Detroit head coach J.B. Bickerstaff seemingly came to the defense of now-former five-year Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau, without explicitly naming the team or coach, writes Matt Ehalt of The New York Post.
During a conversation on ESPN Radio’s “Joe & Q” on Friday, Bickerstaff appeared to allude to Thibodeau’s recent firing, after he had led New York to a 51-win regular season and its first Eastern Conference Finals appearance in 25 years.
“I don’t want to call it the cherry on top, but it’s the final straw, I think, of what has happened this season and the level of respect that we feel coaches deserve versus what they are getting,” Bickerstaff said.
“Some of the decisions made down the stretch with firing coaches, it just shows that there are some places that don’t value what coaching is and what it can bring,” Bickerstaff added. “When you are a coach, you feel like there is a job that you have been told to do. And when you go out and do that job well, you should carry it over to the next year. If you have had past successes, that should envision future successes. You can’t guess what the future is going to look like with somebody new.”
There’s more out of New York:
The Knicks received serious pushback when they attempted to talk with current Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd about their new head coaching vacancy, observes Ryan Dunleavy of The New York Post. Among the other teams New York reached out to, the team got similarly emphatic rejections, as ESPN’s Shams Charania recently detailed on “The Rich Eisen Show” (YouTube video link).“Out of the five rejections, some of the scenarios that I heard [were], you know, teams would just hang up,” Charania said. “They would say no—and hang up. Teams would have maybe some profanity, maybe there is some ‘F— no.'” In addition to Kidd, the Knicks reportedly also reached out to the Timberwolves, Rockets, Hawks and Bulls about poaching their current head coaches.
Following a stellar five-year stint under Thibodeau that turned them back into perennial threats in the East, the Knicks must nail this next head coaching hire, opines Steve Popper of Newsday (subscriber link). Popper notes that, though New York was ridiculed after being rejected in all five of its initial bids for rival coaches, sources formed him that Kidd and Donovan were still potentially in the running. Popper takes stock of some free agent candidates for the gig, including Taylor Jenkins, Mike Brown, Michael Malone, Mike Budenholzer and Frank Vogel.
In case you missed it, the Knicks are now seen as a long shot to acquire 15-time All-Star Suns forward Kevin Durant in a trade.