The next big swing for Knicks must be Michael Malone as coach

There is no doubt, none and nowhere, that Tom Thibodeau had a bad deal. He obtained a terrible affair. But Thibs is not the first to be slapped like that, and will not be the last, and not only in New York. Rick Carlisle, appearing once again as a master of the game, was dismissed in Dallas not so long ago, and looks where he is with the Pacers.

There is, however, a good question to ask here, and it happens like this:

When it did KnicksThose who have just turned into toast to the city, become a team of championship or couple – like about eight days ago?

Seriously: were these Knicks a championship or couple team when they could not get a regular season match of Celtics or Cavaliers or Thunder? Or did it happen for their bosses just after stealing the games 1 and 2 of the Celtics, then watched Jayson Tatum, one of the best players on the planet, Go down with an Achilles injury? It is perhaps at this moment that Leon Rose’s heart and Jimmy Dolan’s heart started beating faster than that of Timothee Chalemet, and they apparently decided that their team could go to the end.

All we know with certainty at the moment is that Rose, with the support of Dolan, absolutely decided that Thibodeau had taken the Knicks as far as he was going to take them and wanted another (younger) face on the bench and another voice in the locker room. So now we are there because they decide where to go from here. And where they should go, Michael Malone, just because I think Pat Riley faxed his own resignation before leaving Erik Spoelstra to make an inverted riles and come to New York.

It is not because they panicked in Denver and dismissed Malone about 20 minutes after winning a title, he forgot how to train Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray, and that means if the nuggets ended up going to the distance with thunder or not. No one would never suggest that Karl-Anthony Towns is about to be Jokic, one of the most complete and gifted centers of all time. But Malone proved to Denver that he could win with two stars – Jokic and a gifted ball player like Murray – who did not play enough defense like cities and Jalen Brunson does not do so.

Malone is there and very available at the age of 53. He even has an honorable family story with the Knicks like Brunson, since his father was sitting on the bench for the Knicks as an assistant with three different coaches. In other words: Bill Parcels spoke of having skins on the wall. Michael Malone has more than Dolan or the president of the Knicks.

Many times: there is nothing good or just in what happened to Thibodeau. And that absolutely happened this way here several times before, with Buck Showalter in 1995, after having put the Yankees in the playoffs for the first time in 14 years. It happened to Joe Girardi after taking the Yankees to a victory for their first world series in eight years. Guess what? The Yankees even got four to insult Joe Torre with a wellness contract offer when Joe – as big manager as the Yankees ever had – was about to go out.

We then heard that, wait, the Yankees wanted him to come back. Yes, on an agreement of one year for less money than he had done the previous year. Incredible that he did not feel love after a really classless offer like this. Conclusion: If the Yankees could tire of him, Jimmy and Leon could get tired of Tom Thibodeau. And I did it.

Listen, by doing this, with a press release instead of a press conference, Rose looks without goal and Gutty at the same time. GUTTE? Yes, because he is about to take another big swing this off -season with a new coach as he did in the last by exchanging Julius Randle and Donte Divincenzo for the cities, and by exchanging all these recovery choices N ° 1 for Mikal Bridges, who had become as much a lightning rod for Knicks fans as Thibodeau. It is official that the guy is not afraid to make movements, to give him that. He certainly takes his swings. But he then looks like one of the smallest guys we never had here in a job like his when he does not come out under his office to face the media. And music.

He and Jimmy clearly did not like what they heard of the players when leaving. Leon Rose clearly did not like the fact that Thibodeau did not use guys like Landry Shamet, not really, and Delon Wright until the Knicks are in a ditch against the Pacers. In the end, it turns out that the real sheriff of the police report with Thibs was his boss, who should have decided that the Knicks were deeper than Thibodeau thought it.

And now, just like that, flashes an eye, the Knicks are the championship or the way the Yankees are still, even if the two managers who followed Joe Torre have won a total combined in a world series in 15 years.

Leon Rose has long been around the NBA as an agent before taking over the Knicks front office. Maybe Rose already knows the guy he wants to replace Thibodeau. Maybe he thinks that his list is so busy suddenly that he can bring in a young guy like Johnnie Bryant, who sat next to Kenny Atkinson this year in Cleveland.

Does all this happen if Tyrese Haliburton’s shooting does not rebound in retired jerseys at the end of match 1 before dropping exhaustion deaths through the hoop? We will never know. All we know is that the Knicks need a new coach. Maybe there is a better candidate than the son of an old Knicks assistant with a title on his CV. I would like to know who it is.

Unless they finally want to bring Jeff Van Gundy back home.

Originally published: June 6, 2025 at 9:23 HAE