Post#713 » by Zenzibar » Tue Jun 3, 2025 10:19 pm
Knicks coaching candidates: Michael Malone leads list of six names to watch, plus a wild-card option
By Sam Quinn
21 mins ago
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Tom Thibodeau was, by far, the best New York Knicks coach of the 21st century. He led the team to the playoffs in four of his five years on the job. The Knicks made the playoffs just four times in the 19 seasons before he was hired. He won four playoff series. Carmelo Anthony only won one as a Knick and he's revered as a team icon. He took a team from seven consecutive lottery seasons to six wins away from a championship.
And he still got fired. Those last six wins are the hardest. The Knicks are no longer grasping for respectability. This is a team that just invested six first-round picks into the trade market. The result was one more regular-season win, a slightly worse net rating, and a playoff run that at least partially boiled down to being healthier than they were a year ago. They are firmly in championship-or-bust mode in a wide-open Eastern Conference, and the Knicks, probably correctly, determined that Thibodeau is not the coach to take them over the top.
For everything Thibodeau did to build a culture in New York, he lacked the sort of adaptability and creativity championship coaches need nowadays. He rarely experimented with lineups in the regular season, so when the Knicks fell down 2-0 in the Eastern Conference finals at home, he was forced to do so from a position of desperation. His offense was bland and unimaginative, frequently boiling down to four players watching Jalen Brunson dribble. He had no defensive answer for Indiana's speed.
There is a ton of talent here, but clearly, the Knicks feel as though Thibodeau didn't make the most of it. How can the Knicks maximize the Jalen Brunson-Karl-Anthony Towns pick-and-roll that mostly disappeared as the season progressed? How can they build a defensive scheme that covers for both of their vulnerabilities? Can anyone help Mikal Bridges rediscover the form that convinced the Knicks to trade five first-round picks for him? Do the young players waiting at the end of Thibodeau's bench have enough to help give this team a somewhat viable bench?
These are the problems New York is trying to solve here, and they are significant ones. The Knicks saw firsthand in the playoffs what a championship-caliber coach looks like when Rick Carlisle ended their season. Carlisles don't grow on trees. There isn't an obvious choice here. Nobody checks every box. The front office is going to have cast a wide net. That's going to mean talking to big names on the market today and it's going to mean looking at assistants who might be the stars of tomorrow. The pool of possible candidates is going to be far wider, but here are six candidates that stand out in some way as the search begins.
1. Michael Malone
Malone is going to be the first name that comes to mind here. He won a championship two seasons ago with the Nuggets. He's represented by CAA, which isn't quite a prerequisite for a significant role with the Knicks, but certainly doesn't hurt with Leon Rose running this franchise. He's a former Knicks assistant. His father, Brendan Malone, had three separate tenures as a Knicks assistant. He was even born in Queens when his dad was still coaching in high school. He was born to coach the New York Knicks.
But was he born to coach these New York Knicks? That's harder to figure out. Typically, when a team wants to change coaches, it wants a replacement with an entirely different set of sensibilities. But Malone and Thibodeau are cut from the same cloth. They even overlapped as Knicks assistants.
The most-used five-man lineup of this season was New York's starting five. Last year? It was Denver's. Neither Thibodeau nor Malone are especially experimental with lineups, and part of what got Malone fired in Denver was his refusal to use the young players Calvin Booth drafted for him. It's not clear what sort of offensive system he'd bring to New York either. Denver's offense was having Nikola Jokić. The Knicks couldn't run the same sets the Nuggets did without him. Somewhat concerningly, the Nuggets never managed to turn Jokić's passing gifts into consistent 3-point production. Denver ranked 30th in 3-point attempt rate this season. The Knicks, having just ranked 28th, badly want to improve on that front.
Thibodeau and Malone are both old-school, defensive-minded head coaches. Maybe that's enough. Maybe what this team needs is just a new voice. But if the goal here is creativity and adaptability, well, it's less clear that Malone should be the pick.
2. Mike Budenholzer
Oh, you want the opposite of Tom Thibodeau? Well, here's Mike Budenholzer, maybe the only NBA coach who gets criticized for resting his starters too much. When Mike Budenholzer is your head coach, your team does the obvious stuff. It shoots enough 3s. It protects the basket. It rebounds on defense. We're talking about a coach who won 60 games with Al Horford and Paul Millsap as his best players. That doesn't happen without a sterling statistical profile. Budenholzer teams nail the basics.
But if playoff Budenholzer was as safe a bet as regular-season Budenholzer, he probably wouldn't be available right now. He's a notoriously slow adjuster, and his hesitance to let Giannis Antetokounmpo defend Jimmy Butler might have cost him his job with the Bucks. If Kevin Durant's shoe had been a size smaller, he probably leaves Milwaukee without a ring.
Coaches can grow over time, but Budenholzer's lone season in Phoenix was concerning. The Knicks should know him fairly well as another CAA-er, but he'd certainly have his fair share of playoff decisions to explain before becoming a top candidate for this job.
3. Jeff Van Gundy
Can I interest you in a feel-good story? Van Gundy is the last Knicks head coach to achieve more success in the role than Thibodeau did. He resigned in 2001, a decision he's long regretted. Could now be the time to bring the prodigal son back home?
Van Gundy and Thibodeau certainly share some sensibilities. Thibodeau was once an assistant under Van Gundy, after all. But it wouldn't be fair to pigeonhole him as the sort of old-school thinker Thibodeau has frequently been. Van Gundy was out of coaching for 17 years, but his return to the bench for the Clippers last season was an unmitigated success. He served as the defensive coordinator for the NBA's third-ranked defense, and he did so using a variety of creative schemes and flexible lineups.
Van Gundy has interviewed for NBA jobs periodically since the beginning of his broadcasting career. He coached Team USA at World Cup qualifiers, so it's not as though he's been out of the coaching profession entirely. He's a basketball lifer coming off of a stellar season as an assistant, and he's a beloved figure in the New York market, specifically. If ever there were a time for him to get another head coaching job, it would be now.
4. Jay Wright
Jay Wright was a frequent target of NBA teams when he was coaching at Villanova. He always turned them down, and he has said consistently he is not interested in an NBA job. Could the change to reunite with three of his former Wildcat champions in Brunson, Bridges and Josh Hart sway him? We might just find out in the coming weeks.
Wright has never coached in the NBA, but he was an assistant on Gregg Popovich's Team USA staff, so he does have some experience with professional stars. He's about as accomplished as college coaches get, and his Villanova teams were generally pretty modern. They shot 3s. They empowered multiple ball-handlers. And they were usually pretty deep. For now he seems comfortably retired from coaching. If any job is going to be enough to stir him out of it, it would probably be this one.
5. Dan Hurley
Hurley, the UConn head coach, had a lengthy flirtation with the Los Angeles Lakers last offseason after winning his second consecutive national championship. He ultimately turned them down. If it was to chase a college three-peat, those dreams have now been dashed. If it was because of money, well, James Dolan is paying out three more years of guaranteed money to Thibodeau. He's never had a problem paying for coaches. If it was because of the roster, the Knicks are better than the Lakers were and aren't built around a legend nearing his 40th birthday.
On paper, they seem better equipped to lure him out of the college game. There were even rumblings at the time that Hurley, a lifelong East Coast resident, preferred the notion of waiting for a job like New York's or Boston's to heading West to Los Angeles. The big question here is whether or not Hurley is worth pursuing.
Strategically, Hurley's Connecticut teams do a lot of things that should appeal to the Knicks. They ranked in the top five in the nation in rebounding rate in both championship years while also ranking in the top 11 in 3-point attempts. For a Knicks team that needs a better shot diet but doesn't want to sacrifice on the glass, that's pretty impressive. More importantly, the Huskies ranked No. 2 in the nation in assists during their first championship run and No. 1 during their second despite ranking 165th in pace in 2023 and 315th in 2024. Any team with Jalen Brunson at point guard is probably going to play slow and pound the rock. If Hurley can generate ball- and player-movement within that context, he might be the perfect offensive mind for this team.
The bigger questions relate to Hurley's temperament. His outbursts toward both the refs and the media would be a distraction in a major media market like New York, and frankly, don't project the sort of calm that an NBA coach needs to keep his team in the right headspace. This is ironically a problem that the coach the Lakers ultimately hired, JJ Redick, is dealing with as he adjusts to coaching in the NBA as well. A coach is not just a strategist. He needs to set the tone for his entire team, and if the last year is any indication, Hurley would have a hard time doing that.
6. Johnnie Bryant
Bryant is here, in a sense, to represent every bright, young assistant eager for a chance at a job like this. He gets the listing because of his ties to the team. Bryant was an assistant under Thibodeau until this season, which he spent as the associate head coach in Cleveland. His success there has made him a finalist for the Phoenix Suns job, and he has a reputation for being well-liked by players.
Ultimately, though, there's not much we can say about him strategically. That's true of any assistant, and that often scares off win-now teams. There's a sense that hiring a first-timer represents a gamble, and I suppose it does, but it's worth pointing out here that gambles can and frequently do pay off.
Think of Joe Mazzulla in Boston. He was a second-row assistant during the 2022-23 season. If Ime Udoka hadn't had a personal scandal, he probably isn't a head coach right now. If Will Hardy hadn't left for Utah months earlier, he, and not Mazzulla, likely gets the Boston job. The 34-year-old Mazzulla was not the sort of assistant who would immediately profile as a head-coaching candidate. Yet he's emerged as one of the NBA's most creative thinkers in leading the Celtics to a championship.
That is the point here. A coach's resume is not necessarily reflective of his acumen. There is basketball genius hidden all over the league. The Knicks know what they're getting in most of the retread candidates. They don't with the first-timers, but that also means that the potential reward is higher. Which brings us to our final candidate...
Bonus wild-card candidate! ... Chris Paul
Yes, I know what you're thinking. This is crazy. Does Chris Paul even want to coach? Just indulge me for a moment...
Paul would hardly be the first player to jump directly from a roster to a coaching staff. Jason Kidd is the most famous example. Redick spent time as a broadcaster, but he was never an assistant, either. Steve Kerr was a broadcaster and a GM before he took over the Golden State Warriors, but he never coached. Steve Nash worked only in a part-time role with the Golden State Warriors before taking over the Brooklyn Nets. The Knicks swung and missed on this sort of hire with Derek Fisher in 2014, but that doesn't mean every such candidate is going to be a dud. There are a handful of players in the NBA at any given time that are clearly smart enough about the sport of basketball to become head coaches if they so choose. Paul is one of them.
There's going to be some level of resistance against any rookie coach in New York, but should there be? Since 2015, Kerr, Ty Lue and Nick Nurse have all won championships in their first seasons as head coaches. Mazzulla did so in his second. Udoka made the Finals as a rookie. This isn't meant to dismiss the importance of experience entirely, just to suggest that it is not absolutely necessary.
No executive in basketball tends to be more relationship-driven than Rose. His first client as an agent was Rick Brunson. The elder Brunson is now a Knicks assistant and his son Jalen is the face of the franchise. Knicks executive William Wesley, known as World Wide Wes, has openly said, perhaps in jest, perhaps not, that the Knicks plan to draft D.J. Wagner some day. Dajuan Wagner was another Rose client. Look at how many Villanova players the Knicks have accumulated. Thibodeau was a CAA client. Karl-Anthony Towns is too. Rose likes to stay in the family, and his most prominent client before taking the Knicks job was Chris Paul.
There is no telling whether or not Paul would be willing to retire as a player yet. There's no telling if he'd even be interested in coaching when does. Frankly, Paul could probably aim higher. He's one of the most respected players in all of basketball, a longtime president of the player's union who would seemingly have a clear path to a GM job, a lofty post within the league office or a top broadcasting position if he wants any of those things.
But if a lack of imagination is part of what doomed Thibodeau, it shouldn't limit the scope of Rose's search for a replacement. The Knicks need a fresh perspective here. Perhaps a perspective untainted by an entire career in the coaching profession is worth considering here. If Paul wants to be an NBA head coach someday, it's hard to imagine he won't be one. This might be a chance for the Knicks to skip the line on someone who, in a few years, otherwise might have been seen as one of the most desirable coaching candidates in all of basketball. As with hiring an assistant, it would be a high-risk, high-reward maneuver, but with the Knicks hellbent on getting those last six wins to reach the championship, that might be exactly the sort of hire they need to make.
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