Getty Tom Thibodeau is under fire again.
The New York Knicks dropped another game on Monday night, this time at home to the lowly Oklahoma City Thunder.
Down the stretch, New York was poised for a victory in their Valentine’s Day matchup, but the Thunder were able to force overtime and eventually take the win at Madison Square Garden.
Julius Randle continues his dominant stretch of games, but it hasn’t resulted in wins for the team as of yet. However, the most costly portion of the game came with under a minute.
Coach Tom Thibodeau, fresh off challenging a call, decided to go for another one. Unfortunately for him and the team, that wasn’t an option and it ended up costing the Knicks a timeout. The Knicks had the opportunity to get the last shot in regulation with about five seconds to go, but they weren’t able to advance the ball because of the lack of timeouts.
Randle ended up missing a shot at the buzzer and the Knicks eventually dropped the game in overtime.
Knicks Fans Slam Thibs
this was not an accident or some coach with an ipad on the bench making the call and there being miscommunication about timeouts/challenges remaining. he made the call himself here the second time.
NBA Twitter star Rob Perez, also a diehard Knicks fan, immediately tweeted out video clips of the incident in question.
In the clip, you can clearly see Thibodeau calling for another challenge, very soon after he made the call for the first one. While it might not seem like a huge deal at first glance, it definitely proved costly for the Knicks.
“Why didn’t the Knicks advance the ball with score tied and only seconds remaining,” he said. “Because the head coach burned the team’s last timeout trying to challenge 28 seconds after challenging. Say that out loud.”
To be fair, the Knicks still had their chances to win in overtime, but they didn’t come through. However, this is just another bit of ammunition fans can use to justify Thibodeau being a problem for the team.
Thibodeau Explains
Tom Thibodeau took responsibility for using a timeout in hopes of challenging the Quentin Grimes foul with 39 seconds to go in Q4 when the Knicks had no challenges remaining:
“That’s my fault, I screwed that up”
After the game, Thibodeau explained that he thought he had a challenge left, although he had just used it a minute ago.
The idea was to challenge the foul on Quentin Grimes, but it wasn’t possible since he had just used it.
He said he “lost his train of thought,” and owned up to the mistake, but the damage was already done.
It was a very costly blunder, but the Knicks were still able to get a decent enough shot at the end of regulation, even if was rushed and a miss. Randle has been playing very well as of late, so it does make sense for him to take that shot, but it just didn’t drop.
While fans would like to see as many wins as they can get, it just doesn’t seem like this squad as currently constructed is able to get many of them, even against the lowly Thunder.
The Knicks will have a lot of decisions to make in the offseason, and we might be seeing a wildly different roster than what we’re looking at now. As for the rest of the season, it’s looking like it’ll be a bumpy ride.
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