So what if the Knicks never win a title with Tom Thibodeau?
Callow fanboys, ask yourself: would that be so bad?
Who’s your favorite coach or manager of all-time?
Before Pep Guardiola turned Manchester City winning trophies into the surest thing in England besides the uselessness of the royal family, my answer would’ve been Pat Riley. If the Jets held on in the second half at Denver in the 1999 AFC Championship game, maybe my answer would’ve been Bill Parcells, who won two Super Bowls with the Giants; I was a fan of both teams as a kid. Mike Keenan did the impossible with the Rangers, but left town before the champagne had time to dry. Davey Johnson, Bobby Valentine and Terry Collins are all up there, too.
But if timing isn’t everything, context is. I started following the Knicks the year before Riley came, meaning I missed the Rick Pitino renaissance (though I’m very much loving it this year at St. John’s) and the Stu Jackson Knicks roaring back from the brink of elimination to sweep the last three games of their best-of-5 against Boston. The Knicks I first knew and loved were a sub-.500 eight-seed who were swept in the first round by the Bulls. The Mets had conditioned me to believe in sports miracles, so I invited several friends over to watch Game 1 of the series at my house, certain they’d pull of a miracle. By halftime the Knicks were down 29. They lost by 41.
Soon thereafter, John MacLeod was out and Riles was in. I don’t know if I can express to you what it felt like in 1991 for those Knicks to hire that guy. This was the world before Ivy League front offices and big data, when coaches were more than coaches, they were cults of personality. Riley wasn’t plastic surgery; he was genetic manipulation. The winner within was going to make winners of the Knicks. And he did.
But he never led them to a title.
If your favorite Knick coach isn’t Riley or Red Holzman, there’s a decent shot it’s Jeff Van Gundy, who walked into a better team but a more difficult situation than Schenectady Pat had. JVG replaced a coach in Don Nelson who was winning (34-25 when New York fired him) and whose CV would eventually land him in the Hall of Fame. Van Gundy also took over a team that was rebuilding on the fly. Charles Smith was traded midseason; it was the last year for Anthony Mason and Derek Harper in New York. Van Gundy wasn’t expected to be more than a stopgap, but by the time he left five years later he’d led the Knicks to multiple 50-win seasons and a miracle run to the 1999 Finals. When he left in 2001, there was much bereavement, and he became — and remains — a beloved figure in franchise history.
But he never led them to a title.
After the Knicks lost to the Celtics Sunday afternoon, I wrote that they’ll never win a championship with Tom Thibodeau in charge. Some called it a hot take, though if you think about it it’s not really saying anything bold. Consider: if Thibs makes it to next season, which I’m sure he will, that will be the 80th in franchise history. 31 different people have coached the Knicks in that time. Only one, Holzman, won it all with them.
On the short list of unforgivable things Isiah Thomas said or did while Musk-ing the Knicks in the mid-2000s was this: “There’s a long list of us that hasn’t [sic] been able to deliver the championship that New York wants. From Pat Riley to Larry Brown to Lenny Wilkens, Jeff Van Gundy, Don Nelson. We all came in here and tried to give it as much as we could humanly possibly give and we all failed.” My ancestors didn’t fight through all that they did to put me in position to sound like Isiah Thomas, so while the point of my Sunday recap remains – I don’t trust Thibodeau to physically guide this team through 100+ games to win a championship – I do think my love for Riley and Van Gundy points to a flaw in my Thibs take.
Before Riley, the Knicks were a losing team for one season. One. Before JVG, they’d won 50-60 games for four years and come agonizingly close to a trophy. In the 19 seasons between Van Gundy and Thibodeau, the Knicks had a losing record 16 times. They won one playoff series in those two decades, and even that was by the skin of their teeth. The high point of that long, lost age? A barely-above-.500 team in 2011? A couple weeks of Linsanity in 2012? Reaching the second round in 2013?
I don’t mean to demean those memories. Barely-above-.500 was a HUGE deal after a decade of garbage hoops. Linsanity was a brief but warming break of sunshine in an otherwise nuclear winter. And the 2013 team was a blast to watch, at least until J.R. Smith J.R. Smith’d.
My point is what’s Thibodeau’s job, really? When he was hired, how many thought “Okay, title or bust, Tom”? There are players we love who we know are not the big dog on a title contender. Since Patrick Ewing and John Starks, Julius Randle is probably my favorite Knick. I know Randle isn’t someone who can be the best player on a contender. Carmelo wasn’t either. Nor were Amar’e Stoudemire, David Lee, Jamal Crawford or Latrell Sprewell. And yet, my love for them has been constant. Why isn’t it the same with coaches?
I love Randle in large part because he helped get the Knicks on their feet. He joined a franchise coming off a 17-win season and a decade as a laughingstock. Ewing never fulfilled the lofty expectations he brought to Gotham, but he was the cornerstone carrying the Knicks over their longest stretch of winning years ever. I loved David Wright – zero rings. Ditto Rodney Hampton, Curtis Martin, Henrik Lundqvist, and Sophia Witherspoon of the early Liberty teams. I loved Dan Reeves coaching the Giants; God bless that man for looking so good in a suit on the sideline. But none of them won it all. So what’s the deal with Thibs?
No Knick coach since Riley ever led a team that was “supposed” to win it all. The ‘97 Knicks were an experiment that was yielding great results until Little Nero Stern decided to punish them for caring about each other. The ‘99 team made the Finals, but no one coming into that season thought they would – there were a lot of new and unknown parts – and by the time they got there against the Spurs and their twin towers, the only healthy Knicks taller than 6-foot-10 were Marcus Camby, Chris Dudley and Herb Williams.
Assuming the Knicks make the playoffs this year, it will be their fourth time there under Thibodeau. 84% of allllll Knick head coaches ever never made more than two postseasons; the only three there more often than Thibs’ were Holzman, Van Gundy and Joe Lapchick. That’s a lot of names and numbers. What’s it all mean?
I will never understand a coach seeing an irreplaceable player limp to the bench late in a game, then go to the locker room – a month after limping to the bench late in a game and leaving for the locker room, then missing three of four games – and concluding “We’re down 18 with four minutes left. Better throw him back out there.” It’s possible Thibodeau can elevate a group from the dregs to the fourth-best team in the league, but not beyond that. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, especially after 20 years of almost exclusively dregs.
Despite Sunday’s headline, I’ve always been a supporter of Thibodeau. I’m not a disciple; I don’t think he’s infallible. I do think he’s successfully answered many of the questions and slanders that accompanied his arrival at Madison Square Garden. I never expected him to be The One. I still don’t.
But as badly as we want to see the Knicks win that third title, that isn’t why many of us follow them. If rings mattered most to me, I wouldn’t root for most of the teams that I follow. That won’t make it any easier the next time the Knicks are up or down 30 with three minutes left and Thibs has all five starters in the game. My head will still explode when he sees Karl-Anthony Towns limping or OG Anunoby grabbing his ankle and plays them another 40 minutes that night.
The part of me that’s craved a Knick parade through the Canyon of Heroes since I was 12 years old thinks the coach who’ll lead them there is still unknown to us. The part of me that’s found joy and work and community watching this team for 35 winters, most of those of the Rochester/Buffalo variety, is grateful that I’m privileged enough today to criticize a team on pace to win 55 games, win 50+ for the second year in a row and is one well-placed Boston or Cleveland injury from having a shot at the Finals. It could probably be better. It could certainly be worse.
