Instead of wearing on the Knicks, coach Tom Thibodeau is enhancing them (2024)

Tom Thibodeau would not stop repeating the same three words: Corey f—ing Kispert.

Kispert, the Washington Wizards sharpshooter, had just walked all over Thibodeau’s New York Knicks in the first half of a late-season game in 2023. A player averaging 11 points entering the night had already dropped 20 through two quarters.

With the Knicks down eight at the half, their head coach barged into the locker room.

“Corey f—ing Kispert!” Thibodeau bellowed. “Corey f—ing Kispert! Corey f—ing Kispert.”

He kept going, revving himself up.

“He said it like five times. … Every one just progressively got louder,” Josh Hart recalled.

Then Thibodeau reached his breaking point.

“How does Corey Kispert,” he crescendoed, “turn into Michael Jordan?!”

Never before has a question been so obviously rhetorical.

To this day, Knicks players reminisce about the Kispert speech. They go into a gravelly timbre, attempting to impersonate Thibodeau’s baritone and release the three famed words, a bit they rarely get through without laughing.

The second half of that Wizards game turned what could have been tragedy into comedy. Thibodeau, as he does each halftime, showed the group clips of what it had done wrong. Come the third quarter, the players tweaked the defense on Kispert, who went for only nine points in the final two periods of a Knicks comeback victory.

Thibodeau’s intensity is his reputation — enough so that many people around the league prefer to avoid it. On Monday, The Athletic released its 2024 anonymous NBA player poll, canvassing responses to questions such as “Who’s the MVP?” and “Which team will win the title this season?” Thibodeau, 66, came out on top in one category: “Which current coach, aside from your own, would you least want to play for?” The results weren’t close. Thibodeau received 47 percent of the vote. Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers finished a distant second, collecting only 9 percent.

It’s the second consecutive season that Thibodeau has won the category in a landslide. And yet, he’s having success on the floor.

The Knicks, who earned the No. 2 seed and currently lead the Philadelphia 76ers 1-0 in their first-round NBA playoff series, continue to roll with Thibodeau at the helm. They have now reached the postseason in three of Thibodeau’s four seasons with the organization. A supposed effect has followed the coach around, claiming he wears down his players, either mentally or physically.

But if that’s true, it’s not showing.

In 2023-24, New York jolted to its first 50-win season in 11 years, a performance that came amid serious injuries to three starters: Julius Randle, Mitchell Robinson and OG Anunoby. Once again, the Knicks have carried themselves with a distinct energy: They might not play well but they will always play hard.

So why does Thibodeau continue to soar to the top of this poll?

“Because nobody’s in our locker room and everybody that talks is on the outside of our locker room. They don’t know what goes on,” Donte DiVincenzo said. “Thibs is a great leader. He’s a great head coach and he’s done an amazing job this year not only dealing with injuries in and out of the lineup but also getting the best out of every single player on our team.

“I’m having a career year. Different guys on the team are having career years.”

50 wins, 2nd seed with an injuried roster for half the season and not a Coach Of The Year candidate…. https://t.co/eSW4wT9H0s

— Josh Hart (@joshhart) April 22, 2024

Heading into Game 1 of the playoffs, the Knicks repainted the walls in the hallway that leads to their locker room. By the entrance now is a motif with three quick-hitting phrases:

NO QUIT
ALL GRIT
CLOSE-KNIT

These are Thibodeau’s principles. The front office has gone out of its way to acquire personalities that can mesh with them.

Some are like DiVincenzo, who was one of the league’s most improved players during his first season in New York and wants a coach who can teach. He, like everyone else, sees Thibodeau already at the practice facility when he arrives and knows his coach is still there when he leaves.

Jalen Brunson prefers Thibodeau’s passion. The coach, who he’s known since he was a little kid when his father was playing for the Knicks and Thibodeau was an assistant coach there, is one of the reasons Brunson chose to sign with New York two years ago.

Hart simply enjoys a good holler.

“When he yells, I think it’s funny,” Hart said.

Hart recalls giggling through the famed Kispert rant, turning away because he was unable to keep a straight face. At times, he can’t hold in a cackle, even when his coach is right in his grill, a move he pulled once when his college coach, Jay Wright, was ripping into him.

He says Wright didn’t appreciate it. Thibodeau, for the most part, lets it go.

“The funniest thing about Thibs: He’ll be calm. He’ll say something and he’ll make himself mad,” Hart said, chuckling as he entered an impression. “So he’ll be like, ‘Chicago, we got outrebounded — AND WE’RE F—ING P—— BECAUSE WE GOT OUTREBOUNDED!’ But it’s funny because he makes himself (mad). That’s the funniest thing when he starts calm.”

But Hart’s inability to take life seriously is not the only reason Thibodeau’s fervor keeps him loose.

Hart just completed one of his best-ever NBA seasons, jockeying around multiple positions and locking in as a starting wing for a 50-win team. And he’s not the only one balling out.

Brunson is having a career season, as is DiVincenzo, as is Miles “Deuce” McBride. Robinson has developed into a defensive force under Thibodeau. Randle turned into an All-Star under his tutelage. Precious Achiuwa has uncovered new discipline. Isaiah Hartenstein has reached new levels, too.

“I don’t think if there’s really any coaches in the league that defensively game plan, be prepared for whoever comes (like Thibodeau does),” Hartenstein said. “I’ve been with a lot of coaches and me going into every game, I think I’m the best prepared, just knowing what the other guys are doing. I think that’s kinda what makes him special. You come in the facility, no matter what time of day, he’s gonna be in there.”

Thibodeau obsesses over details far more minute than defensive coverages or substitution patterns, including how to handle daylight savings.

On the mornings of game days, NBA teams host shootarounds, sessions that outline the upcoming opponent’s top players and most prominent actions. The rule of thumb is that if it’s a 7 p.m. tipoff, then shootaround is in play. But if the game is set to begin before 7 p.m., then there is no shootaround that morning.

In mid-March, Thibodeau met the ultimate predicament.

The Knicks had a 7 p.m. home game on a Sunday against the 76ers, which would usually call for a shootaround, but at 2 a.m. that day, the clocks were set to spring forward an hour, taking away 60 minutes of sleep and making it feel like a 6 p.m. tip on the body.

Leading into the game, Thibodeau scrutinized whether the Knicks should have a shootaround that morning. Eventually, he decided it was best to skip it.

That night, the Knicks lost 79-73, the NBA’s only instance this season of two teams scoring fewer than 80 points in the same game. According to people within the Knicks, Thibodeau was convinced that canceling shootaround was the difference, grumbling about it for some time afterward.

“You kinda prepare (in the regular season) like it’s already the playoffs,” Hartenstein said. “If you watch the playoffs, guys are very keyed in on what everyone does. So we’ll have a shootaround. We’ll go through what they run, what we wanna take away. (It’s) just him being prepared and then when the playoffs come, it’s so much easier to transition into being in the playoffs because the whole season that’s how we were kinda preparing for each team.”

Knicks players say their practices aren’t as strenuous as most on the outside assume. Especially during the second half of the season, when the schedule became more debilitating and New York dealt with a wave of injuries, Thibodeau opted against physical fatigue.

When the Knicks meet, they say the emphasis is more mental.

They will dissect coverages. Thibodeau also runs pre-practice practices, encouraging the young and new players to arrive at the facility beforehand to go over plays. He drills them over and over and over. Get it wrong, and you’re doing it again. They refer to themselves as “the early group.”

At any given moment, even when he bumps into someone in the hallway, Thibodeau could give a pop quiz to one of his guys about what to do on any given play. Players must focus more on their minds than their legs.

“This notion that he runs us into the ground at practice, that’s bull—-,” DiVincenzo said leading into the final game of the regular season. “Thibs is an amazing leader and he’s done an amazing job this year. I can’t say enough about what he’s helped me accomplish individually, but also look at what he’s done. We’re on the verge of possibly having 50 wins and two of our top three guys have been out for most of the year.”

Brunson knew what he was getting into when he signed with the Knicks.

He first met Thibodeau when he was too young to remember, sometime in the 1990s when his father, who is now on Thibodeau’s staff, played with the Knicks and Thibodeau was an assistant under Jeff Van Gundy. A decade later, when the Chicago Bulls appointed Thibodeau to his first head coaching gig, they reunited. Thibodeau hired the elder Brunson as an assistant. Jalen, only in middle school at the time, moved with his family to Chicago.

That’s when Thibodeau first began to advise his friend’s son.

“He’s still the same guy. … He made jokes. But when it comes to basketball, he’s all in. He’s locked in,” Brunson said. “He always told me to keep working hard, all the stuff that he says. And as I got older, as I got better, he would say more things that would be involved with actual basketball concepts and stuff. But when I say he’s the same, he’s the exact same.”

That’s just what Brunson, who’s not searching for an ego boost, wants. The same goes for DiVincenzo and Hartenstein and others in what has become a tight locker room. Hart says he’s never played for a coach who cares more, though he places Wright at a comparable level.

Of course, it helps to have a bunch of personalities who can accept a tongue-lashing about Corey Kispert and respond by absorbing the lesson, implementing second-half changes and then turning it into a joke for the next season.

“I think part of it is just like how we are, the character of the team,” Hart said. “We all play extremely hard, but we’re all goofy and clowns also. So it’s like, we play extremely hard but when that stuff happens, it’s funny. I will look at Donte or Precious or Jalen and they’re like — it’s just one of those things like, we get it and we’re gonna do it, but it’s just funny.”