Baseball’s opening day is approaching and the Knicks will soon be free to watch as many Yankees and Mets games as they want to watch. So let’s put Tom Thibodeau’s two seasons in New York against a backdrop of balls and strikes.
Last year, Thibs was a league MVP who hit .325 with 37 home runs and 118 RBIs.
This year, Thibs hit .269 with 14 homers and an endless parade of runners left on base.
Just as good players have bad seasons, good coaches also have bad seasons. With his team just one unfortunate rebound away from missing the play-in tournament — the lowest of the NBA’s low bars — Thibodeau must accept his share of the blame. And his most damaging failure was his failure to do what he always did last year: get the best out of Julius Randle.
Wednesday night, when the Knicks’ four-game winning streak died in a 125-114 loss to Charlotte, their only starter booed during introductions, Randle, wasn’t among the main culprits, not with 21 points and seven assists. . Afterwards, the power forward expressed his love for the city and for his franchise, but said he was frustrated with the impact the negative crowd reaction had on his 5-year-old son, who quit. games because of it.
“As a father, that’s what bothers me more than anything,” Randle said.
He maintained that he knew he had to “live with the good and the bad” in New York and was “built for it”, although his on-field disposition said otherwise. So be it. Now that the Knicks are one loss or one win away from Atlanta play-in elimination, their blame game should be interesting to watch in the weeks to come.
No one knows if Leon Rose, the agent-turned-executive, has any idea what he’s looking at, or if he’d better get a job as a mime. No one knows if Randle has compromised his business value with substandard play and outing vibes by the point his team will struggle to move him for a reasonable return.
Yes, Randle and Rose will take the most heat, and rightly so. But Thibodeau, the 2020-21 Coach of the Year, must be right behind them on that line in 2022. Although he will never be forgotten for the gift he gave City in his first gas in his dream job, and though he should never again be asked to pay for a meal or drink in the tri-state area, Thibs hasn’t delivered a worthy sequel over the course of the year 2, partly because he couldn’t stop his best player from weighing down the team.
So before the Charlotte game, I asked Thibodeau why he thought last season’s clear love affair between Randle and the City seemed to be headed for divorce court so quickly.
“Every year is different,” he replied. “You face new and different challenges. This year was not like last year. Hopefully we can finish like we did last year. Things change all the time and… I think it goes with turf. You’re going to get a lot of credit, you’re going to get a lot of blame. That’s how it works here, so stay focused, come back the next day and keep working. Just keep working.
Thibodeau didn’t seem to be talking to the reporters gathered in the Garden’s interview room; it sounded like he was talking to Randle.
Does Thibs say these things to Randle behind closed doors? Did he take it private after the star player berated fans and showed a lack of enthusiasm for his teammates’ success?
I asked the coach a follow-up question about pimples. Thibodeau certainly pushed all the good ones with Randle last year, and I wondered if he had trouble finding them this year.
“He’s not just a player,” he replied. “It’s your whole team. How to get the most out of your group? Right now, I want the focus to be, OK, the team is playing really well, playing winning basketball, and that’s where I want it to be. … Once the season is over, we will dig everything. We’ll look at the things we did well, the things we didn’t do as well as we’d like, and then try to make improvements over the summer.
And yes, Thibodeau absolutely deserves the chance over the summer to fix what’s broken. The guy is still one of the best coaches in the league, and still the Knicks’ best asset (with RJ Barrett shutting down hard). Unlike Randle, Thibodeau has no credibility issues when he swears he wants to stay in New York in the worst possible way.
“It’s the best place in the league to play,” he said, “and look, I’ve been pretty much everywhere. I speak from experience. This place is special.
Only it wasn’t special this season, not even close. Thibodeau never connected with Randle, inspired him to coach, play the team’s first ball or honor the terms of his $117 million extension.
It wasn’t just Randle’s fault. It was also the coach’s fault.
