Why History Tells Us the New York Knicks are in Trouble

Why History Tells Us the New York Knicks are in Trouble

the last time the New York Knicks went to the Conference Finals was back at the turn of the century back when George W Bush was still in office watching movies on DVDs was all the rage and this thing called the worldwide web was taking off in the New Millennium I’m Paul perkenstein and welcome to the wide world of web and what was tough about losing in that Conference Finals in the year 2000 was that it really was their last chance to try and win a championship now that Michael Jordan was no longer a threat and after losing in the finals the prior year in a lockout season Patrick Ying nearing the end of his career 2000 was their year their chance to win a title for the first time since 1973 but Reggie Miller and the Indiana Pacers as we had seen them do in years past were too much for the Aging Knicks to take home the Larry obrien trophy but this year the Knicks for the first time seem poised to make their way back to the Conference Finals finishing second in the Eastern Conference going against a Pacers Squad that had a lot to prove with the budding young Talent of Tyrese halberton leading the charge the Nick were up a 3-2 lead on the series with just one game away and making it back to a place they hadn’t been in nearly a quarter Century but unfortunately for the Knicks due to a host of injuries plugging their key players they were unable to close out the series and would get blown out on their own home court in game seven but while the Knicks can shake this one off attribute it to some bad injury luck regroup and come back strong healthy and ready to go The Following Season while hopefully making additional roster improvements over the offseason as well but what if I told you there was a a fundamental problem with this Knicks team that history tells us will prevent them from reaching their true potential and no it’s not any one player but rather the coaching staff more specifically head coach Tom thibo and I’ll explain why in this video as always if you’re new to the channel you like this type of content it would mean a great deal to me if you subscribe to help the channel grow and in return I’ll be providing more NBA content like this now as a diard Chicago Bulls plan I want to be clear that Tom thibo is one of my all-time favorite Bulls coaches which maybe isn’t saying much because outside of Phil Jackson The Bull have had some pretty lousy coaches over the years but I think Tom thibo is an excellent coach hardworking No Nonsense and gets the most out of his players and expects them to put forth maximum effort when they’re on the court he knows and understands the game well and is great at in-game execution and preparing his team for some of the toughest matchups and I personally think that tibs doesn’t get the credit he deserves as one of the better coaches in the NBA the problem with Tom tiido is he has one flaw that throughout the course of his coaching career he just can’t seem to shake and it’s one that people tend to focus on most when assessing his abilities as a coach and that’s time management load management and taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture of the Season at large rather than just looking at every game in isolation now injuries are part of basketball there are always going to be injuries in the NBA in any given season some being more significant than others and while there are certain things that can be done to prevent injuries as much as possible such as proper conditioning rest medical treatment diet sometimes injuries are just out of one’s control control and you can’t fault the player coaching staff or medical staff for it so while we can sit here and say that Tom thibo plays his guys into the ground without consideration for their long-term Health the fact of the matter is some players are just more injury-prone than others and freak injuries are not something for which you can simply blame the coach for that said when there is a common Trend in a history of player injuries or careers being cut short under the same coach it does beg to question whether these injury circumstances are just a coincidence or whether there’s a direct Cor ation between a coach’s coaching style and philosophy that makes players more susceptible to injuries and so I took a look at Tom Theo’s coaching history starting from when he was with the bulls his brief stint in Minnesota to now being with the Knicks in Tomo’s first season with the bulls he of course took an average Bulls team who was the middle of the pack in the Eastern Conference and led them to finishing with the best record in the league and taking the Bulls to their first Conference Finals appearance since Michael Jordan tibs would go on to win Coach of the Year Rose would become the youngest player in NBA history to win MVP and this young Bulls team with a core of Rose Noah and Deng look poised to bring a title back to Chicago since the 90s Dynasty but while The Following season coming out of the lockout year the bulls look better than ever and locked in and getting their revenge on the big three Miami Heat things took a turn for the worst when Derrick Rose went down with an injury and game one for the first round of the playoffs a game in which the Bulls were up 12 with less than a minute and a half to go this was tibs Mo we just talked about the 26 games he has missed you have your best player out on the court no matter the circumstance of the game he didn’t care how it looked on the outside resting and load management be damped he was going to ride with his guys the ones he felt the most comfortable with no matter what and when you look back at that prior season in 2011 a few things stand out both LEL Deng and Derrick Rose played over 3,000 minutes that season Deng finished third in the league in total minutes while Rose ranked ninth for context not a single player played more than 3,000 minutes in the NBA this season while two of the B’s best players in that season surpassed with East luell Deng played in all 82 games that season averaging 39.1 minutes per game the Bulls would also have five players play all 82 games in the 20101 season The Following Season while the Bulls still finished with the best record in the league people forgot that Rose missed a significant amount of time during the regular season from various injuries throughout that year only playing in 39 of the 66 available games luel Deng also missed 12 games due to injury That season but would end up leading the league in minutes per game at 39.4 when he was available even when the Bulls were up 20 points in the fourth quarter Deng would remain in the game as with rose and Jem Noah those were tibs guys the guys that he would ride with even if the game was Out Of Reach of course we all know that the ACL injury to Rose would set him back and ultimately he would never come back to being the same player that we once knew was subsequent injuries that would follow the ACL ter what people sometimes don’t remember though is Joe Keem Noah also got hurt in that first round series against the Sixers after after Rose tour his ACL which would all but seal the Bulls faith in losing in that first round and in the seasons that would precede that one with no rose being in the lineup Noah and Deng would continue to be top 10 in the league in minutes with Deng consistently leading the NBA in minutes per game year after year when it was clear that Rose was no longer going to return to the form Jimmy Butler became the new tibs treadmill which became even more the case when the Bulls traded Deng Midway through the year once Deng was traded away from Chicago though and would later on to go play for the Miami Heat Den quickly declined as a player and would be out of the league just five seasons later at the age of 33 how about Jem Noah once Tom Theo’s tenure ended with the bulls after being fired in 2015 this of course after Noah had missed nearly 20% of his games from injury in that final tib season but after tip’s departure Fred hyberg took over and Noah eventually leaving to go to the Knicks Joe Keem was a complete shell of himself after sustaining various injuries leading up to 2015 Noah like Deng would also fall off as a player and be out of the league in just five seasons after and really borderline being an unplayable player by the age of 31 how about the Minnesota Timberwolves though Tom thibo would coach the Wolves for two and a half Seasons before being let go and like the Bulls he would have his three go-to guys that he would rarely take off the floor those being Zack LaVine Andrew Wiggins and Carl Anthony towns Zack LaVine would end up playing the most minutes per game and would tear his ACL Midway through the season at the age of 21 in that first year that tibs was head coach Wiggins and Cat would each average over 37 minutes per game and play all 82 games Wiggins and towns would finish the season first and second in the entire NBA in total minutes played both surpassing 3,000 minutes on the Year Ricky Rubio would also go on to play the most minutes of his career and we gone to suffer a multitude of future injuries and lead to an early retirement at the age of 32 while cat and Wiggins would never suffer any major injuries during the tibs era they would both later on go through injuries of their own that would keep them and out of the lineup over the preceding Seasons now as for the New York Knicks the team that we’re all here to talk about they saw their season abruptly end in large part due to their short-handed roster going into the East semis like as good as the Indiana Pacers have been and they’ve had a nice little playoff run you can’t tell me they were beating the Knicks team a Knicks team that was fully healthy and in fact you could even go further to say they likely weren’t getting past the Bucks either if yanis had actually played but for the Knicks everything had been going right for them after they made the trades for OG on anobi which which I thought was an incredible deal for them and he fits perfectly into the tibs archetype of a desired player they further bolster the roster by making trades for Boya bogdanovich Alec Burks post the OG on anobi trade the Knicks were one of the best teams in the NBA and I’m not saying that was solely because of OG since he actually missed some time shortly after he got to New York but the Knicks were a new team and looked like probably the best Nick team we have seen since the late ’90s but tibs man he found his new three boys the guys to to squeeze every last minute of them on the court those three guys being OG anobi Josh Hart and Jaylen Brunson the three guys would close out the season post Allstar break with all three of them being in the top five minutes played in those final 26 games of the Season even when Games Were Out Of Reach even against some of the tanking teams who were putting out g-league lineups in the final games of the year tibs just could not help himself consistent rotations building chemistry and relying on his main guys is what he’s used to and he’s never going to let anyone tell him otherwise you play for tibs you better be ready to come work for tibs though he took this philosophy to a new level when the Knicks entered the playoffs now granted rotations are always going to be much thinner in the postseason starters are going to be getting the majority of playing time with coaches generally going seven or eight men deep but for tibs what he did was pretty unprecedented in playing Josh har a complete game the whole 48 minutes three times in the postseason that doesn’t include the 53 full minutes he played in game five against the Sixers a complete Game including the 5 minutes of overtime four complete games in a seven game span for Josh Hart that is the most any player has ever played in NBA history over a seven game span regular season or playoffs since the 70s before the NBA ABA merger by game four of the series versus the Pacers after playing his ninth straight 40 plus minute game in the playoffs Josh Hart was spent and with injuries to ogan anobi bogdanovich and of course Randall and Mitchell Robinson Hartwood have one of his worst games of the postseason in a blowout loss to the Pacers in game four and it would later come out that he had suffered an abdominal strain that would impact his play for the rest of the series despite trying to play through the pain on anobi who had played 46 50 45 and 42 minutes respectively in four straight games between the end of the first round in game one versus the Pacers would leave in the third quarter of game two with a left hamstring injury and despite OG’s efforts to return in a series closing game seven after missing the four prior games but right away it was clear OG was not ready to make his return and would be subbed out after playing Just 5 minutes in game seven but on top of all the other injuries the Knicks had sustained in a long grueling season things really hit its head when Brunson had to leave early in game seven after breaking his left hand now here’s the thing freak injuries happen such as what we saw from Jaylen Brunson and the injuries to OG Josh Hart and the season ending injuries to Julius Randall and Mitchell Robinson can be attributed to just the physical game of basketball but you also can’t ignore the fact that we’ve seen this occur in wear and tear of players who have played under Tom thibo and how it’s not only put them out of the lineup at the most crucial times of the season but more importantly how it is negatively impacted their careers long term with often abrupt declines in play and a fast track to early retirement while I love Tom thibo and I believe he’s one of the more gifted basketball minds of this generation his Achilles heel though of overplaying his favorite players is what will eventually run him out of the league as a head coach and for the Knicks while their team might not seem promising and would have had more success had they not running the injury bug the problem is history tells us the injury bug is more likely to occur again with Tom thid at the hell something us Bulls fans just know all too well let me know what you guys think though let me know in the comments as always be sure to subscribe and I’ll see you in the next one

Discussing the future of the New York Knicks and the biggest problem going into next season (*editing credit: Alon Ginz)

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