Hoops Tonight - Why Tom Thibodeau DESERVED to be fired by Knicks

so we got a bonus episode today. I just want to kind of dive into my take on the situation, some of the realities about how far the Knicks are away from their goals and how a coaching change I think kind of falls in line with their ultimate goal of winning an NBA championship and kind of separating that from some of the realities of the well, what it was like having Tom Thibodeau as coach of the Knicks.

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Make sure you guys follow us there, and the last but not least, in our live shows, make sure you guys keep dropping those male bag questions so we can get to them in our chats at the end of the shows. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the first thing that we have to acknowledge before we go any further is what the Knicks are trying to accomplish. They're trying to win an NBA championship. They view their

defeat in the conference finals as a failure. I know that feels weird in the context of them making their first conference finals in over two decades in defeating the Boston Celtics, which was kind of the goal of the moves that were made last summer. But it's all relative to the Larry O'Brien Trophy. And I'm gonna say something that I said right after the MAVs lost in the finals last year, they weren't actually close. Did you guys

think the MAVs were close to beating Boston? No, they beat a bunch of teams along the way that were also in that tier, below that top tier, championship contending tier, but ultimately when they ran into a team that was actually at a championship level, looked like there was a chasm between them. I would argue there was a pretty significant chasm between them and the Pacers this year, and I think the Pacers have little to no chance to beat the Thunder, so you could argue the Knicks are

still not close. From there, you have to start asking yourself why why were the Knicks not close? And this is where I'm seeing a lot of the issues with the roster being brought up, specifically in defense of Tom Thibodeau, and I think all that's fair. It's really difficult to build a functioning defensive foundation on Karl Anthony Towns and Jalen Brunson. Their challenge is there. It's all fair, and we'll talk more about Kat in a bit, but it's

not just the roster. The Pacers outclassed them, and as we mentioned, the Pacers are below the Thunder so here're several tiers below where you need to be, and if we removed the Celtics series, just take that entire two weeks, set it aside, and look at the entirety of the next season, I would argue they pretty significantly underachieved relative to their talent level. They came into the year with sky high expectations getting Karl Anthony Towns, getting Michale Bridges.

All of a sudden, you have one of the more dynamic starting five units in the NBA, and they came right out the gates and got the shit kicked out of them by the Boston Celtics. They generally underachieved all seasons, especially versus the good teams in the NBA. They were oh to ten versus the Celtics, the Thunder and the Cavs.

They were six and six against the other ten or the other seven teams that were in the top ten in point differential this year, so they were oh to ten versus the top three teams and five hundred against the other good teams in the NBA. They got the three seed, but they finished ten games below the two seed, so it is mostly a product of the East being very weak. They had a mediocre showing against the young Pistons team that had them on the rope several times.

Knicks fans were incredibly frustrated with the team coming out of that series and going into the Celtics Series and then they got firmly outclassed by the Pacers. That's what happens if we removed the Celtics Series. The NBA Finals are here. This is your last chance to bet on the NBA until next season, and DraftKings Sportsbook and official sports betting partner of the NBA is pulling out all the stops to make this a finals. To remember, one team will be crown champ and the other will be

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faced massive deficits in five of the six games. Now, they pulled that series out on the strength of some incredible runs, but there was also some stuff there with Tatum and Brown kind of falling apart. I want to be clear, though, the flashes were real. I'm not sitting here saying this that the Knicks had a bad season and somehow made the Conference finals. They made it there with their flashes. When they needed to be great against

the Pistons, they were great against the Pistons. They were unbelievable against the Celtics at the tail end of those games that they pulled out. Even in the Pacers series, there were stretches. I thought for the majority of Game one they looked like the better team. They had a stretch at the end of Game three where they like were kind of physically overwhelming for the Pacers. The flashes were real, they were not fluky. I'm not saying this

is a bad team. It's just that that's the talent showing. They have all these rangy athletes that can fly around in rotation. Jalen Brunson is still one of the most gifted half core playoff scorers in the league. When they were able to keep opponents in the half court, when they contained the ball, when they flew around in rotation and didn't make mistakes, when they rebound and ran off

of that stuff, they looked scary good. That's how they made the Eastern Conference Finals despite all of the frustrations throughout the season. But overall, what prevented them from sustaining that was a lack of attention to detail throughout their daily process, and it made the mistake prone and in many case. In many cases, it made them play below

what they were capable of. It made them play even when their best players were trying to operate, and they were competitive and engaged it made them operate in a setting that was more difficult than it needed to be. I thought there were three main areas where they struggled to reach their potential. First of all, on the defensive end of the floor, and this gets more complicated with transition defense, but I want to hit transition defense in

a minute. But overall on the defensive end of the floor, like Michale Bridges came out the gates this year and just wasn't very good at the point of attack, right, Brunson and Cat were pretty much a disaster on defense the entire season. They failed to sustain any like consistent

defensive level that they needed to reach. Now, one of the details here that's important to remember is Tom Thibau is playing all these guys massive minutes, and it was under this like kind of theory that if they played massive minutes it would condition them for the playoff environment. It was even something that became a talking point as people in the press would ask questions about the minute loads.

But the reality is is that if you're asking a guy to play extremely high minutes relative to the rest of the league throughout an eighty two game season, that player is not going to be able to be as engaged on a possession by possession basis. So all of a sudden, you start to build habits, and those habits are hard to kick. That's why when in a must win game in Game six on the road in Indiana, they had their sloppiest game with the details. Your habits

are what carry you. When you hit adversity, when everything hits the fan and your SHOT's not falling and the other team's on a big run and the crowd's going crazy and all of this stuff is just working against you, you have one thing you can fall back on. I'm just gonna play hard and I'm habitually focused on these details that I'm gonna do every single time, and that will help me restore control of the situation. Instead, the

opposite happened. They fell back on their bad habits, and so as a result of that, when they hit adversity, they actually fell apart. They were unable to sustain because they leaned too much on their top guys in huge minutes and they all practiced playing mediocre basketball all year. Now, does the roster have a depth is year?

saw Delon Wright be useful. I think Tibbs missed an opportunity to lean on his depth more in the regular season, not so that he can condition his stars for high minute loads in the playoffs, but so that he could actually teach all of those guys to play with a certain amount of attention to detail throughout the season, so that they had these habits in place, so that then when they ended up in some adversity in the postseason, they could fall back on those habits. The second piece

of it is spacing. This also falls into the concept of attention to detail. I thought spacing was the biggest weakness for the Knicks throughout this postseason run, and it affected them both on the offensive end of the floor as well as in their transition defense. I'm not going to get into too much detail here because we've done it quite a bit on the show over the course

of this series. But to make a long story, short, there are simple concepts, simple ideas involving where you need to be when you're off the ball that one make help defenders make harder decisions. That two put specific guys in situations where they can finish plays. And three create the actual space for an on ball player to operate so that he can be comfortable. That's just on the offensive end of the floor. Move it to a step further. That spacing is what allows you to get back and

transition defense. I can't tell you how many times in this postseason run I would see multiple players in and around the paint off the ball while no one's above

the break. Or you have a guy driving into a guy in the strong side dunker spot instead of the weak side dunker spot, or a guy standing where he can't be a threat versus another guy who is a shooting threat standing in the dunker spot, and you're like, this is just making it more difficult than it needs to be, and then you straight up lost the Pacers series in transition, that's where you lost that series. And one of the consistent themes that I saw was a

complete lack of understanding of floor balance. To make a long story short, whenever the ball is moving through a defense, whether it's through the drive or through the pass. As the ball moves through the defense, the off ball guys have to relocate. You can't just stand still right So, for instance, if I'm driving off the left wing and you're in the right dunker spot and I cross the midline, you have to relocate to the left dunker spot so that you can pull that help defender away right by.

If I cut through along the baseline, then the guy who's in the corner I'm cutting two needs to relocate up to the top of the key. Everyone needs to be whirling around the ball into appropriate spacing. And it's not just play finishing. Play finishing is a big part of it. You don't want to have the above the break line wide open. Why because if no one's up there,

you're making your team easier to guard. You want to have a player situated above the break on the opposite wing so that he is a threat, so that he can pull a defender out there, and if they're going to sink into the paint, you have an easy kickout opportunity. And then if for whatever reason, you miss or you turn the ball over. Having guys above the break those are literally the dudes who have to get back in

transition defense. They lost the Pacers series in many cases because you'd have a guy driving off the top of the key, with the guy who set the screen for him rolling off the top of the key, with two guys in the corners and a guy in the dunker spot, and now everyone's below the foul line. So not only are you making yourself easy to guard because all five defenders don't have to worry about half of the half court, they don't have to worry about anything above the foul line.

And then in addition to that, all it takes is one guy leaking out who gets behind all those five guys, and now you're giving up a dunk. They were a poorly spaced, poorly disciplined basketball team that made it to the conference finals sheerly on the strength of their talent. The third piece of it was offensive variety. The upside of getting a guy Lego Jiananobi is he can put the ball on the floor against the mismatch draw out

get a bucket. The upside with McHale bridges you can come off of a ball screen and look to score. The upside of having Karl Anthony Towns, and Jalen Brunson. So you have four players in the starting lineup that are all legitimate shot creators. And there were times where it looked really good good. There's you know a lot of the times when Jalen Brunson would come out of the game, the ball would move around a little bit

more freely and guys would get more involved. I thought in game six of the Pacers series, they finally started to understand like, oh wait, like these guys can't guard Ojannanobi when he's on the side, Let's go to him more frequently. Right. We saw big stretches of the Celtics series where Michale Bridges took over, But there was never a point where you felt like the Knicks were operating like the Pacers operated, meaning when you're playing against the Pacers,

they just they didn't. Every game looked different every every night they kind of found the hot hand. On any given night, they might have four or five different guys score twenty points because their offense was geared towards keeping everyone involved. Action was constantly moving side to side. This is modern five out basketball. Modern five out basketball is trying to get into multiple actions on the same possession, getting the ball at the more quickly with pace getting

into that first action. If the first action creates an advantage, you just play drive and kick off of it. If it doesn't create an advantage, it flows into an action on the other side of the floor. The more ball in player movement that you have on any given possession, the more advantages that are naturally created. The more you cultivate an environment where everyone feels like they can be aggressive, the easier it is for everyone to stay in rhythm

throughout a game. That is Pacers basketball. That is how they beat you, guys. That is how they're in the finals. Now, now, you don't want to go as far as the Pacers did because you've got Jalen Brunson and he's one of the best singular offensive talents in our league. But if you don't go trading a bunch of draft picks for a bunch of forwards that are capable of being super versatile offensive players and then marginalize them, go for Dorian

Finney Smith instead, if that's what you're looking for. This roster was constructed with a lot of aggregate ball. Take advantage of it. So taking it back to self awareness, you don't have a top tier superstar. Jalen Brunson is definitely good enough to win a championship as the best player. I think he's proven that. It's not like Brunson is the reason why they're losing. But what he's not is the indomitable type of talent that we see at the top of our league. He is not a top tier superstar.

He's not Shake Gildess Alexander right. He's not a guy that, regardless of surrounding circumstances, is gonna get off. There were times in this Pacers series where Nie Smith kind of had him under lock, like in crunch time. So like accepting that you have kind of a second tier superstar, your margin for error is smaller. I don't think they'll be able to reach a championship ceiling unless they make

a pivot to the coaching staff and the roster. It's gonna be both again, acknowledging self awareness that your multiple tiers be where you need to be when you're in

this coaching search. The two primary things the Knicks have to be looking for is someone who hunts margin, who hunts the low hanging fruit in basketball, someone who understands we give ourselves a better chance, not just in the regular season, but in the postseason to win games if we are a team that takes advantage of the low hanging fruit and that prevents other teams from taking advantage

of the low hanging fruit. That means you force turnovers and you don't turn the ball over, you corner crash and clear as many offensive rebounds you can within the context of your transition defense while also keeping the opponent off of the offensive glass or like it's the it's the pushing in transition whenever you can to get that extra twenty percent out of every possession while also being a great transition defense that prevents the other team from

getting an extra twenty percent out of every single possession. These are all readily achievable things that basketball teams can take advantage of. It just has to be drilled down from October through to the middle of April when you start this process. The second piece of it is they need to find someone who can build the offense around

a more equal opportunity. Approach someone who advocates for maximizing the aggregate offensive talent on this team, and I'll just be really curious to see who they end up tracking down on that front. And then, lastly, before we get out of here, the Karl Anthony Towns thing. I've talked about this before. The problem with Karl Anthony Towns is he is obscenely talented, and the upside is there, and there were points in the Pacer series where he kind of just realized no one could guard him and he

looked like a force to be reckoned with. But when I watched Game six of the Pacers series, he was front and center for the majority of the issues they were having in their transition defense and in their half court defense, and not in like a oh he's limited kind of way. I've seen some talk about, you know, his athleticism and his ability to like cover ground and all this sort of stuff that I think is certainly part of the issue and that'll prevent Cat from ever

becoming like a dominant defensive player. But the main reason why he is a bad defensive player is his just his natural defensive instincts, his overall just he's just kind of aloof you're above the break, dude, you can't be crashing the offensive glass. You have get back responsibility, Like, dude, you're in a ball screen with three people and the role man's getting behind. You can't just be dancing out around twenty five feet from the basket throwing the worst

headg I've ever seen. There's a certain amount of like Cat just kind of feels like he's freelancing all the time, and so like, Okay, if you decide to bring Cat back, you can try to drill that down with a better coach. But the reality is is we've had multiple stops in his career in big spots where he struggled to be as attentive to detail as he needs to be to

be a strong defensive foundation. That is to say, I think tying up fifty million dollars in salary on an inconsistent offensive player who is a bad to awful defensive player who specifically is bad in terms of just his ability to make basic basketball decisions on that end of the floor, I think you're kind of handcuffing yourself if you tie yourself to him. So I do view him

as the primary pivot point. But I believe that Jalen Brunson, with Josh Hart and Mikale Bridges and og Anobi and a competent coaching staff that has attention to detail that maximizes the overall aggregate offensive talent on this roster. I do believe that championship ceiling is in there. And it takes a lot of guts to look at a guy in Tibbs who just led the most successful next season in decades, who is below his players and in general is just a legend of this era of NBA basketball.

It takes a lot of guts to sit down there and be like, he's not the guy that can bring us to the championship. And I thought it was completely defensible to move on from him. All right, guys, That's all I have for today is always sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. I will see you guys tomorrow night after Game one of the NBA Finals live on YouTube. I cannot wait. We'll see you guys then