After Firing Fisher, Knicks Should Hire Thibodeau
So it’s onto the next Knicks coach for Phil Jackson, or is Garden chairman James Dolan going to pull rank and make the choice as to who replaces Derek Fisher on a full-time basis?
No one knows for sure, but in both cases, it can’t be a very comforting feeling for Knicks fans.
In fact, you could almost expect the worse from Jackson, whose coaching tree features a handful of men with losing records, and Dolan, who always seems to make the wrong choices when it comes to his basketball team.
But maybe in this case Dolan will shock Knicks fans. Maybe he’ll listen to his basketball consigliere,
Isiah Thomas, who also moonlights as the WNBA New York Liberty president, another Garden entity.
Thomas reportedly recommended to Dolan that Fisher had to go, and now there are whispers in the Garden that Thomas is going to try to convince Dolan to hire former Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau.
As if there needs to be any convincing.
But you never know with Dolan, who gave Jackson the keys to the franchise, even knowing that the Zen Master had never run a team in his life. Look at what $60 million bought Dolan: A second straight team steaming toward the lottery, but without a No.1 draft pick this time to help ease the pain.
Thibodeau’s hiring makes almost too much sense. Unlike Fisher, who was tone-deaf to what Knicks fans need to hear from the head coach and still was making rookie mistakes in his second season on the bench, Thibodeau is a proven coach. He knows how to develop players — see Jimmy Butler, a former No. 30 selection in 2011 and now a tried-and-true All-Star. He knows what needs to be said in the Big
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