Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau's job looks secure, for now
Knicks' Tom Thibodeau coaches against the Boston Celtics during the first quarter at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday, April 8, 2025. Credit: Brad Penner
The rug can be pulled out from under you at any time.
It doesn’t matter if you recently won a championship. It doesn’t matter if you are three games away from taking your team to the playoffs for the seventh straight year.
Coaches in the star-driven NBA are expendable, a fact that was driven home Tuesday when the Denver Nuggets fired Michael Malone in the final week of the regular season.
“It’s coaching. You sign up knowing that,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said before his team defeated the Knicks, 119-117, in overtime Tuesday night. “I wake up every day saying this could be my last day.”
While the lack of job security is generally an accepted part of the job, Malone’s firing just two years after winning an NBA title sent shock waves throughout the league. Malone’s firing, just a little more than a week after Memphis announced it was letting Taylor Jenkins go with only nine games left in the regular season, launched an internet conjecture frenzy about what other coaches might be on the hot seat.
Among the names commonly mentioned were Phoenix’s Mike Budenholzer, Milwaukee’s Doc Rivers, Philadelphia’s Nick Nurse and, yes, Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau.
By almost every tangible measure, Thibodeau’s job should be secure.
He has a three-year contract extension that kicks in at the start of next season, and he has piloted the Knicks to back-to-back 50-win seasons for the first time since the mid-1990s. He also has managed to keep his team together through major injuries this season, including a sprained ankle that kept All-Star point guard Jalen Brunson out for a month.
The one thing he hasn’t been able to do was on full display Tuesday night when the Knicks once again lost to an elite team.
The Knicks were reconfigured this past offseason with the intention of becoming contenders. Yet, after Tuesday’s loss to the Celtics, the Knicks are a combined 0-9 against Boston, Cleveland and Oklahoma City, the teams with the three best records in the NBA.
For the first time this season, the Knicks were able to make the Celtics sweat. The Knicks lost their first three games to Boston by margins of 23, 27 and 13 points.
The Celtics long ago locked up the second seed, meaning Mazzulla could have rested all his starters who as of Monday night were on the injury list. Instead, he apparently wanted to send a message to the Knicks that they have their number should they meet in the second round of the playoffs.
The teams seem very likely to meet there as the Knicks’ magic number to clinch the No. 3 seed remains at one with games against Detroit, Cleveland and the lottery-bond Nets remaining. Very likely, that is, if the Knicks can get out of the first round, where they will play either Milwaukee or Detroit.
If the Knicks don’t get out of the first round, it seems more than fair to include Thibodeau on the endangered coach list. If they do and can’t get past Boston, it’s hard to see the Knicks deciding to make such a drastic change.
For as much as Knicks fans like to ride Thibodeau for playing his starters heavy minutes and not trusting his younger players earlier, he has a couple of big things going for him in the job security department.
First, there’s the three-year extension he signed this past summer. That alone should not guarantee job security given that Malone had also recently done so and had a two-year extension ready to kick in next season. What does make Thibodeau’s job more secure than most is the unwavering loyalty of Brunson.
One of the reasons Malone was reportedly let go is that team owners thought he had lost the locker room and could no longer effectively motivate his team. Though the Knicks don’t seem as close as they were heading into the playoffs last season when they seemed willing to run through a wall for their coach, there are signs that they are coming together as a team at just the right time.
Thibodeau, who became close to Malone when they were both on Jeff Van Gundy’s staff with the Knicks, called the firing “a disappointment.”
‘It’s an unfortunate part of the business,” said Thibodeau, who has been previously fired from Chicago and Minnesota. “He had a long run there and he did a great job and won a championship. The record speaks for itself. Sometimes — there’s challenges.”
Yes, there are. Or as Mazzulla put it, every day can be your last day.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
