The Knicks didn’t foul it up with Tom Thibodeau extension

Don’t take my word for it. Listen to Jalen Brunson:

“Thibs is the kind of coach, you hear his voice all the time because he’s always talking about the right thing to do, the right way to play, the right pace, the right defense,” Brunson said last winter. “After a while, that voice becomes your voice.”

Listen to Josh Hart:

“Fifty wins, second seed with an injured roster for half the season and not a Coach of the Year candidate …” Hart wrote on social media last spring.

Listen to this longtime NBA insider: “I congratulated Tom when I heard the Knicks extended him [Wednesday], but what I really should have done was congratulate the Knicks for not [fouling] this up with one of the two or three best coaches in the NBA today.”

The contract extension Tom Thibodeau agreed to that’ll keep him in the fold for four more years, through his 70th birthday, was one more piece of good news for the Knicks in what’s been an abundant summer so far. This keeps the leader of the band leading the band for the foreseeable future, and that’s going to be celebrated inside the walls of the Knicks’ locker room for sure.

“I’m not sure what kind of player doesn’t like to play for him,” Donte DiVincenzo said last spring. “It makes you wonder if they don’t like to play for anyone.”

And yes, it’s not a coincidence that these three provide high approval ratings for Thibodeau, since all three played their college ball for Jay Wright. Now Wright may be more telegenic, and maybe he laughs a little more, but as a coach he was every bit the taskmaster Thibodeau is. Maybe it just came across better in Armani business suits instead of Adidas track suits. Or maybe Thibodeau will simply forever be trapped by easy narratives.

“The same fans who bitch about how Tom allegedly wears his players out,” the NBA insider said, “are the same fans — the exact same ones — who go on social media and gripe about load management and multiple guys getting nights off and teams who cruise and teams who tank and how all of that is destroying the NBA. You know what? You can’t have it both ways.”

There’s never been a question about which way Thibodeau prefers, and he’s been blessed to work for a man in Leon Rose who has built a roster stuffed with players cast in his image. Players like that have much in common. They care foremost about winning. They don’t gripe about minutes (either too many or too few) or touches. And they aren’t included in the silly annual percentages of anonymous players who claim they’d never willingly play for him.

That’s never bothered Thibodeau. Who knows if he’s ever found the time in the past 35 years to actually watch “Hoosiers,” but if he did, he’d surely enjoy this one from Coach Norman Dale: “My team is on the floor.”

Thibodeau’s team is at the Garden. Thibodeau’s team has reminded New York City that it is a basketball city at its very heart, that it’s a Knicks town to its core. The past two springs have been reminders of just how beautiful and bountiful it is in Midtown Manhattan when the weather turns warm and the basketball turns essential.

If you celebrate these players — and you should celebrate these players, after waiting a couple of decades for them to show up — then you ought to celebrate the coach, too.

Not everyone does. And it’s not just the work volume he commands. When the Knicks lose two or three in a row, the critics rise like weeds through a crack in the sidewalk, they bypass slumping or banged-up players and set their aim straight on the coach. They’ll do it again this year, of course. The extension gives him financial security, but there is no armor for the slings and arrows his critics will launch at him.

“It makes you wonder,” the NBA insider said, “if these people remember what it was like watch games coached by David Fizdale and Derek Fisher and Kurt Rambis.”

Yes. It does. It also makes you wonder if those folks truly appreciate where the Knicks are now compared they were on the day in the COVID summer of 2020 when Thibodeau first came aboard. Here’s a sense of it: They were 595-931 for their previous 1,526 games, had won exactly one playoff series in that stretch. Under Thibodeau it’s 175-143, and two playoff wins in two years.

Congratulate Thibodeau, sure, or at least wait until the first tough loss at the Garden to castigate him. But congratulate the Knicks, too, for not [fouling] this up.