Knicks coaching search exposes lack of a plan post-Tom Thibodeau

Possible new bumper sticker for cars owned or leased by current NBA general managers:

“Honk if the Knicks have asked for permission to speak with your coach.”

No kidding, now that the Knicks have been turned down by the Mavericks, Rockets and Timberwolves and Hawks and Lord-knows-who-else, you’re surprised that Leon Rose doesn’t make a play for Rick Carlisle even while Carlisle is coaching the Pacers in the NBA Finals. Maybe the Jets should have inquired about Andy Reid or Nick Sirianni before settling on Aaron Glenn as their new coach.

It is an absolute fact that there is no rush for the Knicks to find a new coach, even though there was this rather gigantic rush to get rid of Tom Thibodeau about twenty minutes after the Knicks lost to the Pacers. That’s not the problem with Rose at the moment, even now that formal interviews have been set up with Mike Brown and Taylor Jenkins. The problem is Rose apparently being under the impression that teams all over the league would be dying to let him play poach the coach, with an approach that can best be described this way:

I’ll have what they’re having.

None of this changes the work that Rose has done since taking over the basketball operation at the Garden. Maybe he’ll find a way to swing a deal for Giannis or even Kevin Durant and nobody will care that he was mean to Thibodeau. Before Rose took over, the Knicks had spent most of this century being as bad and as poorly run as any team in the sport. Now they make the playoffs every year, and just came within a couple of wins of making it back to the NBA Finals for the first time in a quarter-century. And fire their coach, anyway. And sit back while leaks and lousiness out of the Garden and the locker room — and the past — make you wonder how in the world Thibodeau’s Knicks made it as far as they did.

So we discover that Rose, who we so often treat like the smartest guy in the room, really had no plan once the plan was to bag Tom Thibodeau other than throwing up one prayer after another. Show me another time in the history of New York sports when there was a vacancy involving a big job like this and the guy conducting the search for a replacement tried to interview a bunch of guys under contract somewhere else.

The Knicks wanted to make a run at Jason Kidd, perhaps thinking they could trade whatever draft picks Rose has left to the Mavs for Kidd the way the Bucks traded draft picks when Kidd wanted to bail on the Nets. And we heard almost immediately, and were supposed to be dizzy with excitement, that Kidd was as interested in the Knicks, one of his old teams, as the Knicks were in him. If that is true, it means that of the three head coaching jobs Kidd has had in the NBA, he was ready to jump ship for a second time as soon as a better deal and a better situation was out there for him. What a guy.

Are the Knicks going to come out of this with a good coach? They are. And the new guy will be taking over a team that is set up to be one of the best in the Eastern Conference again, even though it is a pretty funny narrative these days hearing that the Knicks are poised to be kings of the hill in the Eastern Conference because the Celtics are going to be in trouble without Jayson Tatum. And they sure will be. But somebody tell me where the Pacers are going, or the Cavaliers, whether the Cavaliers got waxed in the playoffs by the Pacers or not. And you know who else would like a word while all this big title talk about the Eastern Conference is going on here? A young and talented Pistons team that turned their first round playoff series against the Knicks into a rock fight.

When the time comes, here is the story that the Garden will sell you, with or without more cheesy leaks about Thibodeau and his style and the way he may have hurt some delicate feelings with some of his players (hi there, Mikal Bridges): They have upgraded their coaching situation, even if they’re going to have some trouble convincing their fans that the end of the star search is either Brown or Jenkins.

For now, one thing continues to be crystal clear:

Leon Rose thinks he team-presidented a lot better than Tom Thibodeau coached this season, which means Rose has convinced himself that a Knicks bench thinner than copy paper assembled itself. Yet when a younger, faster, deeper, better Pacers team beat the Knicks in the conference finals — if you believe this was some kind of massive upset, you also believe the Earth is flat — Rose decided that couldn’t possibly have been his fault. So it became Thibodeau’s. It’s why this looks like the old days with the permanent government of James Dolan’s Garden. It was probably inevitable that Jimmy was going to get tired of Thibodeau being the pregame and postgame and sideline face of the Knicks. Thibs just got bagged sooner rather than later.

Are the Knicks set up for the immediate future? You bet, and good for Rose getting them to this point. But do they look bad right now? Yeah, they do. And Knick fans are reminded that Dolan being one of the owners in town who’s never won a thing — in two sports — hasn’t happened in a vacuum, and that means whether Rose was a smart hire or not.

We’ll never know what the final and determining factor was with Thibodeau because both Rose and Dolan hide behind press releases and largely treat the media with contempt, Dolan especially. Again: They’ll get a good coach eventually because this is New York and whomever gets the job will imagine what it will be like for him — in New York — if he’s the one to finally put the Knicks back on top.

But the spring of ’25 for the Knicks wasn’t supposed to end like this, not with the way the Knicks carried the city for so much of that spring, when they became the best basketball story, really, since the 1990s.

Know this, whether you loved Tom Thibodeau or not: He looks better than his old bosses do right now. Just get ready for when those bosses name his replacement. They’re going to want you to believe he’s the basketball version of Joe Torre.

ALCARAZ-SINNER WAS THE BEST OF SPORTS, LOOK OUT FOR SOTO & HOW WILL HISTORY JUDGE KOEPKA? …

Garrett Crochet vs. Aaron Judge is already kind of fun, right?

You don’t have to love tennis to love what we saw last Sunday between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner in the French Open final that is the best Grand Slam final I have ever witnessed, either in person or on television.

I was there at Centre Court for the Borg-McEnroe tiebreaker match in 1980.

I watched the epic Nadal-over-Federer Wimbledon final of 2008 on television, and did the same when Djokovic outlasted Fed 13-12 in the fifth set of the ’19 final there.

But then came Alcaraz against Sinner last Sunday:

Alcaraz coming all the way back from two sets down on the red clay of Roland Garros.

Alcaraz facing triple match point in the fourth set, and somehow surviving that, in what felt like the blink of an eye, something no man had ever done in a Grand Slam final.

Sinner served for the match and got broken.

Alcaraz served for the match and got broken.

Then, at the very end, they end up in a super-tiebreaker in the fifth set, where Alcaraz played a level of tennis that only a handful of players, male or female, could possibly ever understand.

All of this playing out across five hours and 29 minutes of speed and grace and power and athletic character.

It was not only tennis at its best.

It was sports at its best.

Alcaraz now has five majors at the age of 22, same as Rafa Nadal did at exactly the same age.

And, oh by the way?

The kid now has a lifetime record of 13-1 in five-set matches.

Say it again: Look out for Juan Soto the rest of the way.

Wait: He’s not still glum Soto?

The NBA can only hope these Finals turn out to be as good as the Stanley Cup finals between the Oilers and Panthers continue to be.

Nobody wanted Kodai Senga to go down grabbing for his leg again.

But repeat:

If the Mets could do it without him last season, they can do it without him this season.

I guess the Pacers trading for Pascal Siakam and Tyrese Haliburton didn’t work out so badly for them.

Boy, we sure could have used the military and the National Guard on Jan. 6, right?

I know Brooks Koepka got paid by the Saudis.

And don’t know how much Koepka cares about his place in golf history, even with five majors coming into this U.S. Open in Oakmont.

But if he does care, he has to wonder where he would be in his sport’s history right now if he hadn’t done the money grab with LIV.

Finally today:

I lost my Pops a couple of years ago, at the blessed age of 99.

The last thing I saw from him the day I said goodbye was one more smile, as he opened his eyes and said my name.

Even at the end, he still thought every day was going to be the best one of his whole life.

So I don’t just miss him on Father’s Day.

I miss him every day.

And expect that I always will.