For one night, at least, Knicks look like a Tom Thibodeau team
Tom Thibodeau of the Knicks looks on in the first half against the Milwaukee Bucks at Madison Square Garden on Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Shortly before game time Friday night, the word came down, bringing gasps from the Madison Square Garden faithful, that Karl-Anthony Towns and Deuce McBride would be sitting out the game against the Nets. And for a team already wobbling early in the season, that understandably was cause for concern.
But maybe it did something different. With the rebuilt starting lineup this season, a riches of talent on paper, the Knicks have looked like something else on the court. They haven’t looked like a Tom Thibodeau team.
Or as Josh Hart put it, “At least right now to the benefit of the East, we’ve been trash this first 11 games.” He paused to laugh and added, “And I think we’re fourth in the standings or whatever. So East got beat up a little bit early. I guess that’s the benefit to us.”
The standings may tell you one thing: that with Friday night's 124-122 win, the Knicks stand at 6-6 and are right in the mix in the Eastern Conference. The eye test, though, will tell you something different, that the Knicks just haven’t looked like the Thibodeau teams that, whether or not shots were falling, would drag you into a street fight.
For one night without their high-scoring center, the Knicks found themselves looking like something else — not an all-star team, but a team with fight. OG Anunoby had to be held back from going after Dorian Finney-Smith after being shoved to the floor. Ariel Hukporti, the last player taken in the most recent draft, lit up the crowd, soaring through the lane for a fourth-quarter dunk and contributing four blocked shots. With the Knicks trailing by one after building a 21-point lead late in the third quarter, Jalen Brunson — the heart, soul and captain of the team — sank a three-pointer with 6.2 seconds left to cap a 16-point fourth quarter and a 37-point night. And when Dennis Schroder drove for a potential tying layup, former Net Mikal Bridges (22 points) blocked it just before the final buzzer.
Said Brunson: "We're gonna fight. That's just us. That's our identity."
On this night, it was. But most nights this season, squint a little as you’ve watched the Knicks and Nets and you might mistake the Nets, led by no-nonsense rookie coach Jordi Fernandez, for a Thibodeau team. The Nets, who were predicted to be pushing toward the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes in the NBA Draft, entered the night at 5-7, right behind the Knicks. And Fernandez has shown even less patience than Thibodeau for the growth process.
The Knicks have looked like world-beaters on some nights and a lottery team on others. Some of it can reasonably be attributed to building familiarity. But nights like Wednesday, when they fell behind a slumping Chicago Bulls team by 22 points, are raising alarm bells.
Friday night provided a template for comparing what the Knicks have been and what they can be. Even without Towns (left knee contusion) and McBride (illness), it was the first meeting for Bridges against the Nets since the Knicks gave up five first-round picks to obtain him, pushing the chips they’d been accumulating for years to the center of the table. It was a move that had some in the league shaking their heads, given that he’s never been an All-Star.
But what Bridges did bring was a player who fit on paper, a talented scorer and, more importantly, a versatile defender who could blend with Anunoby and Hart to smother opposing scorers. However, that hasn’t translated on the court yet. Bridges sometimes has seemed invisible on offense and lost on defense.
“Obviously, we felt he’s a good fit for us,” Thibodeau said. “He’s been a good player in the league for a long time. So we just liked the fit . . . That’s the challenge I think for every team. Every year, even if you come back with the same team, how quickly can you get on the same page with everybody.”
“I think he’s been doing a solid job,” Hart said. “I think he can be better. I think we can all be better. I think we’ve had some frustration at times trying to figure things out. But we knew it was going to take time. None of us thought it was going to be an easy, seamless transition and be going pound for pound with Cleveland to be undefeated. Nah. We knew it was going to take time.”
But listen to Fernandez as he talks about the effort needed from his team — particularly after the Nets got run over by Boston on Wednesday, a game in which they started well and he thought they let go of the rope when challenged.
“I think that you just say it,” Fernandez said. “You’ve got to keep saying it over and over and doing it over and over. It feels like, if there’s 100 possessions in a game, you do it for 99, that’s not good enough. We have to do it for 100 and do it together. And a lot of times I think the NBA is mentally tough. Because you struggle mentally. A lot of times, people think, ‘Oh, you guys have to be so tired.’ It’s like, ‘Oh, it’s not physically. It’s mentally.’ It’s tough. Especially when you’re young. And the veteran players, they just know how to do it. So I think we’re getting there. Right now there’s 12 games in and we have 70 left.”
It sounds like Thibodeau. It reads like Thibodeau. But as evidenced Friday, Fernandez doesn’t have the players to provide more than hard work. And maybe there is a part of Thibodeau, that for all of the talent, enjoys pushing and prodding a team of overachievers. It’s how he earned his second Coach of the Year award in his first season in New York and it’s how an injury-riddled squad still won 50 games and reached Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals last season. Some of the players he’s got now clearly are his type. Some have to prove they can be.
“You know, we’re trying to find it,” Hart said. “And sometimes when you’re trying to find it, it doesn’t come as quickly as you want. You can get frustrated and those frustrations affect your energy level, those kind of things. We’ve just got to understand at the end of the day, we’re not going to be the best we’re going to be in game 10 or game 12. That’s not the goal. The goal is to be the best team we can be in the last game of the season. Hopefully that’s in June.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.