How will Tom Thibodeau fit as the head coach of the New York Knicks?
The Knicks have selected Thibodeau as their next coach, as had been anticipated since the start of their search to replace interim coach Mike Miller.
Now comes the hard part for Thibodeau and the Knicks' new president Leon Rose: building a winning team with a franchise that has won only one postseason series in 20 seasons.
What can we glean from Thibodeau's past stops with the Chicago Bulls and Minnesota Timberwolves about his ability to develop the young talent on the Knicks' roster and build the kind of quality defense the franchise hasn't had since Thibodeau was an assistant in New York?
Let's take a look.
Development a different role for Thibodeau
Assuming the Knicks keep their first-round pick this year, Thibodeau will be in a position that's unusual for him: coaching a top-10 pick as a rookie. (Ahead of the draft lottery, which the NBA plans to hold on Aug. 20, New York's pick has about a 37% chance of ending up in the top four and can be no worse than 10th.)
Because his Bulls teams were consistent contenders and his Timberwolves traded the No. 7 pick in 2017, Thibodeau has coached only one rookie drafted in the top 10 picks during his eight seasons as a head coach: Kris Dunn, taken fifth overall in 2016.
More generally, rookies haven't typically played big roles for Thibodeau. Over those eight seasons, only five rookies played more than 400 minutes under Thibodeau, and two of those were European veterans who were 24 during their rookie seasons (Omer Asik and Nikola Mirotic). Aside from Mirotic, 2018 first-round pick Josh Okogie was the only rookie to average 20 minutes for Thibodeau the year after being drafted.
Overall, Thibodeau has devoted 4.9% of his teams' minutes to rookies, the fifth-lowest rate between 2010-11 and 2018-19 among the 40 coaches with three full seasons in that span.
None of this is to say Thibodeau can't or doesn't develop young players. Derrick Rose grew into an MVP during Thibodeau's first season in Chicago, and Jimmy Butler's development from No. 30 pick who played only 359 minutes as a rookie into an All-Star is an all-time success story.
But playing and developing young players -- a group that also includes 2019 No. 3 overall pick RJ Barrett and young center Mitchell Robinson in New York -- has never been a primary focus for Thibodeau.
That was supposed to change in Minnesota, where Thibodeau inherited what looked like one of the league's most promising young cores in No. 1 overall picks Karl-Anthony Towns (2015) and Andrew Wiggins (2014) along with 2014 lottery pick Zach LaVine and the 2016 pick the Timberwolves used on Dunn.
Instead, after making less progress than expected in Thibodeau's first season on the job, Minnesota pivoted by trading Dunn, LaVine and the No. 7 pick of the 2017 NBA draft to the Bulls for Butler -- a move I fully supported, for the record -- before signing veterans Taj Gibson and Jeff Teague in free agency. The result was one of the biggest season-to-season jumps in average team age (weighted by minutes played) in the past four decades.
Those moves paid immediate dividends as the Timberwolves improved by 16 wins and snapped a 14-year playoff drought. After the season, however, Butler forced his way out via trade and Minnesota slid backward before Thibodeau was fired midway through his third season. The Knicks will surely seek more sustainable success.
Of course, Thibodeau's dual role as coach and president of basketball operations was an important factor in his Minnesota demise; it allowed him to accelerate the team's development timeline. Thibodeau won't have that same kind of control over New York's roster, which could mitigate his impatience to win.
At the same time, Thibodeau's long ties to Rose -- formerly the head of the basketball division at CAA, Thibodeau's agency -- could give him atypical influence for a coach.
Does Thibodeau's defense still work?
Above and beyond Butler's messy exit, the biggest disappointment from Thibodeau's stint in Minnesota was that he failed to turn around Minnesota's defense. Thibodeau had been rightfully regarded as a defensive mastermind first in his role as an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics when they reached the NBA Finals twice in three seasons, winning the 2007-08 title, and then as head coach in Chicago.
Under Thibodeau, the Bulls posted the NBA's best defensive rating in each of his first two seasons and finished in the top 10 each of the first four seasons before slipping to 11th in 2014-15. However, Minnesota improved only modestly after Thibodeau inherited a defense ranked 28th on a per-possession basis the season before his arrival.
The 47-win 2017-18 Timberwolves won primarily on the strength of a top-five offense, ranking 25th in defensive rating. Remarkably, Minnesota's best defensive performance under Thibodeau came during his final season, when it ranked 17th in the league at the time of his firing, according to NBA Advanced Stats.
Starting in Boston, Thibodeau had advanced NBA defense by aggressively overloading the side of the court with the ball handler and trusting defenders to zone up on the opposite side. Thibodeau's favored "ice" defense against side pick-and-rolls, forcing ball handlers to the sideline rather than allowing them to get back to the middle of the court, made it difficult for them to take advantage of the numbers advantage elsewhere.
The result was low-percentage shots for opponents; Thibodeau's Chicago defenses all ranked in the top four in terms of effective field goal percentage (eFG%, which accounts for the additional value of 3s by treating them as 1.5 field goals). Thibodeau's Minnesota defenses never approximated those results. The Wolves finished 29th and 27th in opponent eFG% his first two seasons, and had improved only slightly to 20th when he was fired in 2018-19.
While the personnel obviously wasn't the same, the types of shots opponents got against Thibodeau's Minnesota teams were very different than against his Chicago teams. Thibodeau's Bulls teams consistently forced 2-point attempts outside the paint, ranking either first or second in percentage of shots from these locations all five of his seasons, according to NBA Advanced Stats. In Minnesota, his teams never ranked in the top 20 in this regard while allowing both 3-pointers and shots in the restricted area -- the two most valuable locations -- at above-average rates.
To his credit, Thibodeau has attempted to evolve with the league, which is now running slightly more pick-and-rolls from the middle of the floor rather than the sides as compared to Thibodeau's time in Chicago. After using ice against more than 35% of pick-and-rolls his last two seasons with the Bulls (the first for which Second Spectrum tracking is available), Thibodeau decreased that to about 25% of pick-and-rolls his first two seasons with the Timberwolves and just 22% in 2018-19 before he was fired, according to Second Spectrum data.
Still, if improved NBA floor spacing has neutered the effectiveness of Thibodeau-style defenses, it calls into question whether he can replicate his results from Chicago.
Goal for New York: Develop talent to attract stars
After flailing wildly from one plan to another in the post-Mike Woodson era, New York's mission is clear.
To attract the free agents that have repeatedly rebuffed them in recent offseasons, they must offer a stronger preexisting supporting cast of talent much like the rival Brooklyn Nets built before acquiring Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving last summer.
Given recent New York lottery picks Kevin Knox II and Frank Ntilikina look unlikely to develop into key contributors, that puts pressure on Thibodeau to make the most of Barrett, Robinson and this year's lottery pick.
Building a stout defense along the lines of Thibodeau's Chicago defenses could also offer a selling point to free agents. That means improving on this season's performance: The Knicks stand at 23rd in defensive rating among the league's 30 teams.
It seems likely that Thibodeau's legacy will depend on his performance in New York. Fail and he'll be seen as an innovator who struggled to adapt when the NBA caught up to his defensive scheme. Turn around the Knicks and we might again be debating whether Thibodeau is one of the league's best coaches.