The Knicks are finalizing a five-year deal to make Tom Thibodeau their next head coach, SNY sources confirm.
Thibodeau, who has a close relationship with team president Leon Rose, was among 11 candidates to interview for the job and was long considered the favorite. He is the biggest hire the first-time president has made to date.
ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski first reported the news.
Thibodeau inherits a Knicks team that has finished with a winning percentage below .400 in each of the past six seasons. New York has won just one playoff series in the last 20 seasons, but the former Knicks assistant coach has a winning pedigree.
During coaching stints in Chicago and Minnesota, Thibodeau amassed the 11th-highest winning percentage (.589) among coaches who have been on the sidelines for at least 500 games.
The Knicks also interviewed Mike Woodson, Knicks interim coach Mike Miller, ex-Nets coach and current Lakers assistant Jason Kidd, Golden State assistant Mike Brown, ex-Nets coach Kenny Atkinson, Bulls assistant Chris Fleming, Dallas assistant Jamahl Mosley, San Antonio assistant Will Hardy, Philadelphia 76ers lead assistant Ime Udoka and Orlando Magic assistant Pat Delany.
Miller and Woodson have strong internal support to be added as assistants on Thibodeau’s staff, according to SNY sources.
Rose, executive vice president and senior advisor William “World Wide Wes” Wesley, GM Scott Perry and Vice President of Basketball and Strategic Planning Brock Aller were among the group of Knicks participating in the interviews, per SNY sources.
Thibodeau, the Knicks’ 10th full-time head coach since 2002, was fired in Minnesota midway through the 2018-19 season. He served as team president of the Timberwolves.
Although Thibodeau reportedly didn’t establish a good rapport with some of the younger Timberwolves -- including Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns -- former Knick Nate Robinson, who played for Thibodeau in Chicago, shot down the idea that young players could struggle under Thibodeau.
“The only way you struggle under Tom Thibodeau is if you just don’t want to listen and follow his guidelines. I’m kind of a wild card, and I fit in just right. So if I can fit in, anybody can fit in,” Robinson said in an interview with SNY. “If you can’t fit in with him and just go hoop and do what he asks, you just don’t like basketball. You just don’t know how to adjust.”
Another criticism of Thibodeau is that his intensity and approach to practices/playing time wear players out. Whether that's true or not depends on who you talk to their perspective on the matter.
In an interview with First Take, Thibodeau suggested the criticism is off base.
"I think we all have questions to answer as coaches. The big thing is oftentimes there's things that are being said where there's no validity to them, they're being painted by people that have never even been around you," Thibodeau said. "And then I would say to all those people, the facts are what the facts are. To look into the facts, to do your research, to look into the numbers and to also talk to former players, the guys who have played for me. I think if you did that, you would find what the truth is. There are certain things that I do believe in. But as we all know, our league is always changing. It never stays the same and it never has, nor will it ever. So you have to keep adapting as time goes on.”
Thibodeau intimated that he may adjust how he approaches practices. He saw first-hand how other franchises approach them during visits with teams during his hiatus.
“My experience this past year in going around and visiting a number of different teams and seeing it -- and it's been evolving this way for probably the last three or four years -- there's different ways to manage practice," Thibodeau said in the First Take interview. "There's load management, there's sports scientists, there's situations in which your young guys are practicing a little bit more and your older vets are doing less and you're separating the two, and you're bringing them in toward the end of practice to do whatever needs to be done to prepare for that next game. So I think utilizing all the resources that you now have, understanding how to use them, how to manage that, has become critical.”
If recent history is any indication, the Knicks should see a significant win increase early in Thibodeau’s tenure. The Timberwolves won 29 games the year before Thibodeau arrived. Two years later, they won 47 games and reached the playoffs for the first time in 13 seasons (the second-longest drought in NBA history). The Bulls won 41 games the year before Thibodeau took over. Thibodeau, who was a Knicks assistant under Jeff Van Gundy, coached Chicago to 62 wins in his first season as head coach.
Whether the Knicks can make a jump in wins next season depends, in part, on what they do in the offseason. They may have as much as $60 million in cap space to spend in free agency and have a lottery pick, a late first-round pick and an early second-round pick in the 2020 NBA Draft.