PG: Thibs B Gone

[JayTWill]

Nope they can’t be better. With every rotation “solution” a new problem is created so while you think you fixed one thing you do so by breaking something else. That’s because the roster is constructed in such a way that coaching won’t fix the issues.

Nope they don’t have a chance to contend. Thibs is doing his job which is to coach to win every game. That’s what he gets paid to do with each paycheck. He’s not the GM or trainer or doctor or all these other things you believes a coach is responsible for, he just coaches.

The roster will have to be fixed by the same guy who put the team together. At least roster changes are realistic. Expecting an NBA coach to teach these soon to be 30 year olds how to shoot, dribble and defend at this stage in their careers and fix all the problems with the team is unrealistic.

I have never thought any of the Knicks teams in the last 5-6 years had the talent to contend. Not the January 2024 Knicks, not the Decmeber 2024 Knicks. I can see the flaws in the roster the front office constructed with Thibs and things players could be better at individually but the idea that somehow Thibs has found the exact best solution possible to every problem is ridiculous.

As far as improving the team how are roster changes a simple solution? You can't call someone like Mikal a "mid" role-player and then magically turn him into a better player especially when you have almost no assets to attach to him. You can't just magically change players into better players especially when the guys you are trying to move are already in their primes.

What are they supposed to do now? Hope that the Bucks GM saw Brunson and KAT not take this team to another level together and think to himself that maybe he should exchange possibly a top 5 player in Giannis for KAT to try him with an ageing Lillard and a worse supporting cast? Hope that a team gives the Knicks a better player making $23M or less for Mikal just because? Break Mikal up into multiple cheaper pieces that aren't as good as him individually? Trade Brunson who probably has the highest trade value and hope another player fits better with the team?

Explain to me how they will make the roster significantly better with the way you talk about the players some of the vets, the young players that Thibs won't even let touch the court, the limited draft capital available to trade and the limited money to offer. Changing the coach is very easy. You don't have to worry about trade value or the salary cap.

What is your goal? What improvement are you talking about? If the roster isn’t good enough to win a chip then no coach is getting it to win one so what improvement are you even talking about? You just want to change the coach for the sake of making a change but the expectations of the team remain the same. I don’t see what improvements a coach will make that will realistically bring this roster closer to winning a title.

As far as what roster changes need to be made, that’s on the front office and Leon. The same way he was able to pull moves like getting Brunson, getting IHart, getting Donte, getting OG, getting Mikal, getting KAT, it’s up to him to figure that out. Did you see Hartenstein becoming who he became when we signed him? Donte? Did you expect us to get OG? KAT? He’s very capable of making big changes. Did he make it tougher on himself by capping us out and trading almost all of our draft assets? Yes he did, but he put us in that position and now it’s his job to fix it. I don’t have the solution just like you don’t have a coaching solution but your coaching change still leaves us with a roster that isn’t good enough and what I’m saying is the roster will have to be reconstructed whether you make the coaching change or not.

Just because I don't believe this team will win a championship doesn't mean this team can't be better. The way the team has been performing it feels like it is much closer to an average team than it is a championship team. Part of that is the roster. Part of that is the coaching but you are unwilling to question the coaching for some reason.

Brunson, iHart and DDV cost more than what the Knicks have to offer this year. OG was traded for young players with higher trade value than the Knicks current young players that are glued to the bench. KAT and Mikal are part of the flawed roster created this off-season that you place all the blame on the players for. Somehow you are critical of Mikal for being a "mid" role player and then use that as one of the front office's accomplishments when I asked you how to fix the roster.

I have wanted to move on from Thibs prior to this season. Kenny Atkinson was my choice last off-season. His journey reminded me of Kerr's journey into head coaching from the guys he learned under. Johnnie Bryant is a guy I would not mind the Knicks interviewing with his experience in player development to his time with the Knicks and learning under Quin Snyder, Thibs and Atkinson. What has Thibs done this year with this roster that makes him so indispensable in your eyes other than not being Fizdale or having a better record than some of the terrible records Knicks teams have had over the previous couple decades?

[Gravy]

This is also NO schedule loss

The 72 win Bulls team had schedule losses to Nuggets and expansion Raptors team, but in losses the Bulls showed fight, the Nugz and Rapz just had to play a PERFECT game to pull off the Ws

There's NO PERFECT GAME needed for the Hornets to beat us, they hardly even tried and they had a double digit lead in 1st QUARTER

We will be swept in the 1st round by a lower seed at this rate and maybe 1st time in NBA history Vegas would put us the higher seed as the underdogs in the 1st round

for me, i'm not arguing for or against thibs. i'm arguing that no coach can fix the problems this roster has. the constant harping on thibs is a distraction from the real issues.

Like "no coach could fix the Cavs"?? The Cavs fans were discussing whether they should trade Garland, DMitch, or Allen, and rebuild around Mobley... and look where they are

JJ Redick transformed the horrible Lakers even before the Luka trade

What about those who bring up the argument of fans wanting Mike Woodson fired when he was coaching them and the Knicks becoming a worse team right after he was replaced?

Not only did they get worse after they fired Woodson, they did not make the playoffs again until Thibs brought Woodson back. He must have loved that

[Capn'O]

We replaced Woody with Derek Fisher. We almost had Kerr and if Phil wasn't insistent on puppeteering his coaches we probably would have.

If we replace Thibs we'd better do our homework. You could end up with the next Kerr or the next Adrian Griffin.

[Kidknick!]

Barring a Finals run, Thibs is done. He may be elevated to a FO job, but he's not coaching here next season.

[Capn'O]

Barring a Finals run, Thibs is done. He may be elevated to a FO job, but he's not coaching here next season.

That's what I'm seeing.

[NiceLikeChrist]

for me, i'm not arguing for or against thibs. i'm arguing that no coach can fix the problems this roster has. the constant harping on thibs is a distraction from the real issues.

I just don’t think this is true. There’s no way you can look at our offense alone and say you don’t think a coach with a more wrinkled brain ready for the 21st century wouldn’t construct something better.

If people want to doom and gloom about the defense being irredeemable then fine, although I disagree with that as well.

Other teams play better defense with less talent.

[spree2kawhi]

Barring a Finals run, Thibs is done. He may be elevated to a FO job, but he's not coaching here next season.

That's what I'm seeing.

One can only hope.

[god shammgod]

for me, i'm not arguing for or against thibs. i'm arguing that no coach can fix the problems this roster has. the constant harping on thibs is a distraction from the real issues.

I just don’t think this is true. There’s no way you can look at our offense alone and say you don’t think a coach with a more wrinkled brain ready for the 21st century wouldn’t construct something better.

If people want to doom and gloom about the defense being irredeemable then fine, although I disagree with that as well.

Other teams play better defense with less talent.

the knicks currently have the 5th best offense in the league. the 4 teams ahead are the cavs, the celtics, okc and the nuggets. pre-allstar we had the 2nd best. so yes, i can look and say it's unlikely we can do much better there. because there's not much better to be.

[NoDopeOnSundays]

for me, i'm not arguing for or against thibs. i'm arguing that no coach can fix the problems this roster has. the constant harping on thibs is a distraction from the real issues.

I just don’t think this is true. There’s no way you can look at our offense alone and say you don’t think a coach with a more wrinkled brain ready for the 21st century wouldn’t construct something better.

If people want to doom and gloom about the defense being irredeemable then fine, although I disagree with that as well.

Other teams play better defense with less talent.

the knicks currently have the 5th best offense in the league. the 4 teams ahead are the cavs, the celtics, okc and the nuggets. pre-allstar we had the 2nd best. so yes, i can look and say it's unlikely we can do much better there. because there's not much better to be.

From New Year's to the Brunson injury we had the 14th ranked offense, that's a 30 game stretch. The offense could be better, it's been spiraling for months which again is on coaching.

[MrDollarBills]

MSG mouthpiece

Read on Twitter

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Something is wrong in the locker room. They literally went out and signed a 50 year old guy who hasn't played in two years for his locker room presence. We need scoring off the bench and they had to sign a chaperone who will never play?

The pressure must be building. Players critical of the coach in public. Players screaming at the coach on the court. Players rumbling about being tired for months. The bench looks lost. This is all on the HC. I think there's something brewing behind the scenes. The louder the press gets, the sooner we will find out.

For Hahn to be speaking on this? Feels like the FO is having the same issues the intelligent part of the fan base does. Hmm,

This team has all of the signs of a group that is imploding quickly and everything falls back to Tom's mismanagement of this roster.

Cracks have been showing throughout the season, but it's no coincidence that when Brunson went down things just started to quickly fall apart. He was doing a lot of heavy lifting for Tom and now without him, everything is being exposed.

I know some folks are trolling, but seriously there is something wrong with a coach who would play an 8 man rotation on the tail end of a B2B. Yeah the bench is flawed but you work with who you have and figure out ways to put them in a position to succeed. No one thinks that Kolek is some savior, or that Dadiet is remotely ready for the big time, but the team literally needs another facilitator and big wing to at least get a few minutes to spell guys or make up for at least a little of ballhandling that was lost when JB went down.

The front office is calling him. He did a great job but this team needs a coach with modern sensibilities to take it to the next step. I doubt Leon and company are looking at this and thinking that Tom is putting these guys in a position to succeed.

[KnixinSix]

for me, i'm not arguing for or against thibs. i'm arguing that no coach can fix the problems this roster has. the constant harping on thibs is a distraction from the real issues.

I just don’t think this is true. There’s no way you can look at our offense alone and say you don’t think a coach with a more wrinkled brain ready for the 21st century wouldn’t construct something better.

If people want to doom and gloom about the defense being irredeemable then fine, although I disagree with that as well.

Other teams play better defense with less talent.

+100.

Thibs feels like he has run his course here.

Johnnie Bryant also feels like a move to could pay off bigtime. New coaches with modern thinking come in to this league all the time and seem pretty successful. And how much of that drastic improvement in Cleveland is Atkinson or Bryant? That was for the most part with the same personell as the year before.

I feel like if we get the right coach here (maybe its Bryant) we could see a Cav like improvement from this year to the next. Bryant has a ton of connections to this organization.

Bryant probably gets an HC job NEXT year. If Rose waits to make this move out of loyalty that will likely be a big mistake.

[god shammgod]

I just don’t think this is true. There’s no way you can look at our offense alone and say you don’t think a coach with a more wrinkled brain ready for the 21st century wouldn’t construct something better.

If people want to doom and gloom about the defense being irredeemable then fine, although I disagree with that as well.

Other teams play better defense with less talent.

the knicks currently have the 5th best offense in the league. the 4 teams ahead are the cavs, the celtics, okc and the nuggets. pre-allstar we had the 2nd best. so yes, i can look and say it's unlikely we can do much better there. because there's not much better to be.

From New Year's to the Brunson injury we had the 14th ranked offense, that's a 30 game stretch. The offense could be better, it's been spiraling for months which again is on coaching.

Towns was playing hurt and Josh forgot how to shoot again.

Again, if you want to say that the minutes wore them down that’s fine. That’s a legit complaint. But the offense Thibs ran had them 2nd in the league for half the season. How bad could it be ?

[KnixinSix]

...

[KnixinSix]

MSG mouthpiece

Read on Twitter

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Something is wrong in the locker room. They literally went out and signed a 50 year old guy who hasn't played in two years for his locker room presence. We need scoring off the bench and they had to sign a chaperone who will never play?

The pressure must be building. Players critical of the coach in public. Players screaming at the coach on the court. Players rumbling about being tired for months. The bench looks lost. This is all on the HC. I think there's something brewing behind the scenes. The louder the press gets, the sooner we will find out.

For Hahn to be speaking on this? Feels like the FO is having the same issues the intelligent part of the fan base does. Hmm,

This team has all of the signs of a group that is imploding quickly and everything falls back to Tom's mismanagement of this roster.

Cracks have been showing throughout the season, but it's no coincidence that when Brunson went down things just started to quickly fall apart. He was doing a lot of heavy lifting for Tom and now without him, everything is being exposed.

I know some folks are trolling, but seriously there is something wrong with a coach who would play an 8 man rotation on the tail end of a B2B. Yeah the bench is flawed but you work with who you have and figure out ways to put them in a position to succeed. No one thinks that Kolek is some savior, or that Dadiet is remotely ready for the big time, but the team literally needs another facilitator and big wing to at least get a few minutes to spell guys or make up for at least a little of ballhandling that was lost when JB went down.

The front office is calling him. He did a great job but this team needs a coach with modern sensibilities to take it to the next step. I doubt Leon and company are looking at this and thinking that Tom is putting these guys in a position to succeed.

When company men begin chirping its usually not a good sign.

[KnixinSix]

the knicks currently have the 5th best offense in the league. the 4 teams ahead are the cavs, the celtics, okc and the nuggets. pre-allstar we had the 2nd best. so yes, i can look and say it's unlikely we can do much better there. because there's not much better to be.

From New Year's to the Brunson injury we had the 14th ranked offense, that's a 30 game stretch. The offense could be better, it's been spiraling for months which again is on coaching.

Towns was playing hurt and Josh forgot how to shoot again.

Again, if you want to say that the minutes wore them down that’s fine. That’s a legit complaint. But the offense Thibs ran had them 2nd in the league for half the season. How bad could it be ?

The intensity they are being asked to play at combined with heavy minutes is not a good combination. They look nothing like the team that had fresh legs and was hitting 3s all over the place early on. Thats on Thibs because he has been blind to it.

I really hope Rose sees this because it doesn't seem like he has intervened.

On the other hand, trying to be positive....

Is this a Tom ( Coughlin) situation? Tom after years on the very precipice of being fired, the light turned on last minute and made changes to his approach. That happened in 2007. The year NYG turned it around and won the Superbowl.

Now Im not saying this happens here but this Tom still has a chance to do something before its too late.

Will it happen? Probably not but one can have a glimmer of hope it does I guess.

[FrozenEnvelope]

Hate to tell you this but if Thibs wins another 50 games this season, wins another playoff series and takes the Celtics to 6 or even 5 games (depending if they are competitive or not), he's 110% coming back.

[NoDopeOnSundays]

the knicks currently have the 5th best offense in the league. the 4 teams ahead are the cavs, the celtics, okc and the nuggets. pre-allstar we had the 2nd best. so yes, i can look and say it's unlikely we can do much better there. because there's not much better to be.

From New Year's to the Brunson injury we had the 14th ranked offense, that's a 30 game stretch. The offense could be better, it's been spiraling for months which again is on coaching.

Towns was playing hurt and Josh forgot how to shoot again.

Again, if you want to say that the minutes wore them down that’s fine. That’s a legit complaint. But the offense Thibs ran had them 2nd in the league for half the season. How bad could it be ?

The offense fell off a cliff once more teams started defending us with a big on Hart and a wing on KAT, when that happens he has almost no counter and we become post heavy. The signs were there early in the season when we played teams that could do that, we'd get bogged down trying to post Mikal / KAT and just isoing with Brunson. Even when Josh was hitting shots it was an issue because we don't take volume threes. The offense was purely talent based, we have been underperforming offensively for months now, which is why we went from 2 to 5 and will continue sliding.


At a certain point it's just math, we have a team that should be taking high volume threes but doesn't, that bites us in the ass against good teams because we're trading 2s vs 3s. You can say that's Josh, but the Spurs have a worse shooter (Sochan) on their team and they manage to take a lot of threes with him on or off the court. That is on the coach completely. You can see his philosophy in KATs shooting attempt rates, with Thibs, without and with him again. The 3 pt attempt rate was low with Thibs, jumps without him and plummets again with him.

There's so many things we could do that we never do, like why bother playing Precious against small teams. Why would any sane coach in 2025 have a lineup where Hart, Precious and Mitch are on the floor together.

[Jalen Bluntson]

Hate to tell you this but if Thibs wins another 50 games this season, wins another playoff series and takes the Celtics to 6 or even 5 games (depending if they are competitive or not), he's 110% coming back.

Why would you hate to tell us this? You are his loyal defender. You want this to happen. Which is why we are glad you don't run the team.

[FrozenEnvelope]

Hate to tell you this but if Thibs wins another 50 games this season, wins another playoff series and takes the Celtics to 6 or even 5 games (depending if they are competitive or not), he's 110% coming back.

Why would you hate to tell us this? You are his loyal defender. You want this to happen. Which is why we are glad you don't run the team.

I honestly would love most of you and all Knicks fans to be happy cause all the negativity and whining ruins the experience of this board imo. But back to back 50 wins and back to back 1st round playoff series wins along with giving the Celtics a good hard fought series is good enough for me with this team this season. I know some of you were expecting to be at the level of Boston, OKC and Cleveland this season and anything less was unacceptable.

[HEZI]

I have never thought any of the Knicks teams in the last 5-6 years had the talent to contend. Not the January 2024 Knicks, not the Decmeber 2024 Knicks. I can see the flaws in the roster the front office constructed with Thibs and things players could be better at individually but the idea that somehow Thibs has found the exact best solution possible to every problem is ridiculous.

As far as improving the team how are roster changes a simple solution? You can't call someone like Mikal a "mid" role-player and then magically turn him into a better player especially when you have almost no assets to attach to him. You can't just magically change players into better players especially when the guys you are trying to move are already in their primes.

What are they supposed to do now? Hope that the Bucks GM saw Brunson and KAT not take this team to another level together and think to himself that maybe he should exchange possibly a top 5 player in Giannis for KAT to try him with an ageing Lillard and a worse supporting cast? Hope that a team gives the Knicks a better player making $23M or less for Mikal just because? Break Mikal up into multiple cheaper pieces that aren't as good as him individually? Trade Brunson who probably has the highest trade value and hope another player fits better with the team?

Explain to me how they will make the roster significantly better with the way you talk about the players some of the vets, the young players that Thibs won't even let touch the court, the limited draft capital available to trade and the limited money to offer. Changing the coach is very easy. You don't have to worry about trade value or the salary cap.

What is your goal? What improvement are you talking about? If the roster isn’t good enough to win a chip then no coach is getting it to win one so what improvement are you even talking about? You just want to change the coach for the sake of making a change but the expectations of the team remain the same. I don’t see what improvements a coach will make that will realistically bring this roster closer to winning a title.

As far as what roster changes need to be made, that’s on the front office and Leon. The same way he was able to pull moves like getting Brunson, getting IHart, getting Donte, getting OG, getting Mikal, getting KAT, it’s up to him to figure that out. Did you see Hartenstein becoming who he became when we signed him? Donte? Did you expect us to get OG? KAT? He’s very capable of making big changes. Did he make it tougher on himself by capping us out and trading almost all of our draft assets? Yes he did, but he put us in that position and now it’s his job to fix it. I don’t have the solution just like you don’t have a coaching solution but your coaching change still leaves us with a roster that isn’t good enough and what I’m saying is the roster will have to be reconstructed whether you make the coaching change or not.

Just because I don't believe this team will win a championship doesn't mean this team can't be better. The way the team has been performing it feels like it is much closer to an average team than it is a championship team. Part of that is the roster. Part of that is the coaching but you are unwilling to question the coaching for some reason.

Brunson, iHart and DDV cost more than what the Knicks have to offer this year. OG was traded for young players with higher trade value than the Knicks current young players that are glued to the bench. KAT and Mikal are part of the flawed roster created this off-season that you place all the blame on the players for. Somehow you are critical of Mikal for being a "mid" role player and then use that as one of the front office's accomplishments when I asked you how to fix the roster.

I have wanted to move on from Thibs prior to this season. Kenny Atkinson was my choice last off-season. His journey reminded me of Kerr's journey into head coaching from the guys he learned under. Johnnie Bryant is a guy I would not mind the Knicks interviewing with his experience in player development to his time with the Knicks and learning under Quin Snyder, Thibs and Atkinson. What has Thibs done this year with this roster that makes him so indispensable in your eyes other than not being Fizdale or having a better record than some of the terrible records Knicks teams have had over the previous couple decades?

How has the team been performing? They are 3rd in the East and have been top 5 or so in the league for a while. Have had some recent struggles because Brunson is injured and team lacks depth anyway. Atkinson just lost 4 straight with his team healthy and had his team playing zone while the Suns just shot open 3 after open 3 last night. He’s overrated and needs high end talent to win. He walked into the ideal situation where the team was already good, finally got healthy and added more depth. They were going to improve with or without him. He’s not making the Knicks better. He’s not making KAT a better defender, he’s not giving Mikal handles and fixing his broken jump shot, he’s not fixing the weaknesses of this roster. So how are you making the team better again?