Tom Thibodeau: Youth-developing teacher?
Once maligned for his ability to play and develop young players, has Tom Thibodeau actually turned it into a strength?
I arrive late for breakfast, but it doesn’t matter. All workshops feel the same.
I scan the room for a flimsy, plastic tablecloth and dash toward it to peruse picked-over pastries. No chocolate croissants. No blueberry muffins. Just coffee, then. I head to my seat and hope the lunch spread will be more rewarding.
This is the first time I notice anything about the facilitator. His laptop is a collage of Coen Brothers stickers. There are bowling pins, a Dapper Dan can, and a Fargo poster. There’s even a sticker that’s just a mosquito. This dude has deep cuts.
He hushes the low rumble of stranger chit-chat and begins with a question.
“Who do you think is the best teacher ever portrayed on film? Turn and discuss it with the people near you.”
Now this workshop feels different. A movie question from a teacher who is clearly a movie nerd. Phenomenal!
The people around me share the answers I expected to hear — the tug-at-your-heartstrings answers that elevate the teaching profession to saint-like status. Someone says Jaime Escalante from Stand and Deliver. Another person says LouAnne Johnson from Dangerous Minds. A woman who looks reasonably close to my age says Dumbledore. (There’s always a Harry Potter fanatic at teacher workshops.)
They’re all wrong.
When it’s my turn I say, “Dewey Finn… you know… Jack Black’s character from School of Rock.” They chuckle. They don’t know me, so they have no idea if I’m being serious. I fix that.
“I’m not kidding. It’s the most realistic representation of a successful teacher that I know of.”
“How can you say that?” asks the woman whose answer was a 150-year-old wizard.
“Well for starters, he’s great because he’s true to himself and his passions. He was failing miserably when he was doing his impression of a teacher. He started to connect with them over rock music because that’s who he was.
“Next, he met his students where they were. The project was ‘Rock Band,’ but think about all the kids who had important roles that weren’t playing in the band. He made space for the strong girl to be the band manager. He made space for a kid to design fashion. He made space for a kid to build the light show.
“Finally, I’d say he was great because the learning mattered. The kids didn’t just learn about rock music in a vacuum. They wrote and performed their own rock song to an actual audience that included their parents. People forget the movie doesn’t end there. They lost the battle of the bands, but that didn’t matter. The kids kept studying with him after school. They fell in love with their learning and kept doing it because they felt the impact it had.”
The facilitator makes his way over to my group at some point during my rant. He smirks. “That’s my answer, too.”
I really like Tom Thibodeau. It’s only recently started to dawn on me that the main reason I like him is all the arguments I made for Dewey Finn that morning are also true about Thibodeau as a coach.
Tom Thibodeau is true to himself, but what does that mean exactly? Who is Tom Thibodeau?
Eric Musselman, the head basketball coach at The University of Arkansas, told me that Thibodeau “knows the game inside and out. His attention to detail is second to none. He is a teacher with discipline who knows counterattacks on both sides of the ball. One of the best X and O coaches in the NBA over the last 20 years.”
Thibodeau will not find success trying to be an analytics mastermind or a zen guru. Thibodeau is finding success with the Knicks by being exactly who he is: a gravely-voiced workaholic who loves basketball.
The Knicks are playing in their coach’s image. They compete aggressively for 48 minutes every time they step out on the court (most of the time — after a lapse earlier in the season, they’re getting back there lately). Then they stay after and practice some more.
This will frustrate segments of the fanbase at times. Some folks did not understand why the starters were still playing deep into the fourth quarter of a preseason game against a hobbled Pistons team.
Fans may not always agree with it, but it comes with the territory. The Thibsitory, if you will. Someone stepping in and telling him not to do things his way is asking for him to fail. (See: every head coach of the Phil Jackson era.)
It’s also unmistakable now when guys take even one possession off, because thanks to what Thibs instilled in this team last season, our eyes have been trained to see maximum effort from them.
The great thing about finding success being yourself is that you continue to drop your guard, which just begets more success. And while no one would confuse Thibodeau for the Snuggle Fabric Softener Bear, he absolutely is showing more of his softer side.
The man laughs now! He makes jokes! Like… publicly.
“I’m just a laid-back dude,” he told Knicks media with a deadpan delivery, followed by a wry smile and then straight-up chuckle. He was pleased with himself on that one. He just looks happy to be here, and his players are responding to that.
At the same time, Thibodeau also knows when to adjust his approach to maximize the personnel on his roster.
Per Basketball-Reference, Thibodeau has never had a team he coached for a full season finish higher than 23rd in the league in pace. Last year’s Knicks were dead last. That slow pace was what the team needed last year, but it also hampers the strengths of a few players.
No player is a better example of needing the open floor that transition opportunities provide than Obi Toppin. Last year, Toppin averaged 1.31 points per possession in transition according to the NBA’s data by play type, and it accounted for approximately 15% of his offense. Not only is Toppin even more efficient this year (1.5 points per possession, good for 19th in the entire league), but he’s also increased his attempts. Transition opportunities now make up approximately 22% of his offensive attempts.
Let me cut you off before you say to yourself, “Doesn’t everyone just average more PPP in transition given that those opportunities often result in easy shots?” Nope. RJ Barrett only averages 1.04. Julius Randle only averages 0.94.
Scoring in transition is a clear weapon for members of the rotation, but the Knicks only attempted 9.6 shots in transition per game last year — yet again, last in the league. Thibodeau can’t put a guitar in the computer kid’s hands and expect the band to sound good. He has to adjust.
And he seemingly has.
The Knicks were 21st in the league in pace during the preseason. It has settled out to 22nd league-wide during the regular season. It is not a seismic shift, but it would be above average for a Thibodeau-coached team. The number of transition shot attempts per game has nearly doubled.
The faster pace has unlocked another level to Toppin’s game. In the first preseason game against the Pacers, Toppin’s first touch of his sophomore campaign was a rebound off a missed free throw. He collected the ball and beelined toward the rim like I bolt to a free breakfast table before a beautiful left-hand finish over Domantas Sabonis. He’s continued that trend throughout the regular season thus far.
That opportunity only exists in the Knicks offense right now because Thibodeau is meeting his players where they are and putting them in positions that will make them successful.
Still, the only reason players continue to put their faith in Thibodeau is he demonstrated that what they do matters beyond the four walls of the Tarrytown practice facility. For most of the Knicks’ roster, Thibodeau is either the first or the only coach to lead them to the playoffs in their professional career.
Much like Dewey Finn showed a bunch of private school kids that their musical ability could be rewarding in a brand new way, Thibodeau has shown the Knicks that doing all the little things can result in a new level of success.
I cannot believe I’m saying this, but Tom Thibodeau reminds me of a Jack Black character. And that’s a really, really good thing.
