Who are the Knicks going to hire to replace Tom Thibodeau?
After controversially parting ways with Thibodeau just a few days following the Knicks’ elimination at the hands of the Indiana Pacers, New York has reportedly shifted its initially wide search to two candidates.
Mike Brown and Taylor Jenkins will meet with the Knicks this week for interviews, per ESPN’s Shams Charania.
On Saturday, Yahoo’s Kevin O’Connor revealed that his sources say Brown is the favorite to land the Knicks job.
This prompted a conversation on The Kevin O’Connor Show between O’Connor and his guest, Yahoo’s Tom Haberstroh, as they pondered about Brown and Jenkins in New York.
Haberstroh:
“Mike Brown is a great defensive mind … since his Cleveland days, (he) has always been known as a great defensive coach. They're gonna need to improve defensively, but I also think they need help on both ends of the floor.”
“Taylor Jenkins is really interesting. I think he had a really strange season with the new coaching staff and kind of the mutiny that happened there in Memphis. And he doesn't have the postseason experience that I would want if I'm the Knicks.”
“Like, you have a guy in Tom Thibodeau that took you to the Eastern Conference finals, and you're gonna bring in a guy with no experience of getting that far in the postseason?”
“I would suspect that Mike Brown, of those two candidates, would be more likely to get that job, considering he's had a lot more experience on a championship-winning team in the Golden State, as well as getting to the Finals with the Cavs in 2007.”
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O’Connor:
“I’d be very interested to see what type of offense Mike Brown wants to install there.”
“We know he's a defensive guy, but we saw what he did with the Kings offense when he changed the system there … Obviously, things kind of fell apart for the Kings after that unbelievable “light the beam” first season. But he did show off some offensive prowess.”
“I wonder if he could install some motion, some movement, multi-ballhandler, multi-creator stuff for the Knicks that has otherwise been really lacking for that team.”
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