Another birthday, another basketball game.
So goes the life of Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau, who celebrated his 66h birthday Wednesday night by coaching his team to a 109-94 win over the Houston Rockets at Madison Square Garden. Thibodeau has no idea how many games he’s coached over the years on his birthday, but he said before the game that there’s nothing he would rather be doing on his big day.
“Even going back to being a kid and playing, it always seemed like basketball was a part of it,” Thibodeau said.
Thibodeau didn’t get into what kind of present he would want for his birthday. The one he really deserves to get from Knicks management is a contract extension as he is by far the best coach the franchise has seen in a generation.
Thibodeau, who picked up his 500th career win Saturday, is the 13th coach to head the Knicks since Jeff Van Gundy stepped down in 2002 with a 248-172 record. All but two of those coaches — Thibodeau and Mike Woodson — had losing records with the team.
Even worse than just losing, a number of those coaches brought additional dysfunction to the team, including a coach who was involved in a public sexual harassment lawsuit, a coach who was caught liking a pornographic Twitter post and a coach who missed a team practice after getting punched by a player from another team whose estranged wife he was dating.
Sigh. It’s so much easier to have a basketball junkie for a coach, a guy who likes to celebrate his birthday by drawing up plays, scowling at officials and sparring gently with reporters. And it’s so much more fun to watch a team that has taken on his personality — a team that works hard, holds themselves accountable and is obsessed with winning every game — than it was to watch most of the last 21 years of disappointment.
Basketball coaches all like to talk about establishing a culture, but we’ve seen it actually happen under Thibodeau.
Thibodeau took over a team that had gone 38-110 over its past two seasons. He…
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