Official Knicks Coaching Search Thread

[thebuzzardman]

I'm almost on the Jenkins bandwagon

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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.

YO.

Ok. Now this is the kind of offense we should run. I can see how this would open up shots for literally the entire squad

Aw man.

I thought the assistant they kept was the innovator not this guy

[B8RcDeMktfxC]

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.

Tuomas Iisalo

YO.

Ok. Now this is the kind of offense we should run. I can see how this would open up shots for literally the entire squad

Aw man.

I thought the assistant they kept was the innovator not this guy

[prophet_of_rage]

I don't know why due diligence is a problem. Anyone with a brain watching the Knicks knew it was time for a change. The plan was to remove Thibs and built a pool of candidates. This narrative is pathetic.

Thibs a little better coach than you give him credit for, They could have done due diligence before they fired him—firing him 3 days into the offseason was just flat out stupid

The players coming into meetings and wanting him gone is the catalyst for him being fired.


If they had waited, people would be bitching about why didn't we do it sooner because there's not much time left before the season. The Knicks are damned if they do, and damned if they don't. Because so many people tied their entire credibility to Thibs being our coach and him going nowhere, it needs to be spun as the wrong choice to fire him without having a cloned Red Auerbach waiting to take the job.

Wes won a power play versus Rose and Thibs finally went. Dolan didn't care until the new guys said 'nah' on Thibs. Now it's find the best out there but this search says the availabke guys aren't good enough so when we end up with one of them it will look like we settled for worse.

If they hire Mike Malone for instance he's been available so if it takes a month of looking for better and we hire him it will always be well we couldnhave done that a month earlier. So clearly we didn't get the giy we wanted. Then it's open season on that coach. Which is why NY isn't that attractove to play in.

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[prophet_of_rage]

This is a pretty good article...more of a fan's view but I think it covers everything

https://www.postingandtoasting.com/2025/6/12/24448103/a-letter-to-knicks-fans-stressing-over-the-teams-coaching-search

Thankfully, Leon Rose, World Wide Wes, and the rest of the front office do not care about optics or PR moves. They’ve made that very very clear through their refusal to hold press conferences for the majority of their time in New York. What they have done through their tenure, though, is have a plan and turn every rock possible, even if the odds of said rocks leading to anything are slim to none. Again, if you believe that the Knicks are acting like headless chickens, have no plan, and are losing trust in Rose, I get it, because I can’t say that you are wrong. I have no proof of that.

I have just chosen, maybe naively, and ignorantly, to believe in Rose. I believe that all of this is just him and his team doing their due diligence. Because there’s literally only one cost of asking all of these teams about interviewing their coaches, which is the PR side of it all-which again, they do not seem to care about.

They care about casting as wide a net as possible and seeing if any big fish miraculously bite. That’s not to say that they expect any coaches of Ime Udoka’s or Chris Finch’s caliber to move. But why not try? What if they hadn’t asked any teams about their current coaches, and by some divine miracle, Jason Kidd ends up wanting out in a few weeks? Then reporters and fans would’ve slammed the table wondering why the Knicks didn’t do more research.

People have been quick to assume that Rose’s plan all along was to pry away one of these coaches. But I just have a very difficult time believing that this mastermind, who has pretty quickly turned the Knicks into a serious contender, had no other plan than to find a replacement on a competitor’s bench.

...

The worst part of it all is that there really was no winning with the media and certain sections of the fan base after the firing. I can say, with a pretty large amount of confidence, that in the alternate reality where the Knicks announce their replacement a day or two after the Thibodeau firing, a lot of the same media members and fans that are criticizing the Knicks now for taking too long, are also criticizing them for not doing their due diligence.

Since we're going with tweets, a bunch of tweets from the article

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

Those guys were all unemployed.

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[BKlutch]

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.

YO.

Ok. Now this is the kind of offense we should run. I can see how this would open up shots for literally the entire squad

Aw man.

This is one form of motion offense. It looks "pretty" and would give a lot of our guys good shots. It is something Thibs never tried, even once.

[HEZI]

Knicks had this year, maybe next, and Wemby winning the next 5 chips, at least.

But Knicks blew one year who didn't realize that Deuce provides better spacing than Josh Hart.

I think we need an upgrade in the backcourt but two small guards wasn’t really it either. Deuce wasn’t that good especially in the Pacers series. Definitely can’t have Hart starting anymore but also can’t rely on Bridges to handle guard duties. Brunson needs an actual guard with some size but with guard skills who can do something with the ball. Like how Haliburton has Nembhard, we need our version of that guy.

Nembhard is also a small guard that although being a couple inches taller than Deuce, Nembhard actually has a slightly lower standing reach, a 3 inches shorter wingspan and may actually still weight less than Deuce at this point his career. And even when Deuce was shooting poorly at times through the regular season and postseason opponents were still guarding him as a good shooter and he is still one the team's most reliable ball handlers.

The team somehow performed significantly better in every 2 man pairing that included Deuce throughout the year. Just having him on the court made so many lineups fit better together. Maybe that wouldn't have translated to the starting lineup and I would still love an upgrade in the starting lineup but I have no idea why we didn't attempt starting or playing Deuce more while reducing some of the other awkward lineup combinations. Hopefully the next coach is more flexible in his lineups.

Deuce and Brunson are both like 6’1” and Deuce couldn’t even keep TJ in front of him and had TJ running circles around him meanwhile Nembhard was locking up Brunson and ripping him multiple times. And the Pacers can still hide Haliburton on a wing despite him not being a great defender he doesn’t really give up size because he’s a very tall guard so the Pacers positional versatility is so much better than ours.

I think there’s a much stronger case to be made for Landry Shamet with the way he played on both ends than there is for Deuce who was flat out garbage

[NoDopeOnSundays]

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.

This offense could work, it fell flat on it's face with the Grizz because they don't have an elite creator to bail them out when it stalls. I think combining that kind of offense, with working in a 2 man game with Brunson would be nice.


JA cannot create without a screen, Brunson can.

[Gravy]

With coaches that have experience there is a track record people can pick apart, there's a certain amount of baggage with just about every single one of them.

With a first time head coach there's no track record, you can't examine the warts and issues because they've never had the power to make the decisions.

A never before coach is like a draft prospect, unlimited upside left to imagination and it's hard to find the flaws because they haven't done it at the next level yet.

I'm not advocating for one or the other, I'm just pointing out the obvious facts about how many people often build their opinions about them.

So what you're saying is Johnnie Bryant could be Wemby or Kevin Knox

[Adelheid]

I would think the front office intentionally wanted simple schemes, perhaps the reason they were ok with thibs' lack of creativity
perhaps they wanted a system that is easily adaptable by players

[WaltFrazier]

I don't know why due diligence is a problem. Anyone with a brain watching the Knicks knew it was time for a change. The plan was to remove Thibs and built a pool of candidates. This narrative is pathetic.

Thibs a little better coach than you give him credit for, They could have done due diligence before they fired him—firing him 3 days into the offseason was just flat out stupid

My mother was the best mother in the world. I still stopped listening to her. Team and Thibs had a disconnect. They didn't tune him out regularly, but it was pretty obvious where this was going. And if your calling card is being stubborn, the relationship is done.

Give me a plausible reason why he stubbornly kept the starters in Game 6 after Boston waved the white flag? He was sending a message to his own team, both players, the front office, and staff.

And every coach has a shelf life where the players tune out. Maybe not Pop but most

[Fury]

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[KnicksGadfly]

Thibs a little better coach than you give him credit for, They could have done due diligence before they fired him—firing him 3 days into the offseason was just flat out stupid

The players coming into meetings and wanting him gone is the catalyst for him being fired.


If they had waited, people would be bitching about why didn't we do it sooner because there's not much time left before the season. The Knicks are damned if they do, and damned if they don't. Because so many people tied their entire credibility to Thibs being our coach and him going nowhere, it needs to be spun as the wrong choice to fire him without having a cloned Red Auerbach waiting to take the job.

Wes won a power play versus Rose and Thibs finally went. Dolan didn't care until the new guys said 'nah' on Thibs. Now it's find the best out there but this search says the availabke guys aren't good enough so when we end up with one of them it will look like we settled for worse.

If they hire Mike Malone for instance he's been available so if it takes a month of looking for better and we hire him it will always be well we couldnhave done that a month earlier. So clearly we didn't get the giy we wanted. Then it's open season on that coach. Which is why NY isn't that attractove to play in.

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I'm pretty interested in narratives like these. It feels like we've heard a different variation over and over again, and there's a pattern that emerges.

Cast of characters
Leon Rose - usually the good guy, the victim. He has a good rep here (except to Wingo), so we want to avoid having him be the guy to fire Thibs. If we make him look like the victim, then we can preserve the fiction that Thibs was unfairly fired and the smartest guy in the room actually wanted to keep him
James Dolan - the boogeyman. He has the worst rep, so if we can pin the blame on him, then it looks like a really bad decision and the Thibs firing looks bad.
Wes - Actually this is kinda new. But he's tied to Dolan.

Now where the story unravels is the plot. In this story, Thibs is an undeserving victim, even though simply stated, in real life, he deserved to be fired. He was outcoached in the postseason on the court, but he also couldn't even handle the locker room. He did a lot and brought us to where we are, but he hasn't learned anything from his past experiences. So that's where this story falls apart...because whoever fired Thibs, whether it was Dolan, whether it was Wes, whether it was Rose, they did the right thing for this franchise. They're the real heroes of the story...

So, thank you Wes. Thank you Dolan, if it really was both of you.

Now the weird feeling I'm getting is that it seems like people are rooting for the Knicks to fail here, that they hire the worst coach, so they can say, "I told you so." It's not just that weird Bulls fan Susan, too. I don't know if it's just me. It feels that way.

But for me, even if the Knicks hire the wrong guy, which is entirely possible, we still made the right decision in firing Thibs. I'm onboard with that and supportive, and I'm hoping the Knicks hire the right guy, and I'm willing to be patient about it. This is a big decision, but the Knicks made those big decisions before, and they're going to need to keep making those tough decisions.

[Fat Kat]

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.

YO.

Ok. Now this is the kind of offense we should run. I can see how this would open up shots for literally the entire squad

Aw man.

This is one form of motion offense. It looks "pretty" and would give a lot of our guys good shots. It is something Thibs never tried, even once.

Read on Twitter

[GettinitDone]

Read on Twitter

We're bout to gauge Riley's senility

[HerSports85]

Tuomas Iisalo

YO.

Ok. Now this is the kind of offense we should run. I can see how this would open up shots for literally the entire squad

Aw man.

I thought the assistant they kept was the innovator not this guy

He probably is, but I don't care. What matters is that Jenkins know how and willing to run the it.

[HerSports85]

Read on Twitter

[Guano]

I hope for pure entertainment purposes they hire Rick Brunson as the coach.

[NoDopeOnSundays]

I hope for pure entertainment purposes they hire Rick Brunson as the coach.

Have they called your job yet, asking for permission so they can speak to you about the job?

You got my vote, Guan0 for Knicks head coach 2025-2026.

[Guano]

i’m praying to sweet baby jesus jenkins wins out over mike brown

Well damn if these are our options... we're looking at a damn apple bees menu here.

[Guano]

I hope for pure entertainment purposes they hire Rick Brunson as the coach.

Have they called your job yet, asking for permission so they can speak to you about the job?

You got my vote, Guan0 for Knicks head coach 2025-2026.

This is me on the sideline knowing that 3 year deal is gonna only be 3 weeks of 'work' and im getting paid in full