Don’t bank on Tom Thibodeau working another Knicks miracle

The Giants broke your spirit and the Jets broke your heart — or at least Tom Brady did, again — and so you figured perhaps the Knicks could salvage this first Sunday of the new year. They were playing shorthanded up north, against another sub-.500 team, and perhaps this would be the day they found something and started lifting the city like they did last year. 

Julius Randle was out, and so was Kemba Walker, but then again, Randle had been a shadow of his former self and Walker had been banished after 20 games for a reason. The Knicks cannot win in Toronto, but hey, you never know when a season might turn as dramatically as it did last spring, when suddenly Tom Thibodeau’s team just couldn’t lose. 

So maybe RJ Barrett’s homecoming would spark something inside of him, and turn him into the kind of leader Randle was in Thibodeau’s rookie Knicks season. Maybe Obi Toppin would take flight in his second career start, or Miles McBride would show something in his, or the Knicks as a whole would show the competitive spirit on the road that Toronto and the Orlandos and Clevelands had shown in Madison Square Garden. 

But as it turned out, inside an arena left empty by Canadian protocols, a Knicks breakthrough was no more likely than a Giants touchdown in Chicago. 

Barrett had warned the other night, “Don’t sleep on us,” as 2021 turned to 2022, and then his team delivered a performance that amounted to a temporary cure for insomnia. The Knicks were outscored 120-105, and out-rebounded 44-30, and outmanned in the paint and on the fast break. 

Fred VanVleet didn’t even bother to play in the fourth quarter, not after scoring 35 points in 31 minutes. The Knicks decided against overpaying in free agency in 2020 to sign VanVleet, the undrafted, undersized champ who signed a four-year, $85 million deal to stay with the Raptors. But when Toronto entered the final quarter leading by 22, freeing VanVleet to enjoy some relaxed conversation on the bench, overpaying him seemed like a pretty good idea. 

“He’s a heck of a player,” Thibodeau said. 

And a much better one Sunday than any the Knicks coach put on the floor. 

“When you’re shorthanded,” Thibs would say, “your margin for error is small.” 

So it was smaller for the Knicks than a referee’s whistle. In addition to Randle, Walker, Derrick Rose, and Nerlens Noel, the Knicks were also without Mitchell Robinson. That’s a lot of talent, ball distribution, and rim protection to be without when playing a well-coached team and an established player-development program with championship DNA. 

But after 37 games, it’s clear that it’s always something with these 17-20 Knicks. At the start of the season, Randle and the other holdovers were struggling to get accustomed to Walker and Evan Fournier. Then Walker wasn’t good enough to play anymore. Then Rose badly injured his ankle. Then Kemba was brought back from the basketball dead. Then Randle struggled again, inviting social media scorn, before joining the masses on the COVID-19 list. Then Walker’s bad knee acted up again. And then the Knicks had to start Toppin, McBride, and Taj Gibson at the end of a four-game road trip, with no fans in the house. 

“It was just like last year,” Toppin said. “We had to build our own energy with the guys that we had.” 

That energy was awfully hard to find, and the consequences were obvious. The Knicks are now two games behind last season’s pace in a conference that is deeper and harder to navigate than the one that granted them the fourth seed and home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. If the season ended today, they wouldn’t even qualify for the play-in tournament. 

Asked if he has big-picture concerns (i.e. playoff-picture concerns) about his team, Thibodeau said, “I always have concerns. No matter what, I have concerns. But it doesn’t change my approach. As a head coach, you have to think about everything every day. So I worry about our offense. I worry about our defense. I worry about our rebounding. I worry about our injuries. I worry about who’s out with COVID. I worry about everything. 

“That being said, the guys we do have available are capable, and we can get this done.” 

Can they really? Toppin said the Knicks need to “find that spark and find that connection,” and yes, they did find both nine months ago. But as a failed hunt for a working combination, this latest defeat mirrored this entire season. 

Nobody can question that Thibodeau performed near-miraculous work with his first Knicks team, and for a lot of reasons the city will never forget it. Problem is, this sequel has been like most sequels — unworthy — and after 37 games the fans should be concerned that these Knicks aren’t capable of changing that.