Trouble with Thibodeau

On June 7, 2021, Tom Thibodeau was announced as the 2020-21 NBA coach of the year. He had seemingly brought the Knicks from lottery irrelevancy to a top four seed in the east and playoff contention for the first time in eight years. 

This year the Knicks are far from playoff contenders. At about the quarter of the way through the season, New York has a 10-11 record. The Knicks have a losing record at home and away. This season has not been off to a great start to say the least.

Historically throughout NBA history, when a team is underperforming it is almost always the head coach on the chopping block - even when it might not be warranted. In the case of the New York Knicks, I would argue firing Thibodeau would be a fair move.

Throughout his coaching career, Thibodeau has always had the same calling card, no matter what team he was with. The teams he coaches are always near the top in defensive ranking. However, this season Thibodeau has seemed to have lost his touch. 

The Knicks are the fifth worst defensive team in the league, giving up almost 117 points per game. New York also gives up the second most three pointers in the league, with almost 14 a game. If you watch the games, Knicks’ opponents get countless wide-open looks from behind the arc. In the modern NBA, you can ill afford to give up that many good attempts from three. For a coach known for his defensive prowess, it seems like he is just getting by this season on reputation alone.

Thibodeau’s other main calling card is his stubbornness. He is known to underplay rookies and overplay veterans. A prime example of this is his refusal to play Obi Toppin more. Toppin is averaging the same amount of minutes as he did last year, about 17 per game, while being a drastically better player. Toppin is shooting a career high 36% from three and brings much needed energy to an at times lethargic Knicks team. 

I’m not advocating for Toppin to take Randle’s starting role, that’s another topic, but he should be playing more than 17 minutes a game. One of Thibodeau’s lesser played lineups include Toppin and Randle on the floor together. That lineup, which has only played 19 minutes together, has an offensive rating of 134.1, well-above league average, and a defensive rating of 111.6, also above league average. Yet, unless it’s a time of desperation, Thibodeau refuses to play this lineup or really make any adjustments to his rotations, barring injury.

Credit is due to Thibodeau for benching Fournier to give more minutes to the likes of Cam Reddish and Immanuel Quickley, but that is just a small step in the right direction. 

Continuing with this theme of stubbornness, on their five-game western conference road trip, RJ Barrett was suffering with an illness. During these games Barrett was clearly struggling, moving more lethargically and having little to no lift on his jump shots. Instead of sitting him out and letting him rest, Thibodeau had him playing about 35 minutes a night.

The results were disastrous. Barrett had horrific shooting percentages every game, going 5-27 from beyond the arc during the road game. Fighting through sickness, he was slow on defense giving up countless baskets. If Thibodeau weren’t as stubborn as he is, he would have benched Barrett and let him get healthy - unfortunately, that was not the case.

Thibodeau is a fine coach for getting a bottom level team to relevancy. His second year with the Timberwolves he broke Minnesota’s 14 year playoff drought. It only took one season with the Knicks for Thibodeau to bring them back to the playoffs. However, teams he leads have a tendency to sputter out once they get there.

Only one time, with the 2010-11 Bulls, has a Thibodeau led team not lost in the first or second round. He preaches tough and scrappy defense, and that can get you far night in and night out in the regular season, but in the playoffs everyone is playing just as hard. 

I’m not discrediting anything that Thibodeau has done, winning coach of the year and being a big part of why the Knicks even had expectations to begin with. However, just because has accomplishments does not mean that New York should just settle for mediocrity. Moving on from Thibodeau might be a tough move to make, but the front office needs to do so.