Too many coaches have signed multi-year contracts to train the Knicks, only to end up collecting most of their wages from home. David Fizdale has just shot 22 games in the second season of his five-year contract.
James Dolan is a lot of things, but cheap isn’t one of them. He continued to show willingness to pay the maximum dollar to cover past mistakes. Thibodeau is the latest example.
Signed with a five-year contract, the former Bulls and Timberwolves manager has a lot of confidence in shooting a team that hasn’t smelled the playoffs in seven years. However, it would appear that the Knicks will look for results similar to what he showed in previous stages where he was leading a playoff team in a few seasons on the job.
Of course, the composition of the roster will have a lot to say about how quickly Thibodeau can get results in the field.
But an urgent question to which all Knicks fans are eager to see the answer is how much Thibodeau privileges the marginal improvement in terms of wins over the development of the young main players, perhaps at the expense of early wins.