Knicks have taken to Tom Thibodeau's intense coaching: 'You’ve got to expect greatness from your players'

Tom Thibodeau watched the Knicks get beat on multiple backdoor cuts Wednesday night. He didn’t want to see it happen again.

So he called timeout, pulled his mask down and lit into his players.

“I see my job as to tell them the truth as I see it. The players in this league are great – they can beat you on a great play. But it shouldn’t happen over and over again,” Thibodeau said. “…. To win in this league, that can’t happen.”

Thibodeau’s message was well received.

New York broke the game open against the Bulls in the fourth quarter of a 19-point win.

Thibodeau’s club ended the night in sole possession of fourth place in the Eastern Conference, a game ahead of Atlanta.

Afterward, some of the players were asked about the critique Thibodeau delivered in the first half.

“That's what we need, we need to be coached, we need to be held accountable,” Julius Randle said. “So if we're not doing our job he's gonna tell us about it. And that's how it should be. We should hold each other accountable as well. We have a standard that we set every day, and we have to live up to that. We have to do the right things every day. So we can handle it. We’re not a fragile group. We’ve been doing that all year.”

”We don’t really take it personally,” said RJ Barrett, who seemed to be on the receiving end of Thibodeau’s blow-up. “I was mad at myself, too. I knew before he said anything. It was funny… he actually ran a play for me coming out of timeout. It’s not personal. We’re trying to win the game.”

The Knicks have done a lot of winning in Thibodeau’s first year on the bench. They will clinch a spot in the NBA Play-In tournament with another win or another Bulls loss. They have a strong chance of avoiding the play-in tournament altogether; if they finish sixth or higher, the Knicks would get automatic bid to the postseason.

It would be a remarkable turnaround for a team that went 21-45 a year ago.

When the Knicks were interviewing coaching candidates in the months after that 21-45 season, some agents said privately that Thibodeau would be a bad hire for the Knicks’ young players. They felt that the players would wilt under his intensity.

That theory, of course, has been knocked down again and again this season. Wednesday night – Thibodeau screaming at his players after a defensive miscue – was just the latest piece of contradictory evidence.

“To me that’s coaching,” Barrett said of Thibodeau’s loud critique during the Chicago game. “You’ve got to expect greatness from your players, you’ve got to expect greatness from each other. That’s how you win – you’ve got to hold people accountable.”

Thibodeau’s reputation as a hard-driving coach is well-earned. But it’s interesting to hear Taj Gibson point out why Thibodeau doesn’t fit so neatly into that description.

“He’s personable to the guys who are around – the guys that he’s worked with, the guys that he’s going to battle with every day. If you’re working out or if you’re part of the team, part of the family, that’s all he knows – basketball,” said Gibson, who has played for Thibodeau in Chicago, Minnesota and New York. “He sacrifices a lot day-to-day to focus on basketball, focus on us getting better.

“And you can see it when you’re on the road, you can see it when we’re having dinner meetings or even just having film. How he’s talking to guys and teaching guys. It’s a real tight group. It’s a real family-oriented atmosphere. And I think that’s what’s gets missed about him. He’s grown into a real coach (who is) understanding how to talk to guys.”

Sometimes, yelling is the best way to communicate.