Celtics 118, Knicks 105: New York will never win a title with Tom Thibodeau in charge
Enough is enough is enough is enough
So there’s good news and bad news.
The Knicks managed to put a fresh spin on a played-out premise, getting mostly blown out by the Celtics for the third time in three meetings, losing 118-105 in a game they trailed by as many as 27 and were down double-digits most of the last 40 minutes. Unlike the previous two games against the champs, though, there was a point where the Knicks said “Enough is enough” and actually dominated for a stretch, cutting that 27-point gap in the third quarter to four in the fourth. If you can’t win the fight, at least make sure your opponent knows they were in one. If all the Knicks did today was build the first sinews of some muscle memory of success against the Celtics, that isn’t nothing.
The bad news is Tom Thibodeau won’t stop coaching like reality is a video game with injuries and exhaustion turned off, and all the cute barbs about minutes police don’t absolve him for the malpractice he practices. Late in the game Towns came down awkwardly on a failed dunk attempt and had to go to the locker room.
Oh, my bad. That wasn’t from today’s game. That was last month in Chicago, another game KAT had to exit early after obviously hurting his knee. After that injury against the Bulls, Towns missed the next game, played four, then missed another two. That’d be the same Towns who missed a third of his team’s games the last five years before becoming a Knick. That’s the guy Thibodeau saw limp to the sideline, lay out across the bench, clutching his knee before heading for the locker room, return to the bench and then sent back to play the final four minutes of a game his team had already lost.
Pop quiz: what do the Celtics, Bucks, Warriors and Raptors all have in common? Each won a title at some point in the past six years, each after moving on from a coach who’d led them out of the wilderness into competence, if not contention. Brad Stevens couldn’t get past LeBron and Ime Udoka couldn’t honor his vows to his wife nor handle the woman he had an affair with losing interest in him; twas Joe Mazzulla who got to enter the Promised Land with Tatum, Brown and Company. Giannis Antetokounmpo had more to do with the Bucks getting back on their own two feet than Jason Kidd did, but it was under Kidd that Milwaukee first bared its teeth, taking the older and more experienced Raptors to six games, until Kidd pulled the same failed putsch shit he does everywhere, leading to Mike Budenholzer’s arrival and eventual coronation.
After posting one lone winning season out of nine, Toronto turned to Dwane Casey and took off, posting five straight winning seasons, three of them 50-win campaigns. No titles? No thank you: Nick Nurse was brought in, more importantly Kawhi Leonard was, too, and voila! a Canadian championship. When Golden State hired Mark Jackson, the 11 seasons prior under anybody not named Don Nelson were all losing seasons. In Jackson’s last two years in charge, the Warriors won their first playoff series in six years and followed that up with their first 50-win campaign in 20. The players adored Jackson. The front office didn’t care. In came Steve Kerr, followed by only the second dynasty of this scared and shrieking century.
A lot of people associate Moses with the promised land without remembering he himself never saw it. God straight-up tells him Moses wasn’t good enough, that he’d been arrogant, foolish and proud. Would the Knicks ever make such a move? A franchise with as many close-knit personal and professional bonds as they have? Before he took over the front office, Leon Rose was Thibodeau’s agent, as well as Karl-Anthony Towns’. He was Ric Brunson’s, and is Jalen Brunson’s godfather. Rose’s son represents OG Anunoby. You already know about the Villanova links. Maybe there aren’t that many people walking the face of the earth better built to coach this team than Thibs. But if there is? Would they be that ruthless?
Beyond his self-flaggelist approach to the human body, as if it’s some inconvenience on the path toward true competitive transcendence, there are legit questions as to whether he’s got the ceiling to take the Knicks all the way. Since reaching the Eastern finals with Chicago 14 years ago, his teams have never gotten past the second round. He’s a supposed defensive specialist whose team’s two cornerstones are both exploitable on that end. You could see in this game where Mitchell Robinson is sorely missed; the numbers of times the Celtics had size mismatches across the court; the frequency with which Anunoby, Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges and the bench guards passed up midrange floaters or fadeaways because the nearest defender had between six inches to a foot on them – rarely have the Knicks looked as hesitant or discombobulated as they did today. I lost count how many times two of them were spaced no more than a foot apart in the corners. Or how often they made Luke Kornet look like Kevin Freaking McHale.
I know. I’m out of touch. The minutes police is me. I’m old-fashioned enough not to believe Adam Silver when he tries to tell me there’s no connection between demands made on the body and damage done to the body. And of course these Knicks are all manly men, the manliest. We hear it all the time: “They wanna play! They hate coming out! They never wanna rest.” Tell it to someone who gives a fuck. If the bottom line is as simple as the players getting what they want, then why even have a head coach? If there’s supposed to be someone keeping an eye on the big picture, who exactly is it? And why are they so seemingly derelict in their duty?
There are things Thibodeau can’t control. The Celtics are bigger and better. The Cavs are more explosive and more experienced together. The Thunder are an army of athletic Gumbys. The Knicks are in year one of their best stab at building a title-contender. Jeff Van Gundy, Pat RIley, Georgy Zhukov: any of them could be running the Knicks and they wouldn’t be able to overcome the real-time requirements of space and time. But when arguably the most valuable offensive player on a team whose strength is so obviously the offense leaves a game early – not for the first time in 2025! – with an obvious knee problem, and when he returns to the bench with four minutes left and you’re down 18 and you send him back out there, you’re a fool.
It doesn’t matter if he’s forgotten more about basketball than we’ll ever know. Every day we see rich, successful people with means and recognition well beyond what we’ll ever know screwing up royally, often in astonishing ways. For the Knicks to matter as much in April and May as they have the first five months of the season, they have to get to April and May. Ask yourself: do you trust Thibodeau to be the best judge of how to manage Anunoby’s foot the rest of the year? How about Hart’s knee? When If Mitch returns and is making a difference, and his knee’s a little sore, maybe a little more than anyone expected, you trust Thibs to err on the side of caution? Or to throw Mitch to the wolves and when he comes up lame growl to the press about “Next man up”?
I’ve been waiting for this team to be for real for twentyfuckingfive years. I’ve seen a lot of next mans up who had no business being elevated. I believe they’re closer than they’ve been in a long, long time. I think the roster just needs some deepening and some more time together to have the seasoning required of a champion. I think we’ll never get to see that, because the head coach may as well be Monty Python’s black night: how do you reason with someone with no common sense? And who, if anyone in the organization, would make the tough call once it’s obvious it has to be made? I know the Knicks will fight back against the Celtics. I don’t know what to make when the damage is coming from inside the house.
