Reflecting on the Tom Thibodeau Era of Knicks Basketball

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For the last five seasons, Tom Thibodeau has patrolled the Knicks sideline with stern rigidity and crossed arms that felt like perpetual dissatisfaction. Those five years saw a lot of winning, with Thibodeau ranking fourth in wins and sixth in winning percentage in franchise history. But after a surprising postseason run, Leon Rose and the Knicks front office have decided to move forward without him.

It's a decision that is surprising but also not surprising at all. The change signals a franchise that sees itself at a crossroads—deciding it is time to seek greener pastures and hoping this decision won’t be deemed a mistake years from now. We are left to consider the Thibodeau era, an era that is filled with resurgence and redemption while also being riddled with rigidity.

The Floor Raiser

When Thibodeau was hired, the Knicks head coaching job was considered a wasteland. A position that featured a roster that wasn’t good enough, with an owner that became at times too involved. The Knicks hadn’t made the playoffs in seven years when he came aboard and suffered their two worst seasons in franchise history during that span (2014-15 & 2018-19, where the team won 17 games in each of those seasons).

The Knicks were a disaster. They were unable to lure free agents to play in the biggest markets, the Carmelo Anthony era ended with a whimper, and the team was the laughingstock of the NBA. Perhaps nothing encapsulated this more than in the 2019 NBA Draft when an ESPN graphic that details positions of need for every team said that the Knicks needed “Everything (starters and bench).” That is what Tom Thibodeau signed up for. Those close to him said coaching the Knicks was his dream job, and he acted like it.

In his stops in Chicago and Minnesota, Thibodeau proved himself to be a floor raiser. He was going to come in and make your team competitive right away. They may not be championship level, but they were going to scratch and claw and win a lot of games.

In Chicago he took a team that had back-to-back 41-41 seasons and turned them into a 62-win team immediately. When he got to Minnesota, he took a team amid a 13-year playoff drought and got them to the playoffs in his second year there. And in New York, he took a team that won 21 games and nearly doubled their win total for a 41-31 record and the number four seed in the East in a shortened season.

In that season, Julius Randle became an All-NBA player, Derrick Rose revitalized his career, and RJ Barrett proved to be a reliable scorer in the NBA. Thibodeau’s focus on defensive intensity and maximizing possessions led to winning basketball for the first time in years, and it finally felt like the Knicks were back.

In his time coaching the team, he missed the playoffs only once and his teams were slow paced but relied on defense to win games in the regular season. The roster was always in flux as well, with Mitchell Robinson being the last remaining member of the team from his first season. With the continued upheaval in talent, Thibodeau deserves credit for continuing to win consistently, and the Knicks had the eighth best record in the NBA with him as coach.

What Thibodeau did was akin to the Renaissance era after the Middle Ages. The Knicks were in a dark place with no light in sight. Thibodeau’s Knicks made the team and the Garden relevant again. He created a layer of competency that made it increasingly more difficult to laugh at the Knicks’ expense, which became the norm for the previous two decades.

The story of these Knicks that have championship aspirations instead of lottery dreams cannot be told without Tom Thibodeau. But the manic commitment and rigid style that made Thibodeau so successful in New York, was also his undoing. When the playoffs came, it became evident that this coach had a ceiling—and the team continued to crash into it.

Raising the Ceiling

The attributes that make Thibodeau a great floor raiser are also part of his failings as the head coach of the Knicks. When a team hires him, they are generally lost at sea and looking to chart a path forward. They are looking to build a culture and return to winning basketball games. Thibodeau does that through a cult-like commitment to his way.

He often sticks to his plan with military-like rigidity. That instills discipline with unheralded rosters with no expectations. He plays his starters big minutes and often has a hard time trusting younger players.

It works in the regular season when teams have little time to game plan for the defensive looks that he has implemented. This is shown in his record—Thibodeau coached teams finished under .500 only three times in his thirteen years as a head coach.

But when the playoffs come, adjusting and counter punching becomes a premium asset. Sticking to the plan is no longer viable, and there needs to be a changeup to the proverbial coaching fastball. By being so focused on winning regular season games instead of experimenting with what might come in the playoffs, Thibodeau left himself exposed.

His rigidity made him leave players on the bench until necessitated by injury. He did not fully experiment with the double-big lineup he switched to in the middle of the Pacers series in the regular season. The playing time of bench players like Delon Wright and Landry Shamet were sporadic at best, and they became his best counter punch when the Knicks hit a point of desperation. These all became factors for the Knicks to consider when it came to analyzing whether Thibodeau would be the coach that could lead them to a title or not.

The decision made was that they went as far as they could go with Thibodeau at the helm and that they needed a coach that offered a higher ceiling. While many may bristle at removing a coach that led this team to their first Conference Finals appearance in a quarter of a century, there is some logic that tells us that the success may not be repeatable.

To get there, the Knicks required three 20-point comeback victories along the way (an NBA record for a single postseason). There is reason to believe that they will not always be that fortunate. The offense at times looked archaic and overly reliant on the individual greatness of Karl-Anthony Towns and Jalen Brunson. A general feeling of not being able to replicate the same success and elevating to another level grew stronger.

Taking a Risk

There is no doubt that firing Thibodeau is a risk. It’s the ultimate test of whether the grass is indeed greener on the other side or not. With Thibodeau, the team enjoyed stability that it had not seen since the Jeff Van Gundy era. There was little drama, the team won a lot of games, and fans experienced playoff basketball at MSG again.

By moving on from him, they reiterate how serious they are about winning a championship—so much so that they are willing to risk their competence in the hopes that they will find their championship coach. The Knicks are far from the first team to try this, and there is a history of success.

The Warriors famously moved on from Mark Jackson after two consecutive playoff appearances and won three championships in four years with Steve Kerr. The Detroit Pistons, after two consecutive 50-win seasons with Rick Carlisle, hired Larry Brown and won the title the next season. The Chicago Bulls, after a Conference Finals appearance with Doug Collins, hired Phil Jackson and proceeded to win six championships in a nine-year span.

There are also instances of these decisions crashing and burning. The Phoenix Suns have experienced this with the hires of Frank Vogel and Mike Budenholzer after dismissing Monty Williams. The Orlando Magic did the same when they fired Stan Van Gundy after five consecutive years of playoff appearances (with one Finals appearance) and then went six seasons without making the playoffs.

These sorts of decisions often make or break front offices in the NBA. The importance of this hire for the Knicks cannot be overstated. They sacrificed consistent competitiveness in the hopes of a title, a decision that most teams would choose to make. But if they hire the wrong person, we could be talking about another descent into darkness.

Thibodeau leaves New York with a legacy of appreciation. He is the coach that brought the good times back, the person who brought hope back to this fan base. And that cannot be discounted. He is flawed and had his quirks, but his importance in the modern history of this franchise cannot be ignored.

He leaves the team in a much better position than he inherited, once again validating himself as an all-time great floor raiser. The Knicks now need a ceiling raiser, but the impact of the person that helped them get to that point is not lost upon us. If this championship project for the Knicks is successful, it is important that we remember who set the foundation.

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