Official Knicks Coaching Search Thread pt. 2 (update: poll added 6/18/25)

[BKlutch]

Why are so many on XTwitter wasting their time with the Finals when we have a coaching search underway?

[thebuzzardman]

Jenkins would be a disaster

Why? I like him based on vibes and post game press conferences etc - seems like an incredibly smart basketball mind.

Coaching is a lot more than that obviously - managing the players egos, motivating them, the systems ran on offense/defense - rotations, in game adjustments, etc etc

But from what little I know about him - I don't see why he would be a disaster.

Yes. Let's hire the rah rah guy from the Grizzlies. That worked out well in the past.

[BKlutch]

Yea definitely not a fan of Brown - wasn't he fired because he lost the locker room?

I'm no expert but he's always seemed like a coach that isn't great with the Xs and Os and is more of a motivator rah rah guy - which I don't think we need as much as a guy with a great mind and offensive system. I think Jenkins has that at least moreso than Brown.

My issue with Jenkins is that he also lost his locker room last season as I mentioned yesterday. But he seems to be a lil creative offensively and Memphis played solid d.

I can’t get behind Mike brown at all.

This is what concerns me about Jenkins. How did he lose the team like that and how much was Memphis' offense his system or their new coach? I'd bring him in and see what his ideas would be to unlock this offense.

Mike Brown is a retread...Princeton offensive minded guy. Wouldn't mind him being on a Johnnie Bryant led staff to offer guidance.

I've read an account that wasn't very specific but blamed the front office for bringing in assistants he didn't ask for, underming his authority a bit. I can understand that a personality like Ja Morant could be difficult under those circumstances. I don't have any first hand knowledge of their front office, but there was an insinuation that they were a bunch of bright young people with little experience who did some things that made it worse for the team. But I agree with you, he should be thoroughly interviewed and WWW should be able to dig up the story on what actually happened.

[thebuzzardman]

Retread Brown vs Poser Jenkins.

Great choices. Should have stuck with the outdated orc and watched OG's knees explode.

[thebuzzardman]

HerSports85 wrote:
I'm almost on the Jenkins bandwagon

Watch on YouTube

This was one of my biggest issues with Thibs on offense. No one moved and just watched whoever had the ball.

Brunson and OG will feast with this kind of motion.

ok, so the video says it was introduced last october. was it Jenkins that broke it out?

I thought those new euro assistants were hired this season, so it couldn't have been them.

someone's timeline is funky here.

It's the Finnish coaches system. Not Jenkins. Who was fired.

F*ck hiring White Fizdale.

[BKlutch]

Jenkins would be a disaster

Why? I like him based on vibes and post game press conferences etc - seems like an incredibly smart basketball mind.

Coaching is a lot more than that obviously - managing the players egos, motivating them, the systems ran on offense/defense - rotations, in game adjustments, etc etc

But from what little I know about him - I don't see why he would be a disaster.

Yes. Let's hire the rah rah guy from the Grizzlies. That worked out well in the past.

Shhhh... or you'll reveal the REAL TRUTH -- there is actually no coach who is good for us.

[KnixinSix]

Watch on YouTube

This is the one you want to watch......I still believe Kidd is our prime target and are pushing behind the scenes for it.

[stuporman]

Are we to the 'leak as many terrible names as possible so when we hire our middling choice it doesn't seem as bad' part of the process yet?

[MrDollarBills]

Why is Malone not in the mix, do we know?

This is baseless speculation but maybe what happened in Denver with both Malone and the GM getting booted right before the playoffs was a lot nastier than we know and people around the league may be wary.

I mean, if not for that I don't see why he's not being offered an interview. Couldn't hurt especially when he won a title with poor defenders at the one and 5.

Not my choice tho.

Check this article. Malone sounds really toxic. I would pass.
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/44622610/why-denver-nuggets-fired-michael-malone-calvin-booth-just-days-left-nba-season

He sounds like a horrible communicator based on this article.

You have to know how to talk to people, and everyone is different. All that yelling and hard assery doesn't work with everyone.

[MrDollarBills]

Are we to the 'leak as many terrible names as possible so when we hire our middling choice it doesn't seem as bad' part of the process?

It's all a smokescreen to prepare the fanbase for Johnnie Bryant

[stuporman]

Jenkins would be my top HC choice with coaching experience
Bryant would be my top HC choice as a top lead assistant
Spo would be my top HC choice as a trying to steal a teams HC
Hurley would be my top HC choice as a college coach

any of these would be ideal in my eyes.

But the real question is what would be your top pick as an AI coach...because AI is coming for all our jobs so it might as well be the Knicks who have one first. This way fans can complain about the priority coding or the data sets or something. That would liven up this place don't ya think?

[mpharris36]

Jenkins would be my top HC choice with coaching experience
Bryant would be my top HC choice as a top lead assistant
Spo would be my top HC choice as a trying to steal a teams HC
Hurley would be my top HC choice as a college coach

any of these would be ideal in my eyes.

But the real question is what would be your top pick as an AI coach...because AI is coming for all our jobs so it might as well be the Knicks who have one first. This way fans can complain about the priority coding or the data sets or something. That would liven up this place don't ya think?

Just create a AI version of Sham and he would be my choice.

[MrDollarBills]

My issue with Jenkins is that he also lost his locker room last season as I mentioned yesterday. But he seems to be a lil creative offensively and Memphis played solid d.

I can’t get behind Mike brown at all.

This is what concerns me about Jenkins. How did he lose the team like that and how much was Memphis' offense his system or their new coach? I'd bring him in and see what his ideas would be to unlock this offense.

Mike Brown is a retread...Princeton offensive minded guy. Wouldn't mind him being on a Johnnie Bryant led staff to offer guidance.

I've read an account that wasn't very specific but blamed the front office for bringing in assistants he didn't ask for, underming his authority a bit. I can understand that a personality like Ja Morant could be difficult under those circumstances. I don't have any first hand knowledge of their front office, but there was an insinuation that they were a bunch of bright young people with little experience who did some things that made it worse for the team. But I agree with you, he should be thoroughly interviewed and WWW should be able to dig up the story on what actually happened.

It doesn't hurt to bring him in to talk. I would need to do a deeper dive into his philosophy.

[HEZI]

At this point we know who the available candidates are. I think they are buying time to figure out what the roster will look like. We are still in the KD talks so if we make a trade like that I can see where Brown might become a stronger candidate(I’m not advocating for Brown) If the roster remains the same then a Jenkins might make more sense.

[Jalen Bluntson]

Are we to the 'leak as many terrible names as possible so when we hire our middling choice it doesn't seem as bad' part of the process?

It's all a smokescreen to prepare the fanbase for Johnnie Bryant

I think the target is Kidd and they are doing this smoke screen to avoid tampering charges. I don't know if Kidd is mutually interested but, it seems to make sense as to why he would be the target. If that falls apart they will start interviewing others who are available. It's the only thing that makes sense to me.

[MrDollarBills]

My issue with Jenkins is that he also lost his locker room last season as I mentioned yesterday. But he seems to be a lil creative offensively and Memphis played solid d.

I can’t get behind Mike brown at all.

This is what concerns me about Jenkins. How did he lose the team like that and how much was Memphis' offense his system or their new coach? I'd bring him in and see what his ideas would be to unlock this offense.

Mike Brown is a retread...Princeton offensive minded guy. Wouldn't mind him being on a Johnnie Bryant led staff to offer guidance.

From my understanding is that Jenkins was done dirty by Memphis and my theory is that his assistances running the offense is what led to him losing the locker room.

Offensively, the Grizzlies had become something of a science experiment this season, offering glimpses at how several radical offensive concepts from Europe, and spacing principles found in hockey and soccer, would work in the NBA, but also how difficult it is to get full buy-in from players to implement them

There were two architects and one supervisor -- Jenkins -- charged with blending the competing visions. One was Tuomas Iisalo, a Finnish coach who'd had a meteoric rise in Europe by implementing innovative offensive concepts around pick-and-roll schemes, pacing and offensive rebounding. Another was player development specialist Noah LaRoche, whom the Grizzlies had lured from a consulting role with the San Antonio Spurs and charged with teaching an offense that prioritized spacing and largely did away with pick-and-rolls and dribble handoffs.

Jenkins, the fifth-longest-tenured NBA coach, had never met either of the assistants before interviewing them, one source said.

Still, the Grizzlies paid a seven-figure buyout to Paris Basketball, which Iisalo (pronounced EE-za-lo) coached to a EuroCup championship last season. Memphis also gave Iisalo and LaRoche seven-figure salaries. That's especially lucrative for a second-row assistant such as LaRoche, but it's also extraordinarily unusual for a second-row assistant to have his fingerprints all over the revamping of a team's offensive system. In fact, Memphis hired LaRoche first (in May 2024) with the intention of building the staff of assistants around him, one source said. The club wouldn't bring in Iisalo until nearly two months later.

To make room for these new voices, Kleiman insisted Jenkins replace five of the assistant coaches who'd been with him throughout his time in Memphis: Brad Jones, Blake Ahearn, Scoonie Penn, Vitaly Potapenko and Sonia Raman.

Jenkins went along with the request, in an effort to be a good partner, said a league source, who added, "Taylor shouldn't have allowed that to happen."

The coach was so upset at the news he'd have to deliver to each of his longtime assistants, he invited each over to his house in Memphis for individual sessions.

The front office felt the new approach needed space to get off the ground, according to a source. So the club cut ties with virtually everyone associated with the team's ways of the past.

"It was a total shock because we'd already had our exit meetings and were preparing for the summer," one former assistant said. "We'd all gone away for a few weeks and came back to start work again. Taylor felt so bad about it. But apparently they decided to go in another direction."

"Going in another direction" has become cliché -- a nice way of glossing over a difficult situation and avoiding specific issues. But in this case that's exactly what it was.

"They were going all-in on these new concepts," another source close to the situation said.

The immediate, unintended effect was to signal to the rest of the league, and the Grizzlies' players, that Jenkins was on thin ice.

"Players aren't stupid," another source said. "They know where this is heading when you fire five assistants after the season."

And when the job is getting players to buy into new offensive concepts, already uncomfortable for most NBA players, being taught different schemes by two assistant coaches immediately undercut Jenkins' authority.

Ah man.

I'll be honest, if I was him and they made that request, I would have resigned. I'm not firing my staff

Hm. I would interview the guy. The Grizzlies were a pretty dynamic team before Ja started to cosplay as a South Memphis goon.

[stuporman]

Jenkins would be my top HC choice with coaching experience
Bryant would be my top HC choice as a top lead assistant
Spo would be my top HC choice as a trying to steal a teams HC
Hurley would be my top HC choice as a college coach

any of these would be ideal in my eyes.

But the real question is what would be your top pick as an AI coach...because AI is coming for all our jobs so it might as well be the Knicks who have one first. This way fans can complain about the priority coding or the data sets or something. That would liven up this place don't ya think?

Just create a AI version of Sham and he would be my choice.

Just feed the post history into it for the data set and we have an AI coach that plays 5 Mitchs 48 mins a game while making fat jokes and doing lines of coke. Which is still an upgrade over most of the coaches since the new millennia.

[MrDollarBills]

Are we to the 'leak as many terrible names as possible so when we hire our middling choice it doesn't seem as bad' part of the process?

It's all a smokescreen to prepare the fanbase for Johnnie Bryant

I think the target is Kidd and they are doing this smoke screen to avoid tampering charges. I don't know if Kidd is mutually interested but, it seems to make sense as to why he would be the target. If that falls apart they will start interviewing others who are available. It's the only thing that makes sense to me.

I think so too, but I don't see Dallas letting him go unless he asks and I don't think that's happening now.

[KnixinSix]

It's all a smokescreen to prepare the fanbase for Johnnie Bryant

I think the target is Kidd and they are doing this smoke screen to avoid tampering charges. I don't know if Kidd is mutually interested but, it seems to make sense as to why he would be the target. If that falls apart they will start interviewing others who are available. It's the only thing that makes sense to me.

I think so too, but I don't see Dallas letting him go unless he asks and I don't think that's happening now.

I am more of the belief the NBA will not allow this thing to escalate publicly right now with finals going on. So right now its wait and see until finals are over. In theory, we should get a more definitive read afterwards with both Kidd and Giannis' true intentions as well.

[FrozenEnvelope]

I still think Kidd is their first choice and if that doesn't work out, they will choose between Brown and Jenkins. And if I had to guess between those two, they will go with Brown. He's been around forever, from the Pop tree, got to a Finals, turned around the putrid Kings, top defensive mind and innovative offense mind. Brown checks a lot of boxes of what I think Leon is looking for.

How do you post youtube video's now?

Good video on Brown - https://youtu.be/jnTFPgIEi-M?si=QmT_wyQIPO3iMavk