 games in year five with a roster his boss dumped all the teams’ assets for by way of frontloading success.
Hardly “remarkable.”
You mean the guy who’s team just got beat in the 2nd round of the playoffs worse than we did by The Pacers?
Fair point. Hiring a rookie head coach and expecting a title run out of the gate is definitely a gamble. But I don’t think Leon is banking on instant hardware. I think the decision reflects something else: the belief that we’ve hit the ceiling of what Thibs could deliver, and the window isn’t just about this year — it’s about maximizing the next 2–3 while Brunson is in his prime and under contract.
The goal isn’t to expect a first-year coach to win a chip on day one. It’s to find someone who can elevate the offense, adjust on the fly, and grow with this core. We’re not starting from scratch here — we’ve got a foundation. The right coach doesn’t need to be an all-time great on Day 1 — he just needs to be a better playoff-level decision-maker than Thibs was down the stretch. That’s a realistic ask.
There is a fallacy here that Thibs is at some sort of level as a coach, that he’s like a 9.0 coach and you need to replace him with a 10.0 coach to improve the team’s chances. It just doesn’t work that way.
We have certain players on the roster, and we don’t have a lot of flexibility. Thibs’ style of coaching was not a good fit with those players in ways that have been enumerated many times at this point. “Better than Thibs” is the wrong way to look at it.
You need a coach that can coach THIS GROUP OF PLAYERS in a more effective way than Thibs was able to do, or was likely to do in the future. You may end up with “worse” coach with less gravitas and a less fabulous combover that actually ends up with better results.
That’s the guy, yes.
They might wind up with a worse coach *and* worse results.
There are no certainties here. Taking a swing at Cam Reddish doesn’t mean you think he’s necessarily going to pan out. Risk, reward.
But we should bookmark this page for the agreement we all have that it wasn’t going to get done with this team with Thibs. Because if it goes south next year — as it might — there will be the inevitable revisionism and yearning for the “May Knicks” who “knocked off the mighty Celtics and with a few better breaks would have made the finals.”
It’s easy to revise once you know the results.
This is more than a little bit of a dice roll by Leon/Dolan. It might not turn out well. But “guaranteed working out well” isn’t the measuring stick.
Oh boy.
The irony here is that with this logic, everyone (including Leon, who published it) is finally admitting that this team could get to the mezzanine but not to the top. Thank you, I’ll be handing out L’s all summer like Oprah. You get an L! And you get an L!
“The irony here is that with this logic, everyone (including Leon, who published it) is finally admitting that this team could get to the mezzanine but not to the top. Thank you, I’ll be handing out L’s all summer like Oprah. You get an L! And you get an L!”
It sounds like the argument now is that Leon had no objective in hiring Thibs other than to get to the mezzanine.
I hate to do this, but this line of reasoning naturally leads four-square into the classic old school “RESOLVED: It’s easy to make yourself a playoff team if you don’t care about winning a championship” debate of yore.
The definition of Mezzanine keeps changing. Feels like now anyone who doesn’t win a chip is in the mezzanine.
If by “mezzanine” you mean two wins from the Finals, then yeah — we got to the mezzanine. And that’s exactly why the decision to move on makes sense. You don’t fire a coach because he’s bad. You fire him because you’ve seen what his ceiling looks like — and now it’s time to see if someone else can push past it.
No one’s handing out L’s here. We’re just done accepting “almost” as the peak. The real irony? Realizing you were close enough to believe in more — and finally having the guts to act on it.
No doubt. It is getting so confusing. For example, going “up” from the mezzanine is usually going to the balcony which is … worse, right? Don’t we want to go “down” from the mezzanine to those expensive seats? 😉
This thread has made me feel as shitty as Thibs probably does, except I don’t have $30 million coming my way to console me.
No that was literally the definition all along. The focus was always supposed to be “not the top”.
There were subsequent attempts to reclassify the mezzanine as mediocrity or purgatory from folks but I introduced it to mean good but not champion.
This all would have been a lot easier if all y’all had told us five years ago that Leon didn’t hire Thibs to win a championship.
But I still don’t consider it squandered time!!
That’s exactly the kind of goalpost-shifting Hubert does whenever it suits his preconcieved narrative. I said it after the Knicks beat the Celtics, and sure enough, here we are again. The bar keeps moving — now “mezzanine” apparently includes any team that doesn’t win the title, regardless of context, improvement, or circumstances. By that logic, almost the entire league lives in the mezzanine, and nobody’s allowed to try to get better unless they’re already holding the trophy.
Insufferable.
Yeah, except the claim now is that Leon saw that ceiling all along.
Goal post never moved. Mezzanine has always meant the same thing every time I ever said it. It might have meant something different when you said it, but that’s a you problem.
So?
I fucking love a good fudge brownie.
Sure, Hubert, the definition stayed the same… it’s just the floor plan that magically shifts depending on the argument you’re trying to win.
I hear you on that, but only if the brownie has chopped walnuts in it. I need the crunch texture to compliment the soft, chocolatey, gooey taste.
So thanks to Swifty’s detective work, we’re left to naturally wonder whether Leon recklessly shot for merely purgatory and wasted five years and a bunch of assets to get there.
I’ve always respected Hubert’s trademark over “mezz,” and will leave that term and debate about it to him … but purgatory? Maybe. After next year they might be. Have to see how things shake out.
Question one is, “Is this a championship roster?” Jury’s still very much out. I anticipate Mikal, unfortunately, now being extended. Unless he was absolutely dogging it for Thibs, that will be a significant mistake and setback.
It’s still very possible this roster has peaked. Really wish they had 19 and 26 in the upcoming draft instead of squandering them on a fungible wing, but water under the bridge.
That isn’t the claim at all.
And?
No, almost the entire league is on the ground floor. There’s usually like 6-8 teams in the mezzanine. And either one or two at the top.
Pretty sure Thibs feels stuck between moving goalposts in the mezzanine of purgatory, staring at the ceiling and eating a fudge brownie without nuts as he yearns for a chip.
Mikal Bridges had one half season for the Nets where he attacked the rim and got to the line for more than 6 free throw attempts per game. His free throw numbers have regressed each year since then.
If a new coach can get Bridges to attack the rim again (while others provide floor balance) that would dramatically improve the offense.
Teams not in the mezzanine: OKC, Indiana
Teams in the mezzanine: every other team that made the playoffs
Teams on the ground floor: everybody else
Is that correct?
“Mezzanine” is a useless concept if that’s the definition.
Boston wasn’t in the mezzanine, but they lost to us so now they’re in the mezzanine. They were a total legit title contender, except they weren’t, and then we were a legit title contender but then went back to the mezzanine.
I mean, really, this concept has zero value
Not this shit again
I am excited for when Thibs shows up to a game somewhere with a 25 year old girlfriend like Belichik.
Ah, a full-on thread hijacking now.
Doogie, put your impressive math skills toward assessing the percentage of poison posts so far today…
#bonhommie
I agree. It was a throwaway comment I made in 2022 to suggest that Leon and Thibs were good but not good enough, which frankly should have been an universally accepted truth instead of something we argued about for 3 years.
Please make this happen.
Arguing over throwaway comments is a big part of what we do here. You can’t just kick it to the curb.
Really? I’m perfectly fine with gooey chocolate. No need for walnuts.
If “mezzanine” just gets thrown overboard, together with “Thibs wasn’t even hired to win a championship,” and the fact of his unexpected firing, then this whole thing starts to feel way too much like Thermador or whatnot.
Hopefully, when it gets here, we’ll still be calling next month, “July.” But there’s still 27 days left in June.
FWIW Indiana is probably in the mezzanine, too. I suspect these finals will demonstrate a gulf in class. Boston and OKC were the only two teams this year with the above-the-mezz potential.
Now Thibs can finally get married.
Or, you know, he’ll look for another coaching gig … Sigh…
The idea that a coach is good enough to get a team to the conference finals but is magically incapable of getting to the finals is risibly stupid
I am sorry, but we are at an impasse now.
The reason for the confusion is that folks always use the mezzanine term in a different way than I did. Hence people thinking it’s always changing, when it is actually just people using it differently.
E used it to mean purgatory. Bob (citing Architecture Digest) used it to mean mediocrity. Swifty used it to mean the first round of the playoffs. Everyone for some reason has their own mezzanine.
sorry correction but bill belichick girlfriend is only 24 and very very hot by the way he is 73 so he is only 49 years older than her not 50
You might be right in terms of board opinion — sometimes there’s no controlling things and you might be getting blowback intended for me — but I abandoned the substantive term to you years ago.
This new rationalization — that Thibs wasn’t hired to win a championship at all, what are you even talking about?? — just popped up today.
Until you watch it happen in real time like we just did. Success at one level doesn’t guarantee the ability to break through the next, and ignoring that difference only sets a team up to repeat the same shortcomings.
Dred for GM.
Do you think that in NBA games the coach is more important than the players?
You can fire a guy for losing to a better team, but fyi it really doesn’t matter who you get to replace him.
That wasn’t what I said, but go ahead and do you.
The organization was a joke. You can’t go from joke to championship in one or two seasons. Leon was hired to build a sustainable winning team with the EVENTUAL goal of winning a championship.
Thibs accomplished the first part and now Leon is going to get someone he hopes can finish the job. Why is this so hard to understand?
Actually it is risibly stupid to suggest that any coach who can win in the first two rounds can win all four. The deeper you go, the more problems you have to solve. It’s like suggesting anyone who can run a mile can run a marathon.
I don’t even get the point of framing the issue this way. The question sets up a false dichotomy. In reality, both roles are crucial and interdependent.
I once got a “foot massage” on the mezzanine level at the limelight like 25 years ago. The Geiger room was fun but the mezzanine was hot.
They were not better than us. You’re not going to convince me of that. We had the better record, for the regular season and against them. We had homecourt advantage. It was an evenly matched series. Coaching was the difference.
Would’ve been a better experience if they served brownies with walnuts in them.
If you give Thibs the Spurs of the aughts, or the Warriors of the teens, or the Pacers of the twenties, he’d probably have a few rings on his fingers when he retires. And Kerr, if he’d kept his verbal agreement with Phil, would probably be David Blatt’s assistant with Maccabi Tel Aviv right now.
The NBA coaches’ playbook is this:
1) have superstar player(s).
2) keep superstar player(s) happy
Worst threads in Knickerblogger history:
3) trading RJ Barrett was a mistake
2) the incinerated pick
1) this one
Donnie I have no doubt Thibs could win a championship with the OKC Thunder. Their talent gap surpasses the coaching margin of error. But we only have a talent gap over 75% of the league. And Thibs usually only wins when he has a major talent gap (Boston being the lone exception in his entire career).
That’s why it is “risibly stupid” to suggest that a coach who can win in the early rounds (where he usually has a major talent gap) can also win in the later rounds where he doesn’t.
Lol Hubert
Thibs has gotten knocked out of the playoffs by lower seeds seven times in ten playoff appearances, including all four with the Knicks.
His ORat has decreased relative to the league in the playoffs every year but maybe one, and I can’t remember if it’s even one. Happened yet again this year.
It’s not cosmically impossible or inconceivable that he could win a championship, but at some point enough is enough. That point is long passed.
I legit WAS thinking the other day, “Well, maybe Thibs can get a girlfriend now.”
😊
fudge >>> brownies
diabetics know best…
Thank god we don’t have to talk about this shit much longer.
you do not know that
I know you guys all picked Knicks in Six and think you was robbed by the refs and cheated by the league, and screwed by Thibs, but the reality is that this series wasn’t close and the teams weren’t evenly matched. I was hoping for a much better series, but didn’t even watch the last two games. A different coach could have maybe made it more interesting, but outcome was clear early on. So, yeah, as a layman I feel kind of bad for Thibs.
I’m with LOL Hubert on this one. Running a mile to a marathon is an absolutely idiotic comparison. Running 22 miles and making it to 26 is a decent comparison. Most people who get to 22 can make it to 26, but not all do because those last four are the real bitch.
Not sure what that actually says about Thibs, to be honest, but I couldn’t leave that one just lying there.
anyhow, the roster is more important than the coach, Leon and co have their work cut out for them.
IMO it’s silly to say rebounding doesn’t matter much anymore.
I’d love to get a bunch of steals like OKC or create TOs like the Pacers did to us because that will lead to very high return transition possessions. That’s better then trying to defend a shot, get the rebound and running from there. But if you aren’t getting steals and you aren’t getting rebounds, the other team is probably getting extra possessions and that’s very bad. The more rebounds you get off missed shots the better.
Of course you can also argue the extra rebounds that Hart gets you don’t add as much value as the lack of space he causes hurts Towns and others on offense. In fact, that was the argument for playing Deuce more. The very limted data we had suggested it was worth a try, but Thibs refused to do it. That was one of many things that soured me on him this year.
Regardless of Thibs’s ability to win a championship, he did not do a good job. He was fired accordingly.
The fact the coach was fired immediately after player exit interviews doesn’t seem like a coincidence. Love him or hate him, a coach who has lost the locker room will struggle to be effective.
All I can say is don’t offer a nutless brownie to Clarence.
DRed, far be it for me to argue with our OG GM, but there were a host of issues that surfaced through the year that indicated Thibs was not getting the most out of his players.
Offense was #2 early on; league adjusted, we fell to #10 at the end of the season.
Never tried a 5-out lineup. Maybe it would have been killed as you suggest, but maybe not, and we had AN ENTIRE MONTH where we were pretty much locked into HC for the playoffs. An extra loss or two wouldn’t have mattered.
For that matter, didn’t really experiment at all during that time – never tried a zone, for instance.
Didn’t see whether switching would be better than drop with KAT. Tried it in the playoffs pretty much for first time.
Lots of reports of dissension in the locker room. If the one job of the coach is to take care of the players, he wasn’t doing it. Over the years we’ve seen that he does not communicate well.
It took a while for Mitch to be fully back, but he was there by the playoffs and Thibs did not use him well. Played him too many minutes so he got tired, brought him in late in a quarter when they were in the penalty and could play hack-a-Mitch, just didn’t play him enough other times. Lots of issues there.
Played Hart too much. We could all see he was ineffective in the Indiana series; why couldn’t he? Flip side, took too long to try other players when Hart and others weren’t performing. I knew OG couldn’t guard Siakam; why didn’t he? And most people recognized that Deuce was a better POA defender than Mikal; why wasn’t he deployed that way?
This isn’t second guessing – most of it was first guessing, others getting there before him. Clearly he’s a good coach, he established a culture, a tenacity, he earned the trust of many players. But given the items above, yeah, I do think it’s reasonable to believe he couldn’t take us further and someone else might.
Sorry, Raven, but you’re both wildly wrong.
It is easy for a coach with a 51 team to win one playoff series against a 44 win team.
That does not remotely translate to being able to succeed four times against increasingly harder opponents, particularly with the likelihood that each round presents unique challenges and different styles.
But yes, the roster matters more. I didn’t believe this one had more than a Finals appearance in it, so maybe see if some moves could be made to get closer to having a realistic shot at more than knocking off the lame-ass Pacers.
The Knicks’ offense against the Pacers was painfully basic. It was mostly Brunson isolations, with the occasional Towns ISO sprinkled in. Brunson would hold the ball for 20 seconds and then settle for a contested fadeaway.
It was awful basketball.
Why do people act like we can’t possibly do better than this?
How is roster vs coach even a conversation?
The roster is obviously way more important, but when it comes to the playoffs, the rosters are often close enough that a difference in coaching will make a difference in a close series.
I still think the Knicks have a slightly better roster than the Pacers, though imo it’s damn close.
I also think the gap between Carlise and Thibs was large enough to give the Pacers the win.
Swap coaches and I’m betting on the Knicks at even money in a rematch.
This is the same mistake Ras was making yesterday. You think we got much farther than we did.
22 out of 26 miles is like getting to game 7 of the NBA finals. We didn’t come close to that.
I picked Knicks in 4 despite picking the Pacers over the Cavs (even before the cavs injuries) so as you can see projections differ.
Sometimes it’s not about coaching or roster quality but about matchups.
A Bos-Indy repeat series would probably have sent Hali for early holidays but Knicks made it possible for him to see the finals by eliminating Bos.
Johnnie Bryant has to be close to even money from here given the information we have on the interest from everyone else. Unless he has some serious disqualifying skeletons, I think he’s the new coach.
We’re literally debating with someone who claims that reaching the Eastern Conference Finals isn’t close to being a championship team. Insane. You can’t make this shit up, folks.
Knicks after eliminating Bos were Clear Contenders this season.
Everything Else is either Trolling or Ignorant.
Remarkaby Zach Lowe opened his podcast saying literally the same exact thing I said earlier, that “this is a statement that we don’t think we are close as to being a championship team as the cliche ‘two wins away from the final’ would typically indicate.”
Also remarkably he supported E’s assertion about Dolan, as well, stating “rule of thumb: any time it’s leaked through reporters that this was a GM’s decision not an owner’s decision… it means that the owner did have a role in the decision.”
LOL Zach am I right?
Well, if Zach Lowe says it ….
there’s a healthy serving of both on here today..
Maybe, but didn’t you hear? Zach Lowe says otherwise!
If Team’s Cohesion is broken No matter how close you are to the chip You start making Vital Changes (if you’re smart)
Zach Lowe and math, Ras. Two out of four is half by anyone’s definition.
This team was not close. And they said as much in the statement they released firing Thibs. They wouldn’t have fired him if they were close.
The Pacers weren’t the bar. The Pacers are well below the bar, and we were well below them.
Rama I don’t think thibs is a a great coach or did a great job with this team and they were a couple baskets here and there from going to the finals (where they would have gotten crushed barring a miracle)
Both things are true. I guess I don’t feel it’s unreasonable to think we would have been closer than a couple baskets here and there with a better coach – and then yeah, we would have been waxed in the Finals. But bball in June, you know? Been a long time…
It really does suck that Game 7 would have at least meant basketball in June, and they couldn’t get there.
Yes, but did Zach Lowe confirm this? That’s what really matters …
They were a couple baskets here and there from losing to the Pistons, too. In fact that series was a lot closer than the Pacers. I have to give Leon credit for not being swayed by random bounces and cliches.
I don’t think he’s ever run a marathon before, either
Yes the Pistons are a pretty good team who played well
Pitino threw out the first pitch at the Yankee game.
A sign?
Oh, and I forgot to note – congrats, bidiong!
Um… but … Zach Lowe
we won 10 out of the 16 playoff games required to win a championship thus we completed 16 1/4 miles of the 26 mile marathon zach lowe even says so
Thibs was never getting through the wall. Doesn’t take Zach Lowe to see that one.
In other league news, I kind of like the idea of Durant in Atlanta with Trae. They would instantly become a super villain team. Not sure if they have the assets to pull that off, though.
Doogie do you think it makes sense to apply equal weight to a Finals victory over the Thunder and a first round victory over the Pistons?
No but I did the Brooklyn Half once so it would be stupid to suggest I couldn’t.
It would be the thinning hair team.
Not if Zach Lowe says it isn’t….
if win 1 of a playoff run is worth 0.735294118 and each successive win of a playoff run is worth that number multiplied by the total number of wins at that point until a team reaches 16 wins and where winning 16 games is equal to 100 percent then winning 10 games would be 40.44117647 percent of the way there thus 10.51470588 miles out of the 26 mile marathon
At least half the posts in this thread make the implicit assumption that Thibs was fired because we looked bad and lost against the Pacers, that is, he was fired for his results. But JK has it right, he was fired because he lost the locker room.
I think he lost the players because this year’s team wasn’t suited to his coaching style. Or maybe because he couldn’t find a way to overcome their weaknesses (like KAT’s defense). Either way you need a new coach.
Thibs is owed 30 million dollars of Mr. Dolan’s hard earned money and Mr. Dolan is going to have to spend more on a new coach. There is not a single owner in the NBA who is going to let his GM unilateraly make a move that costs the owner that much money.
edit: maybe Steve Ballmer would he’s so rich he might not notice 30 million dollars
At the risk of being metaphorically stoned let me point out that this shows a good side of James Dolan. He is willing to spend. It sounds like and I believe it is like the $30M wasn’t a factor in making the decision. It was just “What’s best for the team?”
Yeah that’s more like it.
That’s why Thibs got fired: he had a bad year, he lost the locker room, and he never came close.
Scoring by team playoff success who did a better job than thibs this year? 2 guys. Seems like a stupid way to evaluate coaches to me
Some thinly sourced stories about players being unhappy with Rick Brunson are making the rounds. To be fair I wouldn’t blame them if they were true.
interesting proposition it can be argued that carlisle is a better overall coach than thibs by some measure but can someone make the argument that daigneault is a better coach than thibs i can imagine it might be a little tilting to have to do what one of your teammates dads tells you to do
I had no idea JVG was back in the NBA and helped the Clippers with their third ranked defense.
Talking about coaches is dumb. They make a marginal difference. I can be convinced that getting rid of Thibs might help a tiny bit but I hope Leon has more in store.
Not to me. He had one of the most talented rosters in the NBA.
Except Jimmy’s dad died last year, and was worth $18 billion or so. I know for a fact he could lose $3.5 million and not get upset about it lol
Think about the championship coaches/managers that you have seen or read about. Billy Martin won in 1977 and Bob Lemon won in 1978. Their temperaments were diametrically opposed, but they were called on to navigate different paths to the same place. Billy was pushing every crazy button to propel a franchise that had gone 15 years without a title. Lemon’s goal was to apply a steady and subdued hand to allow a championship team to regain its form. Both worked. Mike Keenan had a lot of Billy Martin in him. He made the Rangers watch a video of NYC championship parades down the canyon of heroes to stick that image in their heads. It worked. The Knicks need an experimenter, a developer and a better handler of men to helm the team. Torre brought a lifetime of experience and an attitude of decency and quiet self-confidence. The fire came from his decades-old quest to finally reach the World Series – which his players wanted for him.
Haha.
But the marathon is still a bad metaphor for this. Finishing a marathon is not a zero sum game, it has nothing to do with how the other people in the field are performing.
https://x.com/TheStrickland/status/1930421952826466435 all smiles for the news coming Tuesday afternoon?
If the usual folks want to entertain themselves by parsing the minutiae of how the firing went down, whatever.
Here are the important things on which pretty much all of us agree:
-Despite however you want to characterize his overall record, Thibs’ tenure had run its course. It was time for a change.
-We don’t know the extent of Dolan’s involvement, but he was likely involved to some degree. (seems pretty normal for an owner to at the very least be in the loop on $30M decisions, so whatever.)
-We don’t know whether Leon wanted to retain Thibs or fire him, but it seems pretty clear that there were folks in the front office who wanted him to be fired long before it happened. WWW clearly wasn’t a fan.
-Most here (including me) are looking forward to seeing what another coach can do with this team, or with whatever team takes the floor in October.
Things where there is far less consensus:
-whether Thibs took the team as far as it could go or could another coach have taken them further.
-whether Brunson and KAT can be the core of a championship team, given the current ability to modify the roster, and if not, what should be done about it.
-who should the next coach be…or at the very least, what tree should he be picked from?
-What should be done beyond the KAT-Brunson conundrum…should any of OG, Mikal, Hart, Mitch, or Deuce be packaged for a better player or for depth?
-what should be the temperature of Leon’s seat right now?
Congrats bidiong! Don’t zap yourself!
Seems like when Thibs was fired from Chicago and Minny, his replacements didn’t fare very well. Given the general outcry from the media, whoever takes over will have his hands full.
Glad the Knicks lost. Now KBer season can go into full swing. Already in peak form.
Anyone who can run a half-marathon can run a marathon.
If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball
ortiz wrecking the yanks tonite
A recent conversation with my girlfriend:
Me: I think I’m just kinda sad about Thibs getting fired.
GF: Who’s Thibs?
Me: The Knicks coach!
GF: Oh the sweaty guy? It’s good he got fired before he had a heart attack on the court. He should go spend some time with his family…
Me: But that’s the thing; he doesn’t have a family…all he cares about is basketball.
GF: Yeah well he needs to chill then.
Me: Would you tell Picasso that he needed to chill??
GF: Uhhhh obviously… he cut his own ear off.
Me: That was Van Gogh!
FIN
unimpressive in many ways
And I thought Messier’s hat trick in game 6 of the Jersey series was the turning point, not a movie 🙂
damn but did the yankees suck tonite
Messier was unreal in Game 6. Richter kept the score 2-0. The Devils controlled everything for almost 2 periods. I was wrecked and took a break for the final few minutes of the 2nd period. Luckily, my dad kept watching and saw Kovalev’s goal. He brought me back to the TV. College then, fifties now – have not changed one bit.
Doogie, what possesses you to shit on someone’s story? That’s just mean.
I liked it.
Do you think that making it to the ECF proved that Thibs can win a championship with this roster in this landscape? Bc that’s the real argument. The rest is just metaphor.
Thanks, Raven, but I don’t put any stock in comments from a guy who was so annoying, he got banned from a public forum… only to immediately sneak back in wearing a ridiculous disguise. Now that’s ‘unimpressive’.
Do I believe Thibs COULD HAVE won a championship with this roster? Sure. I’m not a huge fan of determinism, despite my late uncle’s preaching. And I don’t think we were 26.2 miles away. Would he have made the changes necessary? We’ll never know, of course, but the horses were strong enough, they just needed to be hitched together differently. And we’d get destroyed by OKC, of course, except that’s what EVERYONE said about Boston. Gentleman’s sweep. Or Puncher’s chance. Can’t win if you don’t show up.
Note that I’m sad about the firing because I think Thibs is a decent man, but I’m not convinced it was a bad decision. He made a lot of poor tactical mistakes over a long season. Plus he may or may not have lost the locker room, which I’m not sure you can come back from.
Thibs was a very good coach with some blind spots that ultimately sank the team and then him. Of course, no guarantee that the replacement will be as good as Thibs but without his warts.
Did I mix enough metaphors for everyone? I could keep going.
Man this thread Los the narrative.
Thibs sucks but his firing was a mistake except it wasn’t except the roster couldn’t win a championship anyways except maybe it could have but not with Thibs unless maybe he did.
Yeah crazy it’s almost like there are multiple people with multiple points of views and different combinations of beliefs regarding a complicated subject instead of a simple binary system of opposing dogmas that makes it easy to make fun of the other side.
But does Zach Lowe sign off on this? That’s what I need to know …
zach approves holehartedly
It’s Not about making it to the ECF that proved it.
It’s the fact that Thibs Sent Home Boston.
The Ultimate Favourite from the East to repeat.
tatum injured blah blah blah
I read through this thread, and I just want to say: Somebody please register this domain, thanks!
https://x.com/NBA_NewYork/status/1930101539563094434
In tribute to Thibs ( and Dylan and The Band): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9g23eaj-lk
Spolz or bust. We’ve got 3 years with this squad and then you rebuild. Spolz is the man to get us there.