Basketball is his only love and his entire life

Tom Thibodeau is dismissed. The news is not particularly surprising. Yesterday I said that if the Knicks want to change, it is the fastest way to replace Thibodeau, but I didn't expect the Knicks to make up their minds so quickly.

When the Nuggets fired Malone, Clippers head coach Tyron Lu joked: "If you look at the current trend, don't win the coach of the year, and don't win the championship, because you will be fired within two years. This is a cruel industry, and Coach Malone can be said to be one of the best coaches in the league." Although it is a joke, it also reveals something. Sometimes leading a team to get good results may not be a good thing. Imagine if the Knicks and the Celtics were defeated until the tiebreak, Thibodeau's position as coach should still be stable.

It was precisely because he scored into the Eastern Conference Finals and then encountered a team that restrained himself and completely exposed his coaching limit that Thibodeau's Knicks career came to an end. The upper limit of a team is often determined by the head coach, and the position of the head coach can be changed at any time.

Tibodeau is a good coach, but it's still a long way to go from greatness. Despite this, he is already one of the best head coaches of the Knicks this century. The 13 coaches ahead of him only won one round of the series in total, and he has won four rounds in the past few years, reaching the Eastern Conference semi-finals twice, and reaching the Eastern Conference Finals this year after 25 years.

The famous coaches in the history of the Knicks include Pat Riley, Van Gundy Jr., and then now Thibodeau. Interestingly, these three people are also in line with each other. Van Gundy Jr. studied with Pat Riley for a few years, and then Thibodeau also worked as an assistant coach under Van Gundy, which was the early years of Yao Ming's career.

The teams coached by Thibodeau are very obvious. The advantage is that it can maintain the lower limit, always has considerable competitiveness, playoff regulars, good defense, and strong team spirit attributes. The disadvantage of Thibodeau is that he has poor on-the-spot command, short rotation, does not like to use new players, and relies on core defenders to attack.

Tibodeau is a representative figure of the old-school coaches in the league today. Of course, another meaning of old-school is that it can no longer keep up with the trend of the times. There is nothing to do about this. For a 67-year-old man who has been a basketball coach for most of his life, it is almost impossible to change the basketball philosophy he has been practicing for the rest of his life.

He loved playing basketball since he was a child and joined the school team in high school, but with his basketball talent, this is already the upper limit he can reach on the court. In the 1980s, after graduating from the University of Thibodeau, he stayed at school as a teaching assistant. In 1989, Thibodeau got the opportunity to be an assistant coach in Minnesota, which started his NBA career. Thibodeau has worked as an assistant coach for 21 years. He has worked as assistant coaches in the Timberwolves, Supersonics, Spurs, 76ers, Knicks, Rockets and Celtics, assisting many famous coaches. His defensive philosophy has built one defensive strong team after another, and the best is the champion team in 2008.

After 21 years of being a league assistant, he finally got a head coaching job in 2010, and then won the Best Coach Award in his first season. Thibodeau led the Bulls to a league-best record of 62 wins and 20 losses, pushing Ross to the altar.

Tibodeau has only been head coaches for three teams so far. During the Bulls, he was dismissed due to conflicts with management, and during the Timberwolves, it was because of internal strife between Butler and Towns and Wiggins. In the Knicks, it is the real way for management to see his ceiling.

Thibodeau's improvement for a brand new team is huge, and he won the Best Coach in his first season in coaching the Bulls and the Knicks. Perhaps with this resume, Thibodeau can get his next coaching job. Of course, Thibodeau's NBA coaching career may end here.

In the NBA, no one dares to say that he loves basketball more than Thibodeau. Thibodeau's love for basketball runs through his entire life. Since he first touched basketball in his childhood, basketball is the whole of his life. Many people know that Thibodeau is still unmarried and focuses on basketball.

He had a fiancée, but Thibodeau eventually gave up the marriage. Thibodeau explained: "If I were to become a basketball coach, there would be no room for women in my life."

Ross once said: "I have never met such a focused head coach. He is not doing anything else, he doesn't even have time to watch TV. Thiboddeau won't do anything except basketball. It doesn't matter what time you call him, basketball is all his life."

Thibodeau is truly doing one thing in his life, and does it very well. His hobby is his profession, and his profession is his life. So in a sense, you can also understand that he is paranoid on the court. Only paranoid can such a person make him so determined to do only one thing.

Interestingly, Thibodeau and Carlisle's coaching resumes were both started in 1989, when Carlisle, who had just retired at the age of 30, also chose to become an assistant coach. In 1997, Carlisle joined the Pacers coaching staff, and in 1995, Thibodeau joined the Knicks coaching staff.

When the Pacers and the Knicks met in the Eastern Conference Finals for two consecutive years in 1999 and 2000, Thibodeau and Carlisle served on two teams as assistant coaches. 25 years later, in the Eastern Conference Finals, both of the former assistant coaches became head coaches standing on the sidelines, continuing their grudges.

In the showdown of Carlisle, Thibodeau was convinced. When Thibodeau had to take Shamet and Wright for a long rotation against the Pacers, perhaps he also felt a trace of loneliness abandoned by the times..

After being fired by the Knicks, the sense of the moment that Thibodeau was abandoned by the times became stronger and stronger. Can this alliance still have a ship carrying Thibodeau? Can this little old man who only loves basketball all his life still stay here?