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New York Knicks legend Charles Oakley defended Tom Thibodeau with a blunt message on the criticism that the head coach overplays his starters. The Knicks' head coach has dealt with this criticism for much of his career, some of which has been valid. New York's starters largely have been among leaders in minutes per game during the regular season, and several of them are in the high 30s and low 40s in the postseason. The Knicks are currently in an epic series with the Boston Celtics and are one win away from reaching the Conference Finals for the first time since 2000.
New York has its work cut out for it after a lackluster performance in Game 5, but still, this group is doing way better in this series than a lot of pundits originally thought. On a segment of SiriusXM NBA Radio with Frank Isola and Brian Scalabrine, Oakley defended Thibodeau from the general criticism about him.
“You want to win, you [have to] put the best guys out there [that] give you a chance to win. Yeah, you gotta make a sub here and there, but in the playoffs you should be playing 38-42 minutes because you’ve got a system you’re trying to run and you want to make sure that all [the] guys know their roles and where to rotate to and help to get back. Thibs’ been around for a while. He understands that you gotta stay engaged. You gotta know what’s going on at all times.”
The Knicks are starting to take on the resilience of their head coach
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Last season, the Knicks were fully built around the identity of their gritty head coach. New York was all heart and went down kicking and screaming when it lost to the Indiana Pacers in the conference semifinals.
This offseason, Leon Rose traded for Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns with the idea of this franchise keeping its resilient nature while upping its offensive ceiling. And there have been several times when Thibodeau has not looked like the necessary fit with this new core, especially with offensive sets that are less free-flowing, iso-oriented, and do not implement many pick-and-pop opportunities for Towns. That being said, the Knicks are now showing the kind of resilience this postseason that made last year's team so beloved.
Overall, despite some head-scratching results during the regular season, this group put itself in a position where the season's success would be dependent on its playoff run. So far, so good, but the Knicks cannot play with fire on Friday night. Thibodeau's rotations have largely been solid. The main criticism so far in this series has been how the veteran coach has played Josh Hart heavy minutes.
Hart is a phenomenal role player, but there have been times when the team has struggled on the floor because of the Celtics' willingness to ignore him on the perimeter. Mitchell Robinson, on the other hand, has been a lot more effective with the rest of the starting lineup this series. Regardless of whether Thibodeau makes that adjustment, the Knicks have all of their goals still ahead of them, and that's excellent news considering that we're halfway into May.
