Van Gundy ended up being an unlikely folk hero here, starting as an obscure assistant even the courtside regulars wouldve had trouble choosing of a lineup and somehow becoming a man whose name Knicks fans shouted one night in 1999, when his group was on the brink of eliminating the Hawks and advancing to the conference finals.
The Knicks employ the best coach here, and thats where you have to start. In the NBA in 2020 a coach can just manage so much, so there is no stone-cold guarantee the Knicks have simply secured a passing-lane trip to the top of the East. That utilized to matter when New York teams went looking for coaches. The Knicks took their time, and seemed to talk to every coach this side of Norman Dale and Ken Reeves looking to make the right choice. They work with the ideal coach.
Thats a great place to begin. The Knicks took their time, and appeared to talk with every coach this side of Norman Dale and Ken Reeves looking to make the ideal option. It does not matter how they got here, it matters that they got here. They employ Tom Thibodeau. They employ the right coach.
The Knicks work with the ideal coach here, and thats where you have to start. Forget the double-elimination interview competition the teams brass appeared to be carrying out while many of the NBA was busy trying to return to work, the 11 prospects who roamed into and out of their purview. All of that is prelude.
Those 7 years at the Garden– 1996-2003– Thibodeau not just saw how Van Gundy did the task, how he managed to generate trust and loyalty from his gamers and optimize those skills, he also got a taste of what it can be for a basketball lifer in a New York City starved for so long of basketball nourishment.
The Knicks will do those things for Thibodeau, too, because he features his own no-nonsense credibility, due to the fact that if not for Derrick Rose blowing his knee out one terrible championship game against the 76ers in 2012, he might well have led the Bulls to a full post-Jordan renaissance, may well have actually taken among the titles the Heat won during LeBron James time there, may well have actually built something long-term at United Center.
Thibodeau will require accountability, and he will be an instructor for the kids. Van Gundy has actually told anybody who will listen that winning gamers prosper under Thibodeau, and of course part of the groups objective will be to get more of those kinds of gamers. But, for one, it seems a Thibodeau-RJ Barrett collaboration ought to be very fruitful.
Things didnt go rather so well for Thibodeau in Minnesota, though the Timberwolves did win 47 games his last complete year there. In the NBA in 2020 a coach can only control a lot, so there is no stone-cold assurance the Knicks have simply secured a passing-lane journey to the top of the East. However he was still the finest coach offered. That utilized to matter when New York teams went searching for coaches. For the Knicks, in the meantime, it mattered still.
” Tom Thibodeau is one of the very best coaches in the world,” Jeff Van Gundy said a few months back, and, yes, Van Gundy isnt precisely the most unbiased voice on the subject of Thibodeau– they are friends and they worked closely together the last time the Knicks brought any type of style and design and high-end aspiration to the Garden.
He was an outstanding coach. The Knicks played defense on his watch. The Knicks bled and sweat and cared on his watch.
This is the centerpiece: They hire the ideal coach, at the correct time, they include a significant foundation toward a much better location and a better time at Madison Square Garden. They work with Tom Thibodeau, they provide him a five-year agreement, and they begin the long, painstaking task of ending up being a relevant basketball group again.
They were a good idea to bypass Jason Kidd and whatever delusions of Giannis Antetokounmpo he might have dangled throughout his interviews. You work with Kidd you hire his computing past, his Machiavellian machinations, and that isnt what the Knicks needed, not on the 20 percent possibility Kidd might really provide Giannis.
As it was he was 352-246 with the Bulls, a. 647 winning percentage that included a few of the most fantastic on-the-fly makeshift coaching tasks youll ever see. In 2013, a damaged and beaten-down Bulls team strolled into Brooklyn and beat the Nets in Game 7 of a playoff series, and afterward Nets coach P.J. Carlesimo seemed like a high school kid caught by a truant officer.
“Everything we attempted, they had an instant response for. And that team simply plays so damned difficult.
