NBA Veteran Defends Knicks’ Tom Thibodeau

Patrick Beverley has built quite an expansive list of enemies in his NBA career, but New York Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau isn’t on it.

Beverley is the latest NBA veteran to stand up for Thibodeau, whose minute methods have been a postseason talking point. Thibodeau critics have partly blamed the Knicks’ myriad of injuries on the head coach excessively relying on his starters but Beverley believes that blaming the New York boss i an easy way out.

“I don’t think injury is based on the minutes you play,” Beverley said on the latest episode of his “Pat Bev Pod.” “But that’s just how Thibs is: you play some minutes, you recover, maybe you don’t practice as much. So you can’t put injury on a coaching staff at all.”

Five players averaged at least 29 minutes a game for the Knicks this season, a figure partly necessitated by numerous injuries that ate away at the primary rotation. Thibodeau nonetheless guided an ever-changing group to 50 wins and the second seed on the Eastern Conference leaderboard, the best marks the Knicks franchise has had in over a decade.

Mere minutes, Beverley argues, aren’t painful.

“Different injuries are different,” the current Milwaukee Buck said. “Some injuries are based on lack of training, some injuries are based on (if) you fall bad, someone lands on you, a non-contact injury, you step wrong, you plant wrong, you spin wrong … (Chris Paul) got a big knee injury. Was it because he played 48 minutes or was it lack of training in the summertime?”

“To put injuries on coaching staffs, to put injuries on teams, I don’t think that’s fair.”

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