Tom Thibodeau shall be reunited with one among his mentors at Madison Square Garden.
With Rick Pitino taking the job at St. John’s and scheduled quickly for an introductory press convention, Monday was a chance for Thibodeau to allude to his halcyon days as a younger Ivy League assistant.
“Just really, really happy for him. I think he’s been a great coach wherever he’s been,” Thibodeau instructed reporters earlier than his Knicks confronted the Timberwolves. “So he’s been through a lot. When I was a young coach, I used to go watch his practices at Providence. So he’s a good man, great coach, and I know he’ll do a great job at St. John’s.”
When Thibodeau was an assistant at Harvard within the late 80s, he traveled to Providence — roughly an hour from Cambridge — to watch Pitino’s practices and take up the teachings of the trademark aggressive protection.
It wasn’t solely a useful classroom since Pitino’s Friars went to the Final Four in 1987, but additionally the fitting surroundings to forge the connection that first introduced Thibodeau to New York. It’s the place he first met Jeff Van Gundy, who was Pitino’s graduate assistant at Providence.
Pitino left the Friars to teach the Knicks. Years later, Van Gundy and Thibodeau had been on the Knicks bench collectively.
On Monday, Pitino reportedly accepted a six-year deal to teach the Red Storm, giving this system a high-profile alternative for the fired Mike Anderson. The hiring figures to offer a lift to the lagging native faculty scene, and one other draw at MSG alongside the surging Knicks below Thibodeau.
There’s mutual respect between the coaches as properly.
Before Thibodeau was employed because the Knicks head coach in 2020, Pitino recalled watching a Thibodeau observe and gave him “the highest compliment” in an interview with the Daily News.
“He was meticulously organized, almost scary organized, and he reminded me of Bill Belichick,” Pitino stated. “I’ve spent a lot of time with Belichick and Thibodeau’s got a lot of the same mannerisms, the same attention to detail that Belichick has. And that’s about the highest compliment I could give someone.”
Thibodeau has no less than partially resurrected the Knicks in three seasons, guiding the franchise to each of its solely successful seasons during the last decade. He’s additionally bucked his fame as defense-only coach — very like Pitino modified narratives over his lengthy profession — and has New York’s offense buzzing this season.
“What happens in this business is everybody wants to pigeonhole you,” Nuggets coach Mike Malone, additionally a former Knicks assistant, stated about Thibodeau. “They stated Tom Thibodeau was a defensive coach and he doesn’t know there’s a scoreboard and that you must rating factors on this league. You have a look at [the Knicks] stats, you have a look at their effectivity, their offense has been terrific. They’re top-5 in offense and outdoors the top-10 in defensive effectivity proper now.
“So I think it’s — coaches change. They get better, they adjust. We ask our players to get better. And all the good coaches are not afraid to look at themselves in the mirror and challenge themselves to be better.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com