Knicks Rookie Impressing Coach Tom Thobodeau

An early grounding hasn’t stopped the New York Knicks’ Golden Eagle from making progress.

Prior to the Knicks’ 109-97 loss to the Houston Rockets on Monday, head coach Tom Thibodeau praised the early outings of Marquette alum Tyler Kolek. The 34th pick of June’s draft earned a somewhat extended opportunity on Monday with the Knicks (3-3) missing Cameron Payne due to hamstring issues.

While rookies often have to work a little harder to earn the attention of the notoriously hard-to-please Thibodeau, the veteran Knicks boss piled on the praise during the pregame.

I really like him a lot,” Thibodeau said, per Stefan Bondy of the New York Post. “I think he’s learning like most young guys coming into the league. He’s a gym rat, works extremely hard, puts a lot of time into film study, extra work, [and] practice.”

“He’s around really good veterans. That helps move it along in terms of how you learn and then a big part of it is the trial and error of getting out there and doing it. So I think he’s putting everything he has into it.”

Kolek has mostly handled metropolitan mop-up duty in the early going but he gained entry into a relatively close game on Monday with Payne down. The rookie got six minutes and sank a three-pointer in the second quarter off a feed from Josh Hart, helping the Knicks cut an early double-figure deficit to five by the halftime break.

Though somewhat undersized, Kolek earned a considerable amount of hype from Knicks observers on draft night: New York traded with Portland to land in his slot and Kolek brought with him a plethora of individual honors earned in Milwaukee. Like Hart and Jalen Brunson before him, Kolek won the Big East’s Men’s Basketball Player of the Year Award in 2023, the same year that saw him win the famed conference tournament’s Most Outstanding Player title at Madison Square Garden.

“Besides the fact that he went to Marquette, I like Tyler a lot,” Brunson, an alum of Big East rival Villanova, said during training camp, per Zach Braziller of the Post. “That’s my guy. I’m not surprised with the way he’s been playing. Just watching him since being here working on his game every day, being in the gym, you put the work in, the results are going to show.”

Time will tell if Kolek gets a similar situation come Wednesday night, when the Knicks end a four-game road trip in Atlanta (7:30 p.m. ET, MSG).

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