The sports world was taken aback on Tuesday afternoon when news broke that the New York Knicks had fired head coach Tom Thibodeau days after the team fell to the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals.
No one really expected the move. After all, Thibodeau had just led the Knicks to their first Eastern Conference Final in 25 years and had notched back-to-back 50-win seasons. But alas, coaching is a cutthroat business, and the powers-that-be in New York, namely Knicks president Leon Rose and owner James Dolan, decided it was best to move on.
ESPN star Stephen A. Smith didn’t love the move, but he especially didn’t love the way the Knicks organization communicated it. Appearing on Tuesday’s edition of NBA Today, Smith teed off on Rose for what he saw as a cowardly decision to release a statement about Thibodeau’s firing, rather than directly addressing the media.
“Get the hell in front of a microphone and a camera and answers questions. Stop being a coward.”
3 minutes of Stephen A. Smith torching Leon Rose for his “weak-ass statement”: pic.twitter.com/G6CYWzFona
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 3, 2025
“To be quite honest with you, I think we all as New Yorkers should find Leon Rose’s statement offensive,” Smith began. “Get the hell in front of a microphone and camera and answer questions. Stop being a coward, because that’s how he’s acting. I’m not calling him that as a man or as a person. I’m saying that’s how he’s been acting as president of the New York Knicks when it comes to communicating with the media and articulating the decisions that you make and why they are being made.
“This is the problem with the arrogance of the New York Knicks, okay?” Smith continued. “They deserve credit for what they’ve achieved. I applaud them for elevating us from basketball purgatory into relevance. I truly, truly believe that. But in the same breath, when you make the potpourri of decisions that you have made, could you have the decency to stand before the media and answer the questions?
“That statement is as weak as it gets, it emanates from a James Dolan-run organizations, who doesn’t want to communicate with the media himself, who never wants to answer any questions. And they get away with it because they don’t have to answer to anybody because they know Knick fans are still going to show up to Madison Square Garden patronizing their product and their brand, and doing everything that they can to make sure that they support the team. The New York Knicks as an organization know that that’s coming, they know that you’re going to support the Knicks no matter what Leon Rose does, no matter what James Dolan does, which is why they get away with acting the way they way that they’re acting.
“I want to see Leon Rose stand before the camera and justify firing a man who just took you to within two games of a berth to the NBA Finals, right after you decided to trade five picks for a guy that never even made an All-Star. …Stand before the media and answer them damn questions. But we can’t expect Leon Rose to do that because since James Dolan has arrived, that’s not something that he likes, and Leon Rose seems to fit right in. Matter of fact, one could legitimately argue that his willingness to avoid the media, to answer these questions, is just as much of a big reason as to why he got the job, as it is the job that he’s actually did, which has been a pretty damn good job.”
The failure for both Rose and Dolan to address the media after such a shocking decision is pretty telling, especially in contrast to Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison who, after controversially dealing Luka Doncic to the Lakers, faced the media numerous times (albeit, sometimes trying to control the rules of engagement). If Harrison can hold multiple press availabilities after that, Rose and Dolan should be able to talk about firing a coach.
Not many franchises would ever fire a coach after their most successful season in 25 years, but that’s apparently how the Knicks are operating. And until their succession plan becomes apparent, Rose and Dolan have a few questions to answer.