The Knicks entered the Eastern Conference Finals again after 25 years. What did Thibodeau do right?

The last time the Knicks reached the Eastern Conference Finals dates back to 2000. At that time, the only All-Star in their lineup, Alan Houston, was 28 years old, and the team spirit Patrick Ewing was 37 years old. Van Gundy, who led the Knicks into the Eastern Conference Final that year, was the best coach in the hearts of Knicks fans for a long time.

Now, Ewing is 62 years old, "China Investment King" Alan Houston is 53 years old, and Van Gundy Jr. hasn't been a head coach for a long time.

However, another man took the torch of Van Gundy Jr. in New York, and he brought a group of young men under 30 to the highest stage in the East after 25 years.

But 3 months ago, not many people were optimistic that Thibodeau's team could enter the Eastern Conference Finals, and I was one of them.

At that time, they were still a soft-footed shrimp in high-end games. After all, the Knicks' record against the top three teams in the previous league was 0 wins and 10 losses. If they want to reach the highest stage in the East, they have to step past one of the two Eastern giants, the Cavaliers and the Celtics, but they are both opponents they have not beaten in the regular season.

The key to winning: defense

At that time, I pointed out that the Knicks were weak in playing with strong teams because Thibodeau did a few things well. The first thing is defense.

Although there are a group of defensive players, the Knicks did not allow Bridges, Anunobi and Hart to play enough oppressiveness, and often they "do whatever their opponent wants." And the result is that when you give it to the right phone, he can only accept it...

During the regular season, the teams who played against the Knicks made 36.7% of their three-point shooting percentage, and only 4 teams were worse than them, and none of these 4 teams made the playoffs.

But entering the playoffs, the Knicks' three-point defense level reached the upper and middle level. Moreover, they turned the Celtics, who had three-pointers in the league, into a squib. In the 6-game series, the Celtics had three-point shooting percentages of not exceeding 30% in three games, and in the first game, they made a tragic record of 15 of 60 shots.

The Knicks in the regular season are prone to the situation where they can make a shot, maybe they are tired, or they are unable to rotate... and this situation has been greatly reduced in the playoffs.

Take the Celtics as a sample:

Facing the Knicks in the regular season, 31.8% of their long shots were open positions, and 23.7% of their proportion was large open positions. Moreover, the three-point shooting percentages in these two states are 43.4% and 46.3% respectively, which is a situation where you can grasp it by giving opportunities.

In the playoffs, although the Celtics still have similar proportions of large open positions, they can also grasp it relatively (the shooting percentage is 43.5%). But the percentage of shots in the open state has dropped to 29.5%, which is not much at first glance, but based on their open three-point shooting percentage is only 28.6%, you can probably understand what the Knicks have done on defense.

In fact, the "vacancies" on this data column is not the real vacant position. This is just a convenient classification term.

The Celtics failed to grasp these "open spots" and took action. The reason was that the Knicks players took more intensity before they made shots, making their actual shooting shooting far away from their comfort zone.

Just like the next round of the last attack in G2, Tatum failed in the last attack, it was actually Mitchell Robinson who tried his best to block his shooting space even if he was blocked by the screen. Forced him to plunge into the crowd, resulting in the final mistake.

Tibodeau reinforced the defensive system in the playoffs, and this matter is very important. This adds the resilience to the Knicks to resist stress in situations like extremely low fault tolerance in the playoffs.

This resilience allows the Knicks to balance out the power with any team, including a team with a stronger paper lineup than themselves.

You should know that during the regular season, the Knicks collapsed in the fourth quarter more than once, and they seemed to be unable to play under pressure at all. Data shows that they scored 23rd in the league in the fourth quarter and 25th in the net score. It's totally at the level of a lottery team.

But during the playoffs, we have to give a thumbs up on the mental toughness of the Knicks players. They won the first round with the Pistons' old-fashioned iron-blooded basketball with their strong fighting spirit. In the second round, they did not retreat under the pressure of the new king - G1 and G2 completed 20+ away reversals in two consecutive games, and G4 also won the match point when they were 14 points behind.

Including the 21-0 turn against the Pistons in the last quarter of the first round, the Knicks have achieved four heart-warming reversals so far.

The key to win 2: "Don't put the eggs in the same basket"

And while everyone praises Brunson for always being able to stand up at critical moments, I also have to put the water on the right and give some praise to the person who planned the layout.

In fact, Thibodeau has learned in failure. Last year, the Knicks fell in front of the Eastern Conference Finals, and many people were sick enough. "Will Thibodeau only let Brunson play singles?"

And whenever Brunson is silent (even the king of the last quarter is always tired), the Knicks will wither.

The Knicks lost four games last year in the Eastern Conference semi-finals, Brunson averaged only 23 points per game, with a shooting percentage of 38.4%...

Everyone understands the principle of "Don't put all the eggs in the same basket". The addition of Towns and Bridges also gave Thibodeau enough resources to add this to the Knicks' tactical code..

Last year, in addition to Brunson, the one who could trust Thibodeau the most was the 33-year-old veteran Burks... And this year, they have both Brunson, who averaged 9.9 points in the final quarter, and Bridges, who had 4.9 points and Towns, who had 4.7 points.

So you can see that in the entire series of defeating the Celtics, not only Brunson killed people at critical moments, but Bridges also contributed winning goals and defense in different games.

The key to winning 3: Thibodeau has been evolving

Thibodeau has been evolving, which has been ignored by many people.

When he was coaching in Minnesota in 2018, Thibodeau once said, "People are sometimes prone to falling into cognitive misunderstandings, and winning is the first priority."

Since then, Thibodeau has distilled a purer pragmatic philosophy from his past coaching experience and used it as an evolutionary label.

But if you only think about Thibodeau's basketball from a specific perspective, it is easy to fall into the fallacy that he has fallen into.

For example, the cliché "serf basketball". Is Thibodeau not sure that the starter needs a rest? He is a tyrant, but not a fool.

He knew very well that he could not win and rotate on a team with an average salary of only US$2.38 million on the bench. So he could only stick to the John Wooden-like rotational idea of ​​"the best player to play" and said, "The Knicks don't need to take a rotation rest."

They do not need to take turns to rest, but they do not have space to rest.

Once Thibodeau gets the space for employment, he will be willing to adapt to the times and adjust his strategy. When Mitchell Robinson returned in the final stage of the regular season, it did not drag down the offensive rhythm as expected. When Miro was on the court, the Knicks only scored 1.3 points less per 100 rounds of offense. But he can help the team lose 13.4 points less.

So, Thibodeau gave him enough playing time and found a balance for the Knicks' rotation. Throughout the playoffs, Towns doesn't need to be exhausted anymore because Miro can play the role of a substitute center. His two sets of lineups that replaced Towns, won a total of 20 points. And the twin towers he and Towns partnered with are also positive returns. In fact, Thibodeau was once very good at coaching substitutes: in the 2011/12 season when he was coach of the Bulls, all three of his substitutes were selected for the No. 6 man nomination list. In his first year in New York, he used Quickley, who averaged 11.4 points per game and Derek Rose, who averaged 14.3 points in the connection.

So, don't be blinded by the so-called "serf basketball". Putting aside the playful memes of Donkeys, Thibodeau is actually a very excellent coach.

He has been improving his coaching ability with the evolution of the times, and this is not just about drawing a few tactics during the pause between the quarters, but also more complex considerations: such as building the team system, polishing the fighting spirit and character of the players, and cultivating the winning culture...

Some people say that Thibodeau is just like the main player in the regular season. Is it actually to make players get used to the confrontation and consumption of the playoffs? Just like the saying we have heard since childhood, "Take normal as the college entrance examination, and the college entrance examination will be easier."

As early as two thousand years ago, Emperor Taizong of Tang proposed how to be a leader: "Learn from the best, you can only be the middle; when you learn from the best, you can be the lower one." Human nature is like this. Slutty and laziness are the norm. In this way, only by using high standards to restrain others and oneself are restrained.

When Thibodeau asked his players to play every game as the last game, he also devoted his life to basketball and became a basketball madman. You know, he once called his former former subordinate Taji Gibson at 3 a.m. and asked him if he could come back to play for the Knicks, who were full of wounded soldiers...

From this, it can be seen that Thibodeau's life is basically only thinking about one thing - how to win.

So, I can understand now why the moment when the Celtics fell 34 points in the final quarter, replaced the unused substitute and announced their surrender. Thibodeau also called Anunobi from the bench and let him play the remaining games with Brunson...

Although according to the logic of pragmatism, after he had determined to achieve the goal of "winning", he should have replaced all the main players. But in Thibodeau's heart, he knew very well that "winning this game" had not completed the work. He was also reminding the players that the playoff journey is not over yet, everyone still needs to wind up tightly, and the work has not been completed.

Perhaps he will relax a little only when Thibodeau and his teammates hold up the O'Brien Cup, which symbolizes the highest honor, right?

But maybe in the early morning of the next day, he would suddenly get up from the bed, and he didn't even sleep. Thinking about how to find better players in your mind? How to continue to improve the team's offensive and defensive efficiency? Is there any way to continue to win more goals? Until the next time we hit the championship podium...

This is the Thibodeau we know, right?