Shortly after the Knicks made the hiring of Tom Thibodeau as their next head coach official on Thursday, Thibodeau, team president Leon Rose, and GM Scott Perry spoke with the media via Zoom about the process and what's next as New York continues its rebuild.
Rose, who has a close personal relationship with Thibodeau, said the extensive coaching search reaffirmed that the 62-year-old was the right man for the job.
Here are the takeaways from Thibodeau, who said it was his "dream job" and could be on the sidelines coaching in the coming days...
THREE MAIN REASONS THE JOB WAS APPEALING
"The three main reasons the job was appealing to me was the current roster that we have now. It's young and talented, and there's room for growth -- and that's exciting. Secondly is to work for Leon (Rose) and Wes (William Wesley), two people that I've known an extremely long time. I'm just getting to know Scott now. He's one of the most respected executives in the league. And then thirdly, all of the draft picks that have been acquired, and also the cap space that we have. We have many different ways to improve the team."
ON HOW TO FIX THE KNICKS
"Since I started interviewing, I watched games and you try to get a feel for who each player is, how you can try and improve. And obviously it was a challenging year. ... I thought we had some players that really stepped up and did a good job, but there's a lot of work to do. I think one of the most important things that we can do when studying the team is just look at efficiency. And when you see you're a minus 6.54, you realize there's a lot of work. And hopefully we can get everyone to make the commitment to play for each other, put the team first."
ON THE YOUNG PLAYERS ON THE ROSTER
"Just based on film I've seen, I really think that RJ (Barrett) has a very bright future, as does Mitchell Robinson. So those are two that stand out, but I think we have a lot of young talent. I don't like to make qualifications on people until I get around them."
"With Frank (Ntilikina) and Kevin (Knox), they're both young guys that have talent. That being said, as I mentioned earlier, I'm not making any real observations or evaluations until I get to be around them."
HIS CORE VALUES AND STYLE OF PLAY
"There's five things that we're gonna look to do on a consistent basis. That's gonna be defend, rebound, low turnover, no ball hits the paint, and then share the ball. Those are core values. We're gonna try to do that every day and we can't wait to get started."
ON LEARNING FROM HIS COACHING EXPERIENCE IN MINNESOTA
"You learn from each situation. ... I think you take from each experience, but each experience is different. So I think we've gotta get in, we've gotta study, we have to compare, we have to develop our plan, and then work our plan. So I'm excited about it."