Knicks fire Tom Thibodeau: New York moves on from coach after Eastern Conference finals exit

The New York Knicks have fired head coach Tom Thibodeau, the team announced Tuesday. The decision comes three days after the Knicks were eliminated in the Eastern Conference finals by the Indiana Pacers in six games. The Knicks entered the season hoping to win their first championship since 1973 after spending six first-round picks, a first-round swap, Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo to acquire Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns in the offseason. However, despite their best postseason run since 2000, they ultimately failed to reach the NBA Finals despite having home-court advantage in the Eastern Conference finals.

Thibodeau won 56.5% of his regular-season games as Knicks head coach, going 226-174 overall over five seasons.

“Our organization is singularly focused on winning a championship for our fans. This pursuit led us to the difficult decision to inform Tom Thibodeau that we’ve decided to move in another direction,” Knicks president Leon Rose said in a press release. “We can’t thank Tom enough for pouring his heart and soul into each and every day of being the New York Knicks head coach. He led us not only with class and professionalism for the past five seasons, but also to tremendous success on the court with four playoff berths and four playoff series victories. Ultimately, we made the decision we feel is best for our organization moving forward. Tom will always be a part of our Knicks family and we truly wish him nothing but the best in the future.”

The Knicks hired Thibodeau in 2020 to take over a team that had not reached the playoffs in the seven previous seasons. He proceeded to immediately change that, winning Coach of the Year for a 2020-21 campaign that saw the team post a 41-31 record. The Knicks missed the playoffs in 2022, but reached the second round in consecutive seasons afterward thanks to free-agent addition Jalen Brunson. With Brunson in place, the Knicks felt as though they had a foundational piece and were ready to go all-in.

Bridges, who played collegiately with Brunson and fellow Knick Josh Hart at Villanova, was supposed to arrive for the 2024-25 season as a second 3-and-D star alongside OG Anunoby. He wound up having his worst 3-point shooting season since his rookie year and declining considerably on defense. Towns proved to be a defensive issue in his own right despite thriving on offense.

Meanwhile, years of playing his starters more than any other coach began to catch up to Thibodeau. Bridges said publicly in March that playing so many minutes sometimes isn’t “fun on the body.” Yet Thibodeau did not relent and, partially as a result, the Knicks never developed a reliable bench. 

They didn’t experiment with nearly enough lineups, either. One major problem that developed throughout the season was Hart’s poor shooting. The Knicks couldn’t successfully run pick-and-roll between Brunson and Towns because defenses were putting their centers on Hart so that they could serve as extra help-defenders. The Knicks could have countered this by inserting a shooter into Hart’s place in the lineup, with Deuce McBride frequently mentioned as a candidate. But the starters minus Hart played only 82 regular-season possessions with McBride. All other Knicks combined played only 91 possessions alongside the four-man unit of Brunson, Towns, Anunoby and Bridges. Hart played just under 1,900 with his fellow starters.

Tom Thibodeau coaching record with Knicks

The Knicks entered the 2025 postseason as a No. 3 seed, the highest seed any Knicks team had earned in more than a decade. It wasn’t always easy, but they managed to get by the Detroit Pistons in six games in the first round and then stun the defending champion Boston Celtics in six games in the second. With Boston defeated and the 64-win Cleveland Cavaliers eliminated on the other side of the bracket, New York had its clearest path to the Finals in decades.

Those hopes were dashed by the eventual Eastern Conference champion Pacers, and much of what went wrong in that series has been laid at Thibodeau’s feet. Despite Josh Hart suggesting a starting lineup change in private during the Boston series, Thibodeau stuck with the most-used lineup in the NBA for the first two games against Indiana. 

The Knicks lost both at home, and their starters lost their minutes by 29 points. That unit was ultimately outscored by 31 points in the postseason. They were on the floor as the Knicks stunningly blew a nine-point lead in the final minute of Game 1, the loss that may have cost them the series. Thibodeau adjusted as the series progressed, even getting good minutes out of seldom-seen reserves Landry Shamet and Delon Wright, but that led to further questions about why it took two losses for him to use his bench in the first place. In the end, New York lost a winnable series in six games.

Thibodeau — who signed a contract extension last summer that was set to run through the 2027-28 season — leaves New York as the fourth-winningest coach in Knicks history behind Red Holzman, Joe Lapchick and Jeff Van Gundy. Now the Knicks re-enter the coaching market with a strong roster and a proven front office. 

The job should be fairly attractive, and with so much coaching turnover around the league over the past few years, there is no shortage of qualified candidates. But the bar is high here. Thibodeau came six wins short of the championship. Anyone replacing him will take the job knowing that the Knicks are in championship-or-bust mode.