Source: https://sny.tv/articles/knicks-tom-thibodeau-firing-next-coach-candidates

As SNY noted Sunday, the Knicks conducted a review of players and coaches in the post-mortem of this season. The setup of these meetings was different than the traditional exit meeting. Based on what I know, these exit meetings are traditionally conducted by the leading executive. Each player meets individually with the top executive. Sometimes other front office members are present. I’ve heard of at least two instances where the head coach was present.

But this assessment was different. It didn’t involve all of the players. Only a select few were interviewed. I believe Thibodeau was interviewed as well as members of his coaching staff. Dolan was present as well.

So this was less an exit meeting and more of an assessment of what went wrong and what needed to be fixed. Obviously, the end result was Thibodeau getting let go.

37 comments

  1. Bridges: “This mofo has me playing 47 minutes against the Hornets/Wizards/whoever in January. I’m tired, fellas.”

  4. I honestly don’t know what the fuck is going around with Knicks, hopefully somebody clears up what happened in the organization in a podcast few years later.

  6. Turns out the select few star players don’t care for him.

    The best thing you can be in the modern NBA is a “players coach” because they ultimately decide if you have a job or not.

  7. Only a few players could attend because the rest were still on the court. Thibs Culture.

  8. Why give the bench guys interview minutes when you can just interview the starters?

  10. Nobody has any idea what questions were asked or how they were answered in this meeting.

    Assuming negative things were said about Thibs is just an assumption. All we know is that meetings happened and the decision.

    Things we don’t know:

    What was asked.
    What was answered.
    The weight of these answers on the decision.
    Thibodeau’s own discussions with the FO.
    Everything else.

    We know very little and these articles and reports just add baseless speculation.

  11. Knicks players to management: “I’m tired boss”

    Management: “Why?”

    Players: “Thibs playing me 47 minutes a game.”

  12. Tom Thibodeau hopes ***Nova Knicks*** can be ‘forgiven for their sins’ by new Pope

    :👀

  13. He had clearly started to lose the locker room. When they signed PJ Tucker as someone to yell at them with no intention of playing, the writing was on the wall. Deuce McBride also never makes comments about stuff like this and he straight up after game 6 said that they were exposed for stuff. that’s been an issue since the regular season.

  14. Obviously not everyone’s been following the Knicks all season, but this was definitely not a rushed decision. This front office with Leon Rose at the helm has been extremely diligent with its moves, and Thibs job had been at risk for a while. I will always love him for getting us out of the trenches, but if the organization wants to have legitimate title aspirations, seeing how far they went this year with a handicapped offense and an imitation of a rotation, this is the right move.

  20. They better hope they get that Johnnie Bryant guy cause Michael Malone is Thibs lite. He won a title of course but that’s with Jokic (and Murray was awesome that year). I don’t see him getting this team any further without a lineup shakeup and him actually changing his ways and trusting the bench.

  23. Easier to fire a coach then to get rid of high price players. But his contract is guaranteed, he will get another chance

  24. Wow, so it was definitely an assessment of Thibs, not just a general exit meeting. Makes sense he got fired.

  25. The issue with Thibs is he maximizes the regular season and maybe the first few rounds of the playoffs. He does this by playing his best players for a ton of minutes. The problem is that players tend to see their performance drop and injuries get more common particularly after the 82 game season and then in the playoffs where they start playing every other day.

    You want to theoretically rest your starters enough so they are fresh for the conference finals and finals. It’s just a recipe for the team burning out.

    With all that being said, who is actually a better coach on the open market? What is this Knicks team’s ceiling? Next year the East should be completely open with no real dominant team coming into the season. It’s a great opportunity to make the finals and if they get lucky maybe win. The issue is that there is no immediately available better coach than Thibs than I can think of. He got the team to the ECF, they beat the Celtics. This is a good team and Thibs is a good coach. Why not run it back and try again rather than risk it all on an unknown?

    The thing is I remember criticizing the Warriors for firing Mark Jackson and replacing him with Kerr who had no experience as a head coach or assistant coach up to that point. This was a bad take, and I justified it with “The Warriors won 47 and 51 games under Mark Jackson, that’s the best they have done since forever, why fire him? They went onto win 67 and then 73 games. So you never know.

  26. Overplaying starters always seemed to me like a crutch for a lack of coaching skills but I’m just some guy

  27. As a Knicks fan, I’m mainly surprised they pulled the trigger, not that his job was on the line.

    This team had issues all year. They constantly played down to opponents, had to have crazy second half comebacks against bottom rung opponents, would come out swinging early only to collapse in the third quarter. Bridges was playing 47 minutes a night.

    It’s a risk because in spite of all that Thibs was the best HC this franchise has had since Van Gundy was taking shots to the mouth from the sidelines.

    The upside is a HC who can get this franchise to the Promised Land.

  28. I liked during the year when Thibs was explaining that Brunson and KAT were barely in the top 25 in minutes played per game… completely ignoring the fact that they were ranked 4 & 5 on the Knicks roster in minutes played per game. Like if you have 5 of the top 25 players in minutes played per game, something is wrong and it isn’t just roster construction. We had a good enough team with big enough leads to let the bench come in throughout the game against bad teams (at least).

  33. Thibs sits down for meeting and is asked what went wrong. Thibs folds his hands high into his armpits and says “come on man”.

  34. Thibs style was great for maximizing what the Knicks could do when they had a few C level players and Randle. It’s not good when you have a roster like this that actually is expected to compete

  36. Leon Rose is taking the heat in the press, but some of that heat belongs to Dolan.

  37. Considering 90% of the minutes went to a handful of players, it makes sense that the entire team didn’t need an interview.

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