Tom Thibodeau already has a matching Coach of the Year trophy. He won his first championship in 2011 when he took over a Chicago team that went 41-41 and quickly won 62 games and qualified for the conference finals. He won his second championship in 2021, taking over a Knicks team that was 21-45 at the time, leading the team to a 41-31 record and a surprising No. 4 seed in the East.
In both cases, he fulfilled the simplest conditions necessary to win the award. That means dragging a team with a recent, hopeless history directly to excellence. In that sense, the three people considered to be favorites to win this year, Oklahoma City’s Mark Dainot, Minnesota’s Chris Finch and Orlando’s Jamal Mosley, are perfect candidates.
Same goes for Boston’s Joe Mazzula, who has one of the most talented teams in the league and is largely mentioned because he’s much more adept at his job in his second year than he was as a rookie last season. If there was a “Most Improved Manager,” Mazzula would beat him with a walk.
So the Knicks are expected to be very good this year, and they’ve been pretty good for the most part, so Thibodeau is unlikely to add a third piece of hardware to his collection. That award isn’t usually given to coaches who just meet expectations. Even though, in a grand irony, this award is named after Red Auerbach, whose greatest talent was essentially doing just that. He led the nine Celtics teams he coached to the championship. excellence. Red did a lot. He didn’t have to go in order of worst.
Thibodeau’s winning margin this year is about 1,000 to 1.
he doesn’t. There’s a good chance he won’t even be in the top five.
And that’s fine, and it’s probably fine for him too. Because he is a vocal advocate for other coaches and takes great satisfaction in seeing other coaches succeed and be recognized.
But this is also true.
This was the best day-to-day job of Mr. Thibodeau’s career. And that’s saying something. An easy way to emphasize this is to simply look at how the Knicks have survived from December, when Mitch Robinson was injured, to January, when Julius Randle and OG Anunoby were placed on injured reserve. Thing.
Despite somehow missing 60 percent of their starting lineup most nights since late January, the Knicks are still the No. 4 seed. Somehow, the Knicks reached 40 wins in 67 games, the fastest since 2013 and second fastest since 2001. But even Thibodeau has reduced his active involvement in that, instead pointing to the team’s absolute belief in Next Man Up.
“When the opportunity comes, you have to take it,” he said a few weeks ago. “And we have the people to do it.”
However, it’s not just plug and play. Injured teams often have difficulty summoning the means to compete. At the risk of burdening the Nets, consider what happened in Brooklyn every time adversity hit this year. They don’t just lose, they surrender. And the truth is, that’s more of the norm than the exception across the league.
The Knicks had one such game on March 10, humiliating the Sixers 79-73 at the Garden. Through 48 minutes that night, it felt as if the Knicks simply succumbed to the weight of the absences that still plague them. Perhaps people were looking for Shibs to get out of the team after that. he didn’t. He was strangely philosophical.
“If you play this badly, you’re not going to win many games,” he said.
The Knicks are 4-0 since then, off to an impressive 3-0 start in their final West Coast swing of the year, with a house money game in Denver looming on Thursday night. This isn’t Thibodeau’s first rodeo. He knows the nature of NBA marathons better than anyone, and believes that if he does his job right, his team will be able to shake off the miserable nights without getting too carried away with the magical nights.
Thibodeau started against the Warriors in San Francisco and it was his turn to guard Stephen Curry. McBride said late Monday that he’s starting from the top after scoring a career-high 29 points while playing great defense. Deuce McBride said. “It starts with Coach Thisbs and how he prepares us every day.”
It’s not enough to add a third piece to his shelf when the Auerbach Trophy award is announced during the playoffs, but Thibodeau has done his job so far that neither he nor anyone else will notice. There’s a good chance. Because the Knicks could have an important basketball game that night.
