Another NBA coach received a contract extension Monday but still no official word on Tom Thibodeau, who has one year remaining on his initial deal but shouldn’t be too concerned about his future, according to a longtime friend and coaching confidant.
“I think it would be a real mistake on [the Knicks’] part not to lock him up for a lot of years,” Stan Van Gundy, the current TNT analyst, told The Post. “I don’t think it’s something Tom has to worry about. He certainly wants to be there. But any organization that it’s in a win-now mode would want him so he’s going to have a job.
“So I don’t think he has to worry about it a whole lot. But I think he’d rather be there and they should want to lock him up for as long as they possibly can.”
Thibodeau’s five-year deal expires after next season, and coaches typically don’t make it to a lame-duck status.
With Monday’s announcement of Jason Kidd’s “multi-year” extension from the Mavericks, at least five coaches — Kidd, Jamahl Mosely, Steve Kerr, Erik Spoelstra and Gregg Popovich — got more years tacked onto their contracts since the summer.
Coincidentally, Kidd was the other finalist for the Knicks job before Thibodeau was hired in 2020. Kidd just guided Dallas to the second round with a victory over the Clippers.
Though only one Knicks coach had his contract extended by James Dolan (Isiah Thomas), Thibodeau has been by far the best on the sideline under the owner.
He’s already won more games (175) and playoff series (two) than any coach of the last 22 years.
Only Jeff Van Gundy and Pat Riley won more than Thibodeau with the Knicks since Red Holzman.
“I would be shocked if the Knicks organization didn’t understand that. And I’m biased going back to my brother’s days, but guys like my brother [Jeff] and Tom, they not only are great coaches, they fit that fan base so well,” Stan Van Gundy said. “New York wants a tough, hard-nosed team. Everybody wants to win. But I don’t know that New York would embrace a soft, skilled team. There’s a lot of ways to win. There’s nothing wrong with winning in other ways. But the New York fan base to me, they want a certain type of team, too. And Tom fits that perfectly.”
Van Gundy pushed back on narratives that Thibodeau isn’t a good offensive coach and players prefer not to play for him because he wears them out with too many minutes.
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In the annual players poll conducted by The Athletic, Thibodeau was again voted the coach “you’d least want to play for.”
“I think a lot of the narratives about him have been bulls–t, to be honest with you,” Van Gundy said. “I think, No. 1, everybody thinks of him as just a defensive guy and his offenses aren’t creative enough and all of this bulls–t. But in the last six years, he’s had a top-10 offense in four of them and a top-10 defense in two of them. It doesn’t add up. But nobody cares because that’s the narrative.”
Thibodeau’s starters have historically played more minutes than the league average, and that was certainly true amid injuries in the second half of this season with Josh Hart and Donte DiVincenzo in the top five in minutes played since Feb. 1.
“More minutes, means more numbers, means more money. Players understand that,” Van Gundy said. “Second thing is, his teams are highly, highly conditioned. To me, it’s one of the big reasons he wins. He’s playing his best players more minutes than you’re playing your best players. How can that not be an advantage if your guys are conditioned to where they [don’t] wear down?”
DiVincenzo, among the several Knicks who just completed a career-best season, said Sunday that he “hell yeah” wants Thibodeau as his long-term coach.
“One of the most prepared coaches,” DiVincenzo said. “That’s not a shot at any other coach. I know other coaches I played for are very, very prepared. But Thibs is on a whole ’nother level. He knows every single movement of what they’re gonna do, every single adjustment within a play. And we go through it all.”
