The New York Knicks releived Tom Thibodeau of his coaching duties on Tuesday, according to Shams Charania of ESPN, just days after the coach led the New York Knicks to their first Eastern Conference Finals in 25 years.
Thibodeau was consistently under fire during the ECF for his rotations, lack of bench minutes and his tendency to lean on his starters. Still, this comes as a pretty big shock, considering the Knicks just completed their best season in a quarter-century. New York will now begin a coaching search, hoping to fill a pretty great position.
Knicks just fired the best coach they’ve had in decades
The Knicks don't have a good enough roster to make the NBA Finals. That's the problem at the end of the day. The team struggled against the top teams in the East all season long, and it became pretty obvious long ago that a Finals run wasn't in the cards. So when the team shocked the world in the second round by beating the Boston Celtics, I (and most of the NBA world) assumed that Thibs had secured his job for at least a few more years.
We were all wrong, apparently.
I understand that Thibs has his problems. He does lean on his starters too much, and he doesn't like change even when change would be for the better.
But results should matter, and Thibs just led the Knicks to their best three-year stretch since the Clinton administration. Losing to a better team in the playoffs isn't grounds to fire a coach, and that's what just happened in New York. Indiana didn't fluke its way to the NBA Finals, it got there because it's really good.
Why did the Knicks fire Tom Thibodeau now?
I don't know. But we've seen this happen time and again in the NBA. When things go well, the players get credit, and when things go poorly, the coach gets the blame.
Losing in the NBA Playoffs is always frustrating, especially in series that teams think they should have won. But firing Thibs now is a monstrous overreaction from a front office that is apparently "singularly focused on a championship," according to Charania, but is willing to fire a coach that got the team closer to that championship than anyone else has in a long, long time.
What does this mean for Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns?
We have yet to hear from New York's star players about the firing of Thibs, but it's hard to believe that Brunson advocated for him to be fired, considering that less than a week ago, the star point guard was unequivocal about his support for Thibs and his belief in the coach to lead New York all the way. "Yes," Brunson said when asked if he believes Thibs was the "right guy" for the Knicks.