If recent NBA history has taught us anything, it’s that no coach is safe. Michael Malone, who led the Denver Nuggets to the 2023 NBA championship, just got fired with three games left in the regular season. A few weeks earlier, the Memphis Grizzlies axed Taylor Jenkins as they fought for playoff seeding. Three coaches who reached the 2024 postseason were fired afterward: Darvin Ham, Frank Vogel and J.B. Bickerstaff.
We live in the NBA’s all-in era, and the problem with a league in which half of the teams are all-in is that only a small number can mathematically ever be satisfied with the seasons they had. Everyone else needs an explanation for what went wrong, and coaching is usually the easiest. If you want to improve your roster, you need to give up assets and work around the salary cap. But improving your coaching staff? Theoretically, that’s always possible. It makes coaches convenient scapegoats, and Malone and Jenkins showed us that even the winners have less job security than we thought.
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One winner that might be on the hot seat? Tom Thibodeau. On The Putback with Ian Begley, both Begley and Steve Popper, veteran Knicks reporters, hinted at possible danger for Thibodeau. While Begley acknowledged that he viewed a change as unlikely before the year, “more recently having conversations with people, seeing which way the wind is blowing, the stakes are high for Tom Thibodeau going into this postseason.” Popper echoed the sentiment, saying “If the Knicks don’t get past the first round somehow, there’s going to be changes probably,” with Thibodeau as the first name mentioned.
The Knicks face the Pistons in the first round, starting Saturday, and they could very well match up with the reigning champion Celtics in the second round of the East’s playoff bracket.
The Knicks are about as all-in as a team can get. Last offseason, they traded Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, six first-round picks and one first-round swap to get Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges. They might be able to make roster changes by trading a core player, but their ammunition is mostly spent. They made those trades expecting to compete for a championship.
Where exactly the barometer for success is under that context is hard to define. Losing in the first round would be an obvious disappointment. A second-round loss to Boston would be harder to evaluate. An easy series for the Celtics might be seen as evidence that the Knicks cannot realistically contend. But if they play Boston competitively and the Celtics go on to defend their championship? That complicates matters.
Thibodeau has frequently drawn criticism for his overuse of starters. A research study conducted by The Guardian suggests that, despite the widely held belief, it does not actually lead to more injuries for his players. Some players have seemingly grown frustrated with the practice, though. “Sometimes it’s not fun on the body,” Mikal Bridges, who has never missed a game in his NBA career, said in March.
Thibodeau’s offense has been criticized for limited creativity this season, but when the dust settled, New York still ranked No. 5 in offensive efficiency this season. Despite the Towns’ widely publicized defensive woes, the Knicks still ranked No. 13 on that end of the floor. In short, there is not a single, obvious reason to dump Thibodeau. If he gets fired, it will be for a combination of factors. Some would be within his control, some outside of it.
More than anything, though, it would come down to an internal belief that the Knicks can do better. Whether or not that’s true is debatable, but it’s what almost every contender seemingly tells itself these days when it comes up short in the postseason.
