“In Leon Rose we trust,” said diehard city hoops fans everywhere. Well, that is until New York Knicks president Leon Rose no longer has Tom Thibodeau making his players look better than they actually are.
Now that the Knickerbockers’ head-coaching post is collaborating with the front office and players, the trust that once labeled the Big Apple’s hoops gospel as “Leon Rose is the new basketball Jesus” has seemingly vanished. An 11-game stretch featuring nine losses will sort of zap such staunch views.
Thibodeau’s coaching fooled everybody
Simply put, here’s what happened: Tom Thibodeau did such a great job as New York Knicks head coach that everybody got ahead of their skis. This includes the Knicks organization, the media, and fans.
A significant portion of the basketball-loving world believed New York needed to move on from Thibs, if only to adopt a more modern feel.
Whether it boiled down to his stubborn, shorter-rotation looks, the team’s slower pace, or the lack of three-point volume, onlookers believed Thibs had taken the Knicks as far as they could go under him. In other words, the narrative that “Thibs isn’t a championship coach, only a program builder,” ran rampant.
Why that assumption ran wild remains a question. The same narrative followed Rick Carlisle for years, over a decade, before he finally broke through with the 2011 Dallas Mavericks. For those old enough to remember, the Detroit Pistons replaced him with Larry Brown, and the result was an NBA championship in 2004.
Therefore, the “not a championship coach” label followed Carlisle until 2011.
A great coach is a great coach, and context isn’t just helpful when analyzing coaching; it’s essential. Thibodeau taking the 2020-21 Knicks to the playoffs represents arguably the greatest coaching job in franchise history.
If fans believe then-Julius Randle (who was still viewed as a middler), RJ Barrett, Alec Burks, Elfrid Payton, Frank Ntilikina, Reggie Bullock, Taj Gibson, Nerlens Noel, old-man Derrick Rose, sophomore RJ Barrett, and rookie Immanuel Quickley comprised a roster deserving of a playoff spot, straitjackets and white-padded rooms are immediately required.
To grasp that Thibs overachieved with the 2020-21 team and simultaneously not even consider the possibility that he did the same in 2024-25 is an all-time stubborn thought.
Yet, despite falling just two games shy of an NBA Finals trip a year ago — one that could have easily happened had OG Anunoby and/or Karl-Anthony Towns made a clutch free throw — fans and so-called media pundits firmly believed the head coach was not maximizing this ultra-talented roster.
They wanted Tom Thibodeau gone. After all, the 2024-25 Knicks employed exciting talent on the roster, yet played like a 1990s squad as much as possible. The outdated Thibs had to go.
So he went. James Dolan pulled the trigger on Thibs’s Knicks tenure, and a healthy chunk of the fanbase celebrated. “Finally, the offensively exciting New York Knicks have been freed of those repressive shackles,” they said.
The roster is outdated; it was never the coaching
Unfortunately, once this season’s sample size hit a healthy number (43 games), the basketball gods revealed the truth. It wasn’t Tom Thibodeau’s outdated coaching that was holding this squad back, not even a little.
In fact, Thibs’s coaching masked just how ill-conceived this roster was from the start.
It’s the roster that’s outdated.
It’s outdated because it’s incredibly slow and short, both in height and overall length. The Indiana Pacers athletically running them out of the gym in the Eastern Conference Finals should have been everybody’s first hint.
The Knicks are tied as the fourth-shortest team in the NBA. Of course, that itself isn’t even close to a deathblow, but it’s brutally obvious that their kryptonite is exposed when facing more athletic and longer teams.
Thibs coached with this understanding in mind.
The hoops folks who are sick of seeing the Tom Thibodeau stuff in the media and on social media must first grasp the reality of the situation. Believing the Knicks still made the right call in firing Thibodeau misses the point entirely. The reason is simple: This Knicks roster has near-impossible flexibility.
Rose has already used most of his bullets. The deal that sent five first-rounders for Mikal Bridges was one of the final salvos towards building this thing. The trade that brought Karl-Anthony Towns here represented the polishing-off transaction.
How does the argument that any other coach gives this specific roster a better chance to win a championship this season, even begin? How, when roster flexibility is done, and they stunned the world by beating a non-injured Boston Celtics team in the playoffs, when not one person gave them a shot? How, when they didn’t even have their defensive stalwart for nearly the entire regular season a year ago? How, when each season has seen incremental improvement?
The argument to fire Thibs was based solely on modern NBA realities. This isn’t up for debate, really; the anti-Thibs folks cited a lack of bench usage, sluggish pace, and ball movement (too much iso ball), and everything else so that the Knicks could “fit in” better with the rest of today’s NBA — which includes the front office and roster being included more.
A “collaboration” is how many have described it, specifically Dolan, when he appeared on WFAN a few weeks ago.
So, in comes Mike Brown, the nice guy who’s down with a collab. He implements a faster-paced system that encourages more three-point usage. At this point, everybody knows the numbers…
New York’s three-point attempts have jumped from 27th (34.1) in the NBA last year to 8th (39.8). The percentage is even higher, as the Knicks currently rank 3rd (37.5%) compared to their 8th-ranked mark (36.9%) last season.
Yet, the positive that comes from the three-point increase pales in comparison to the detrimental negatives the volume has on the rest of the squad’s production.
Slow and short
Coaching, beyond the psychology of it all, is mainly about exchanging currency. For every positive, a negative rears its ugly head. For every negative, a positive is just waiting to be plucked from around the corner.
Increasing the three-point-shooting volume on this team is so blatantly ridiculous that it’s tough to even know where to begin.
Missed threes mean more transition basketball will occur. More threes lead to long rebounds, which means transition ball will commence.
If more transition basketball occurs, your team better have the resources to handle it. This Knicks team is one of the worst in the league in that area, as their defensive rating, especially during this recent stretch, hasn’t been this horrendous in years.
Although it took over half a season, MSG Networks’ Wally Szczerbiak finally touched on the great sin of 2025-26 New York Knicks basketball. After the Knicks’ most recent bludgeoning, Szczerbiak warned the Knicks that they better have “fresh legs” if they want to chuck up as many threes as they do, and he also called them a “veteran, half-court team.”
Nothing could be truer.
Just glance at the roster for a moment. Which Knicks players can sufficiently be labeled as transition monsters? Which guys are lightning-fast on the open floor?
Jalen Brunson certainly doesn’t fall into this category. While the captain’s clutch gene and scoring prowess are undeniable, he’s a shorter point guard who doesn’t really facilitate. With the ball, he’s more crafty than he is fast.
Karl-Anthony Towns is as slow-footed as they come in today’s game. Fans and media pundits often confuse Towns for a modern big man because he’s a tremendous outside shooter.
While yes, his skill set spaces the floor in an advantageous way offensively, his lack of quickness en route to that spacing creates an unrecognized hurdle for offensive strategists.
We all know Mitchell Robinson is an offensive rebounding demon and invaluable on the defensive end of the floor. Yet, standing 7-foot-0, he also falls in the slow-footed category — along with nearly every 7-footer.
How exactly could a Knicks’ lineup featuring Brunson, Towns, and Robinson play any style that even remotely resembles the faster-paced modern brand of ball? It’s impossible.
Without Robinson on the floor, KAT plays the 5, which creates its own set of brutal circumstances. Towns, coupled with Brunson, places the coaching staff in a position where the team’s two best players must be substituted out of the game on every crunchtime defensive possession.
If Rose were to miraculously trade Brunson for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, then ok, let’s go. Let’s talk about pace, ball movement, and getting the transition game going on both ends.
Obviously, that’s not the real world.
Cannot fight the reality
When analyzing the average speed statistic, the Knicks roster paints a clear picture for any coach worth his salt. He knows what he has in the roster, and he conducts his business to best fit it.
The following is each player’s average speed metric so far this season:
- Karl-Anthony Towns: 3.99 (30th slowest in the NBA)
- Mitchell Robninson: 4.20
- OG Anunoby: 4.24
- Josh Hart: 4.32
- Jalen Brunson: 4.38
- Guerschon Yabusele: 4.40
- Miles McBride: 4.57
- Jordan Clarkson: 4.59
- Tyler Kolek: 4.63
- Mikal Bridges: 4.65
- Landry Shamet: 4.84 (17th fastest in the NBA)
The NBA average is 4.40, yet a bulk of the Knicks’ most-played players fall well below that mark. Of the primetime rotation pieces, only Duece McBride and Mikal Bridges come out on the faster side.
Why in the world would that be the case, especially when Brown’s intentions were all about increasing the team’s pace, ball movement, and action?
It’s simple, really: That’s not who they are as players.
Not even OG Anunoby, Josh Hart, or Jalen Brunson place faster than the average. Honestly, do fans believe Anunoby is on the faster side of things? While he’s a great athlete, he’s a long-strider whose body isn’t exactly quick in short spaces. (The first time he avoids a charge while driving to the rack, will be the first time somebody can color me shocked.)
Hart can reach quality sprinting speed in transition; there’s little doubt about that. Former football player Deuce McBride is another piece who fits the mold of wanting the pace to increase and the transition game to roll forth.
Aside from those two, that’s pretty much it. It’s even tough to throw Mikal Bridges into that pile considering how timid he his when attacking the hole or chasing loose balls.
For fans, media members, and even Leon Rose’s front office, wishing for a basketball team to fit in with modern realities of today’s fast-paced NBA is only a wish. The wish could make sense, or it could result in a wholly nonsensical move when put into practice.
The irony of where the New York Knicks are now is that their former head coach actually understands the guts of the roster better than anyone else. He never cared if fans (or anybody else, for that matter) called his tactics outdated, because, as a hoops lifer, he knew the realities of his personnel and knew the best way to attack the opponent with it.
Increasing the pace and chucking more threes would bring a precipitation of pain over a large sample size that could not be overcome. At least that’s fully accurate as it relates to this specific New York Knicks roster.
Tom Thibodeau stuck to his guns because he realized what he had.
Mike Brown did precisely what the organization and its fans wanted — which is why the organization’s health feels so troubling.
Now, the very same folks who are sick of hearing the name of Thibs, and who still believe it was the right move to fire him, cling tightly to the belief that his ways are a thing of the past.
Yet, interestingly enough, his “outdated” ways yielded far better results with this particular New York Knicks roster.
Yes, ladies and gents, this was the point all along: It was Leon Rose’s roster that was outdated, never the coaching. Great coaching can only be crafted from an origin that takes the guts of the roster into firm account and as the only principle that matters.
Everything else is just a blitzkrieg of bullsh*t.
