តើ New York Knicks គួរតែដុត Tom Thibodeau ទេ?

The easiest thing for fans to do is to blame the head coach for when a team underperforms. That limelight becomes increasingly hotter when you step on to the court in New York and have some of the most passionate fans in the world grilling you on the daily.

Last year’s coach of the year was Tom Thibodeau. He is also the same person that has been put on the hot seat for the job that he has done this season. Let’s explore what he brings to the table, and the things he takes off of the table as a head coach.

Keep Him

Any valid analysis calls for the good and the bad to be dragged out into the light and there is plenty of good that comes with a Thibodeau led team.

One of the key reasons is that the defense was still the 11th ranked unit in the league, even though they played worse defensive personnel this season. Losing Reggie Bullock and being unable to play Nerlens Noel a large majority of the season impacted the effectiveness of the unit. The number one transgressor may have been the prized acquisition the team made during the offseason.

That prized acquisition comes in the name of Kemba Walker. Walker came into the season with so much promise, but ultimately failed for a variety of different reasons. Jonathan Macri នៃ Knicks Film School had a great stat about the point differential of the team with and without Walker:

And finally, my favorite quirky stat:

• Knicks net rating without Kemba Walker on the court this season: positive 2.4 in 3008 minutes, or 76 percent of the season.
• Knicks net rating with Kemba Walker on the court this season: negative 9.1 in 948 minutes.

This reminds me a lot of last year’s on/off numbers involving Derrick Rose (plus 10.6 in 937 minutes with Rose; minus 0.3 in 1301 minutes without Rose after his acquisition; minus 1.1 in 1200 minutes before Rose’s arrived).

The stat perfectly encapsulates the failure of the team to succeed with Walker. Extrapolating the data some could make a case that his performance was the biggest of detriment to the team and his garnering time on the court was an anchor the rest of the Knicks could not swim out of.

The defensive metrics do tend to back it up. The unit placed 19th in the NBA in defense until the All-Star break. Since coming back from the All-Star game in Cleveland the team has been the number one ranked defense in the NBA, a time period in which Walker failed to see a minute of action.

That is a feather in the cap of Thibs and exhibits his ability to coax the most out of his teams when he doesn’t have a complete turnstile at the point of attack. On top of that he deployed a more adaptable defensive scheme this season, occasionally blitzing Jericho Sims at ball handlers instead of playing his conventional drop style with his center.

The team developed young players and currently has a core that fans can be proud of. Immanuel Quickley, Jericho Sims, RJ Barrett, Obi Toppin, Mitchell Robinson, Quentin Grimes and Miles McBride have all taken steps in the right direction with Thibs at the helm. The story written about Barrett’s transformation in his second year included a tidbit that seemed to take aim at David Fizdale and his staff messing with his shooting mechanics. Kevin Knox came nowhere close to reaching his potential with the same staff developing him. These players may have always gone through this trajectory but it’s fair to question if the staff failed to maximize them. It’s fair to say that Thibs and his crew have done the opposite of that.

Fire Him

Part of the reason that the Kemba Walker experiment failed is because Thibodeau completely botched the playing of him. He didn’t talk to Walker about the explanation for why he took him out of the rotation entirely instead of simply using him in a more reduced role. Once he did bring him back he had a tendency to overuse him, putting him in a position where he was likely to fail by playing him for long stretches of times when he was slipping on defense.

Walker wasn’t the only player that underperformed for the Knicks. Julius Randle is the clear winner in that category and much has been made of whether some of that responsibility should fall on the shoulders of Thibodeau. Randle felt empowered to play in the exact same style he did last year, even though more firepower existed. He maintained that ball dominant style, even when his shot went cold. He retaliated against opponents and fans alike, even when it seemed as if he was on an island doing so. The តួលេខ Leon Rose pushed forward up in his press conference is all a cover for the things that fans across the area witnessed: a player that repeatedly made the team worse in every aspect.

Thibodeau didn’t seem to prioritize utilizing him in a different way or downsizing his role in games where he cost the team possible victories. That reluctance was felt in more than just his handling of Randle. Some of his most egregious mistakes came in his rigidness in playing the youth.

The Knicks had a -2 net rating before the All-Star break with a 25-34 record. After the All-Star break? That number jacked up to a +3.4 figure with a 12-11 record. One of the key reasons can be found in finally playing the young guys.

The poster child for that forced change of heart is Quickley. He didn’t start until the last game of the season (post All-Star game), but his minutes finally increased to nearly 28 minutes per game. The team continued to excel in his minutes, and he made plays that gave you glimpses of a potential starting point guard in the NBA.

The problem? The coach has given every indication that he won’t go to Quickley as the starting option, even if the best interest of the current and future New York Knicks goes hand and hand with the decision to start the 22-year-old.

Toppin falls into a similar camp. He showcased an ability to hit jumpers off the bounce, hit 3-pointers at a respectable clip and continue to dominate in transition with a bumped up minutes load. Once again, the issue lies in Toppin proving that over the last few weeks of the year puts the front office in a tough spot of trusting those numbers entirely. A bigger sample size may have proven enough to justify starting Toppin next year and moving Randle. Alas, Thibodeau’s desire to chase for an unreachable play-in game put the Knicks at a disadvantage this summer for his ហេតុផល that the younger players on the team kept them from winning. Why would his thinking change next year with a stable of both veterans and youngsters on the team?

The unimaginative offense is one of the killers with Thibodeau. He is reminiscent of a defensive coordinator taking hold of a team as a head coach and leaving the offense on autopilot. At the least, the front office should mandate an additional assistant come in to try to juice up that end of the court.