Tom Thibodeau ‘happy’ to hear Rick Pitino landed St. John’s job: ‘I know he’ll do a great job’

Tom Thibodeau will be reunited with one of his mentors at Madison Square Garden.

With Rick Pitino taking the job at St. John’s and scheduled soon for an introductory press conference, Monday was an opportunity for Thibodeau to allude to his halcyon days as a young Ivy League assistant.

“Just really, really happy for him. I think he’s been a great coach wherever he’s been,” Thibodeau told reporters before his Knicks faced the Timberwolves. “So he’s been through a lot. When I was a young coach, I used to go watch his practices at Providence. So he’s a good man, great coach, and I know he’ll do a great job at St. John’s.”

When Thibodeau was an assistant at Harvard in the late 80s, he traveled to Providence — roughly an hour from Cambridge — to observe Pitino’s practices and absorb the lessons of the trademark aggressive defense.

It wasn’t only a helpful classroom since Pitino’s Friars went to the Final Four in 1987, but also the right environment to forge the relationship that first brought Thibodeau to New York. It’s where he first met Jeff Van Gundy, who was Pitino’s graduate assistant at Providence.

Pitino left the Friars to coach the Knicks. Years later, Van Gundy and Thibodeau were on the Knicks bench together.

On Monday, Pitino reportedly accepted a six-year deal to coach the Red Storm, giving the program a high-profile replacement for the fired Mike Anderson. The hiring figures to provide a boost to the lagging local college scene, and another draw at MSG alongside the surging Knicks under Thibodeau.

There’s mutual respect between the coaches as well.

Before Thibodeau was hired as the Knicks head coach in 2020, Pitino recalled watching a Thibodeau practice and gave him “the highest compliment” in an interview with the Daily News.

“He was meticulously organized, almost scary organized, and he reminded me of Bill Belichick,” Pitino said. “I’ve spent a lot of time with Belichick and Thibodeau’s got a lot of the same mannerisms, the same attention to detail that Belichick has. And that’s about the highest compliment I could give someone.”

Thibodeau has at least partially resurrected the Knicks in three seasons, guiding the franchise to both of its only winning seasons over the last decade. He’s also bucked his reputation as defense-only coach — much like Pitino changed narratives over his long career — and has New York’s offense humming this season.

“What happens in this business is everybody wants to pigeonhole you,” Nuggets coach Mike Malone, also a former Knicks assistant, said about Thibodeau. “They said Tom Thibodeau was a defensive coach and he doesn’t know there’s a scoreboard and that you have to score points in this league. You look at [the Knicks] stats, you look at their efficiency, their offense has been terrific. They’re top-5 in offense and outside the top-10 in defensive efficiency right now.

“So I think it’s — coaches change. They get better, they adjust. We ask our players to get better. And all the good coaches are not afraid to look at themselves in the mirror and challenge themselves to be better.”

()