Knicks Fire Their Most Successful Coach of the Past 25 Years
"You're timing stinks. We've just made a billion eight for the second year in a row. That's three and a half billion in the past two years. But mark my words, Henry. You may never see a billion eight again. And do you know why? Because you don't know how the f--- we made it in the first place." Lee Iacocca to Henry Ford after being fired by Ford
A family run business can hire and fire on a whim. That is how Ford Motor Company operated under Henry Ford II, which is how Lee Iacocca ended up at Chrysler, where he revitalized a company that had seemed to be on the brink of imminent collapse; meanwhile, Ford Motor Company's market share gradually declined after the Iacocca firing. Iacocca had a lot to do with Ford Motor Company's success in the 1960s and 1970s, but job performance had nothing to do with Henry Ford II's decision to fire Iacocca.
What does this trip down automotive history memory lane have to do with the NBA? Tom Thibodeau just coached the New York Knicks to their most successful season in the past 25 years--the culmination of three straight years of improved regular season records--but that was not enough to save his job when James Dolan decided to fire him. Much like Henry Ford II ran Ford Motor Company as a family business (never mind the existence of a supposedly independent board of directors), Dolan runs the Knicks as a personal fiefdom where he can declare "Off with their heads!" on a whim.
The Knicks steadily improved during Thibodeau's tenure, and before this season began no
reasonable person would have said that reaching the 2025 Eastern
Conference Finals would constitute failure, let alone be a fireable
offense. The Knicks went 21-45 in the COVID-19 abbreviated 2019-20 season, and then went 41-31 in Thibodeau's first season at the helm. After slipping to 37-45 in 2021-22, the Knicks went 47-35, 50-32, and 51-31 in the next three seasons, advancing to the second round in back to back years before reaching the Eastern Conference Finals this season.
Prior to hiring Thibodeau in 2020, the Knicks had missed the playoffs for seven straight seasons under six different coaches. The Knicks have had 13 head coaches in the 24 years since the departure of Jeff Van Gundy in 2001.
Do you see the pattern? The one constant is James Dolan, who has owned the team through all of this turbulence; the general managers change, the coaches change, the players change, but Dolan is always there, presiding over the chaos.
Firing excellent coaches is a trademark move of a dysfunctional franchise. Sensible reasons to fire a coach include underperformance relative to
reasonable expectations, declining performance in the absence of
extenuating circumstances, or the availability of a superior coach.
Those reasons are not applicable to Thibodeau and the Knicks.
Bashing excellent coaches is a trademark move of media members who do not understand the sport that they cover. The correct way to critique a coach is to focus on a specific coaching decision, provide evidence demonstrating why that coaching decision was suboptimal, and then suggest an alternative coaching decision that would have been better, supporting that alternative with evidence. Media members do not do this for a simple reason: they are not capable of doing this. The barriers to entry for some fields are quite high: to become an attorney, you must first get a high LSAT score, then you must graduate from law school, and then you must pass the bar exam; to become a chess master, you must achieve a rating in timed, competitive play that exceeds the ratings of 99% of competitive chess players. To become a media member, all you have to do is know someone who knows someone who likes you, and that is why media members who could not coach their way out of a paper bag with a machete are paid to intone solemnly (or yell bombastically) about how they would coach a team much better than a career professional coach would.
The prevailing media-driven narrative that Thibodeau did not use his bench enough is as lazy as it is stupid, and the people who propagate that nonsense fail to explain (1) who specifically Thibodeau should have played more minutes, (2) who specifically Thibodeau should have played fewer minutes, and (3) what evidence exists to demonstrate that making those moves would have produced a better outcome than losing in the Eastern Conference Finals.
When I critique a coach, I provide specific evidence-based reasons for that critique. For example, when Kevin Durant entered the NBA and Seattle Coach P.J. Carlesimo declared that he would move Durant from forward to guard, I expressed skepticism:
Durant has not played one minute of regular season action in the NBA,
yet even though he has been advertised as a great inside player his
coach already wants him to switch positions. Carlesimo clearly wants to
spare Durant from being pounded in the paint but the move to the
backcourt will lead to other problems. To the best of my knowledge,
Durant has never played guard; now he will have to learn how to do so
against the best guards in the world. Also, from what I saw in the
summer league, Durant has a very high dribble and is not a great
ballhandler, so he will be a turnover waiting to happen if he is relied
upon to do a lot of dribbling.
Durant clearly needs to put on
some weight but that will be true regardless of which position he plays.
I think that he and Seattle would be better served if he takes his
lumps at his natural small forward position where he will at least be in
the comfort zone of playing in areas of the court that are familiar to
him.
The Seattle franchise subsequently moved to Oklahoma City and replaced Carlesimo with Scott Brooks, who immediately shifted Durant back to forward, a decision that I praised: "Moving Durant to small forward is a big step in the right direction that
I predict will pay noticeable dividends, possibly as soon as the end of
this season." The rest is history, as Durant assembled a Hall of Fame career as a forward; he averaged 20.3 ppg on .430 field goal shooting in his one year as a shooting guard, and in the next 16 seasons he never averaged less than 25.1 ppg and he never shot worse than .462 from the field.
A few years later, Carlesimo was coaching the Brooklyn Nets and Thibodeau was coaching the Chicago Bulls. The teams met in the first round of the 2013 playoffs, and I predicted that Chicago would win: "This series features a huge coaching mismatch. TNT's Kenny Smith says
that if a team loses by more than five points then blame the players but
if it loses by less than five points blame the coach; the games in this
series figure to be low scoring and close and I trust Chicago's Tom
Thibodeau much more than I trust Brooklyn's P. J. Carlesimo; this is not
just about in-game adjustments but also about elements of preparation
that give one team an edge over another." Sure enough, Chicago--which had won 45 games during the regular season while Brooklyn had won 49 games--won that series, 4-3. After the series, I distinguished coach evaluating from coach bashing:
Coach bashing is a favorite media pastime but most media members do not
have a clue how to determine if a team is well coached or poorly
coached. I respect all NBA coaches tremendously and I fully realize that
even a bad NBA head coach knows more about basketball than the vast
majority of coaches at any other level of the sport; [George] Karl is a very good
NBA coach but he seems to be better suited for rebuilding
teams/coaching underdogs than he is at extracting the maximum out of
50-plus win teams. Carlesimo was an excellent collegiate coach and he
served as an assistant on Gregg Popovich's San Antonio staff so
Carlesimo obviously has a very good basketball mind--but as an NBA head
coach he has not measured up well in comparison with the best of the
best, a category in which Thibodeau clearly belongs.
When I critique coaches like Carlesimo and Karl I am not trying to
suggest that I know more about basketball than they do or that I would
be a better NBA head coach; in other words, I am not acting like Bill
Simmons. I am just doing my job as an NBA analyst by pointing out that,
as much as Karl and Carlesimo know about basketball, there are other
coaches who are demonstrably performing at a higher level.
Media members do not like to admit being wrong and it is interesting to
see the lengths some of them will go to in order to avoid such
admissions. Simmons used to regularly bash Doc Rivers' coaching acumen
but now Rivers is widely recognized as a great coach so Simmons had to
stop degrading Rivers--but did Simmons admit that he was wrong? Of
course not! Simmons' story is that Rivers has evolved into being a great
coach. Rivers won the 2000 Coach of the Year award in his first season
as an NBA head coach after leading the "heart and hustle" Orlando Magic
to a 41-41 record with Darrell Armstrong, John Amaechi and Chucky Atkins
as the top three players in the rotation. Has Rivers become a better
coach in the intervening 13 years? I am sure that he has; I hope that
anyone who does something for more than a decade becomes better at
it--but the idea that Rivers was a terrible coach who then became a
great coach is absurd. Simmons was dead wrong about Rivers and he should
just admit it.
After retiring from the NBA, Brian Scalabrine has played several one on one games versus regular people who assume that because he was a bench player in the league and is now a retired player they have a chance to beat him--but Scalabrine routinely dominates these players, and he has correctly stated that he is closer to LeBron James' level than any of those players are to his level. Similarly, the worst coach in the NBA is closer to Phil Jackson's level of basketball understanding and acumen than any media member is to the worst coach's basketball understanding and acumen. In other words, media members should approach their craft with humility and with the goal of trying to learn more about basketball strategy--but that does not generate hype or TV ratings, so basketball fans will continue to be subjected to empty minds with large mouths loudly proclaiming "hot takes" devoid of cold logic.
Labels: James Dolan, Jeff Van Gundy, Kevin Durant, New York Knicks, Oklahoma City Thunder, P.J. Carlesimo, Scott Brooks, Seattle Supersonics, Tom Thibodeau
posted by David Friedman @ 10:32 PM
The NBA Coaching Carousel Rotates Quickly
If you believe the rumors, the same David Blatt who led the Cleveland Cavaliers to the NBA Finals almost got fired before the All-Star break. The idea of letting players and coaches develop seems laughably quaint; almost every current NBA coach was hired within the past four years and within the past decade or so it has become a bizarre tradition for a coach to be fired within a few years of winning the Coach of the Year award. Did all of those Coach of the Year honorees suddenly take stupid pills or is it possible that the coach is simply the most convenient scapegoat after teams fail to reach expectations that may not have been realistic in the first place?
At
The Roar, I discuss the recent firings of Scott Brooks and Tom Thibodeau:
The NBA Coaching Carousel Rotates QuicklyLabels: Billy Donovan, Fred Hoiberg, Scott Brooks, Tom Thibodeau
posted by David Friedman @ 3:45 PM
Miami Reclaims Home Court Advantage Against Determined but Shorthanded Chicago
Due to injuries, foul trouble and an ejection, four Chicago players played at least 42 minutes in Friday night's game three versus Miami. Despite being so shorthanded, the Bulls led the 66-16 Heat by as many as seven points and they forged a 70-70 tie entering the fourth quarter.
Four-time MVP LeBron James James had a pedestrian game by his lofty standards--25 points, eight rebounds, seven assists, 6-17 field goal shooting--but he took over in the fourth quarter, scoring 12 of Miami's 34 points as the reigning champions pulled away for a 104-94 win. Even before James authored that great final stanza, his performance and demeanor were a lot different than they were when he infamously quit
versus Boston in the 2010 playoffs and
versus Dallas in the 2011 NBA Finals; in the two earlier situations, James did not aggressively seek to score or to create scoring opportunities for his teammates but against Chicago James was actively engaged throughout the game, even at the times when he was not as productive or as efficient as usual. James understands this difference very well and he has even spoken about it publicly, admitting that he previously let the defense off the hook by not attacking in the paint; statistics alone do not indicate a player's effort level, because a player's talent and role can enable him to put up certain numbers even when he is not fully engaged: it is necessary to watch an entire game in order to determine a player's effort level and intensity, traits that cannot be found in the box score. The 2010 and 2011 versions of James might have put up similar numbers in game three but he would not have made the key attacking plays in the fourth quarter and his team likely would have lost because of this; if James had settled for two or three long jumpers instead of attacking the hoop he may have still finished with 20-8-7 instead of 25-8-7 but those few empty possessions would have changed the outcome of the game even if the "stat gurus" would not find much difference between those respective box score totals.
While LeBron James is deservedly the headliner, the Heat would not have won without Chris Bosh's 20 points, playoff career-high 19 rebounds, four assists and two blocked shots. Bosh is very underrated by media members and fans, though the coaches have selected him for the All-Star Game seven times (the fans have picked him as a starter just once). Bosh's versatility is invaluable at both ends of the court: he can post up (though this is not his favorite thing to do), he can score facing up (even beyond the three point line), he sets solid screens, he is a good passer, he rebounds well and his length/mobility enable him to defend multiple positions. The Heat would not be a championship caliber team without his many contributions.
James has been so consistently outstanding and Bosh has been so consistently productive that not much is being said about Dwyane Wade's subpar play; Wade is fourth on the team in scoring versus Chicago (13.0 ppg) and he has almost as many fouls (eight) as rebounds (nine). Earlier this season, Charles Barkley called Wade a declining player. During the regular season, Wade averaged 21.2 ppg while shooting a career-high .521 from the field but he missed 13 games and he has been hobbled by knee problems for the past two years. Those statistics suggest that when healthy Wade's skills may not have declined by much but he is 31 years old and he has been throwing his body into the paint for 10 seasons. All of that pounding has predictably and inevitably taken its toll; Wade never developed a consistent jump shot or post up game (though his inability to drive now has forced him to rely on posting up more than usual), so it has long been obvious that he would not be as effective or durable in his 30s as Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant, who was still performing at an MVP level in his 17th season at 34 years of age
before his Achilles ruptured under the weight of the L.A. Lakers' ineptitude.
Speaking of ineptitude, here is a thought experiment for anyone who believes that coaching does not matter: picture the Lakers with Tom Thibodeau at the helm and the Bulls with Mike D'Antoni calling the shots. It is hard to imagine that under those conditions the Lakers would have only been the seventh seed or that the Bulls would have made the playoffs, much less advanced past the first round. Thibodeau's Bulls have an excellent defensive game plan, they maximize their limited offensive potential and they always play hard. In contrast, when Hubie Brown covered the Lakers during the playoffs
he could not even identify what the Lakers' defensive game plan is and the Lakers did not play with much energy at either end of the court. Leadership matters in all walks of life and the NBA is no exception.
Jeff Van Gundy recently told an interesting story about his time as Pat Riley's assistant. Riley asked an injured player who was dressed in street clothes if that player could give the team even one minute and the player said that he could, whereupon Riley then snarled that the player should be in uniform if that is the case. I don't presume to know what is going on in Derrick Rose's mind or body but he has been practicing with the team for months now. If there is any way that he could play 20, 10 or even five minutes for the shorthanded Bulls then how can he watch from the bench as his teammates give their all against the powerhouse Heat? Maybe Rose really just cannot play but if that is the case then he and the team should say so, because what is happening now does not look right--even if Rose's teammates and some media members are defending Rose. I want to believe that Rose is doing everything he can to come back as quickly as possible but at this point it seems like Rose should either suit up or shut it down until next season. What could possibly change in the next day or two to make him ready to play? If he plays in game four then why couldn't he have played in game three? Rookie Marquis Teague did the best that he could in 11 game three minutes but the Bulls were outscored by four points when he was on the court; what if Rose had played those minutes instead? Even if Rose were rusty, his presence would have altered Miami's defense and possibly created scoring opportunities for the offensively challenged Bulls. Even at 50% or 60% effectiveness, Rose could tip the balance of power in this series.
Labels: Chicago Bulls, Chris Bosh, Derrick Rose, Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, Miami Heat, Mike D'Antoni, Tom Thibodeau
posted by David Friedman @ 3:14 PM
Real Talk About Media Coverage of NBA Coaching
I correctly predicted the winner of seven of the eight first round series, including both upsets in the #4 versus #5 matchups; my only mistake was favoring Denver over Golden State: the Nuggets took game one on Andre Miller's buzzer-beating layup and then lost four of the next five games. I should have known better than to pick a George Karl-coached team in the playoffs: Karl has a .599 regular season winning percentage but just a .432 playoff winning percentage; compare that to the winning percentages of championship-winning coaches Phil Jackson (.704/.688), Gregg Popovich (.681/.613), Erik Spoelstra (.660/.633), Pat Riley (.636/.606), Rick Carlisle (.587/.515), Larry Brown (.568/.511) and Doc Rivers (.554/.529) and it is clear that neither Karl's playoff winning percentage nor the gaping differential between his regular season/playoff winning percentages suggest that Karl is an elite level coach.
Coaching matters in the NBA, even though some "stat gurus" dispute this. When I picked Chicago to beat Brooklyn I
wrote, "This series features a huge coaching mismatch. TNT's Kenny Smith says
that if a team loses by more than five points then blame the players but
if it loses by less than five points blame the coach; the games in this
series figure to be low scoring and close and I trust Chicago's Tom
Thibodeau much more than I trust Brooklyn's P. J. Carlesimo; this is not
just about in-game adjustments but also about elements of preparation
that give one team an edge over another." Only two of the seven games in the Chicago-Brooklyn series were decided by five points or less--with each team winning one of those games--but five of the games were decided by eight points or less (including the triple overtime contest that Chicago won by eight points) and the Bulls went 4-1 in those games. Brooklyn's other two victories were both blowouts; there is no doubt that the Nets have a more talented team on paper than the injury-ravaged Bulls but the Bulls proved to be a more disciplined and focused squad: the Bulls did all of the "little things" that actually are quite important, such as setting solid screens, executing plays crisply and taking advantage of opportunities to score easy baskets on inbounds plays while also denying Brooklyn similar opportunities.
Bum Phillips once said that Don Shula "can take his'n and beat your'n or he can take your'n and beat
his'n." The Chicago-Brooklyn series very much had that feel; in game seven, the Bulls were without the services of 2011 MVP Derrick Rose (who missed the entire 2012-13 season), All-Star Luol Deng and Kirk Hinrich while the Nets had all hands on deck yet the Bulls took a huge first half lead and never trailed en route to a 99-93 road win: if everything else were kept the same but the head coaches switched sides, I'd be willing to bet that the Nets would have won the series.
Coach bashing is a favorite media pastime but most media members do not have a clue how to determine if a team is well coached or poorly coached. I respect all NBA coaches tremendously and I fully realize that even a bad NBA head coach knows more about basketball than the vast majority of coaches at any other level of the sport; Karl is a very good NBA coach but he seems to be better suited for rebuilding teams/coaching underdogs than he is at extracting the maximum out of 50-plus win teams. Carlesimo was an excellent collegiate coach and he served as an assistant on Gregg Popovich's San Antonio staff so Carlesimo obviously has a very good basketball mind--but as an NBA head coach he has not measured up well in comparison with the best of the best, a category in which Thibodeau clearly belongs.
When I critique coaches like Carlesimo and Karl I am not trying to suggest that I know more about basketball than they do or that I would be a better NBA head coach; in other words, I am not acting like Bill Simmons. I am just doing my job as an NBA analyst by pointing out that, as much as Karl and Carlesimo know about basketball, there are other coaches who are demonstrably performing at a higher level.
Media members do not like to admit being wrong and it is interesting to see the lengths some of them will go to in order to avoid such admissions. Simmons used to regularly bash Doc Rivers' coaching acumen but now Rivers is widely recognized as a great coach so Simmons had to stop degrading Rivers--but did Simmons admit that he was wrong? Of course not! Simmons' story is that Rivers has evolved into being a great coach. Rivers won the 2000 Coach of the Year award in his first season as an NBA head coach after leading the "heart and hustle" Orlando Magic to a 41-41 record with Darrell Armstrong, John Amaechi and Chucky Atkins as the top three players in the rotation. Has Rivers become a better coach in the intervening 13 years? I am sure that he has; I hope that anyone who does something for more than a decade becomes better at it--but the idea that Rivers was a terrible coach who then became a great coach is absurd. Simmons was dead wrong about Rivers and he should just admit it.
Simmons' arrogance is not unique; Cleveland media members still give the Simmons treatment to Bill Belichick, who took over a 3-13 Browns team in 1991 and transformed them into an 11-5 playoff team by 1994. During Belichick's entire tenure in Cleveland the media relentlessly mocked his coaching strategies and his public speaking style. The Browns have not won a playoff game since the 1994 team went 1-1 in the postseason, while Belichick has won three Super Bowls in New England. Belichick is now widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest coaches in NFL history--but do the Cleveland media members admit that they were wrong? Of course not! They insist that Belichick learned from his supposed mistakes in Cleveland and became a much better coach in New England. Sure, that makes sense: he was a dunce in Cleveland but he became a genius in New England--well, if ignorance is contagious then perhaps one could theorize that he caught it from those Cleveland media members! Smart people are much more apt to learn from their mistakes than stupid people, so there is no doubt that Belichick learned from some mistakes that he made in Cleveland but the record before, during and after his time there shows that he did a great job as the Browns' coach. A lot of those very same media members
gave Mike Brown the Belichick treatment during Brown's first term as the Cavaliers' coach and they are no doubt gearing up to do so again as Brown takes over for the fired Byron Scott. We will be told that Brown should hire John Kuester as some kind of "offensive coordinator"--so that the Cavs can hope to replicate the awesome scoring attack that Kuester built during his tenure as Detroit's head coach when the Pistons ranked 29th and 22nd in points scored. Brown will be mocked for talking about his players letting him coach them, even though Hall of Fame Coach Chuck Daly
said exactly the same thing; that statement has nothing to do with being a soft person or a bad leader and everything to do with understanding the nature of the culture in an NBA locker room: if a coach cannot elicit "voluntary cooperation" (Pat Riley's way of referring to the concept mentioned by Daly and Brown) then he cannot function effectively.
Mike Brown does not need me to defend him; he is well paid for his services and he is well respected by people who actually understand the technical aspects of the sport--I just wish that media members covered the league more intelligently, but we are all getting the media coverage that we accept/tolerate; perhaps some day editors and consumers will hold writers/TV talking heads to higher standards but it does not seem like that kind of change will happen any time soon.
Labels: Bill Belichick, Bill Simmons, Boston Celtics, Brooklyn Nets, Chicago Bulls, Doc Rivers, Mike Brown, Orlando Magic, P.J. Carlesimo, Tom Thibodeau
posted by David Friedman @ 3:31 AM
