Tom Thibodeau Is Making History
Tonight, New York Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau only played seven players in Game 5 of his team's series with the Philadelphia 76ers. Three of them – OG Anunoby, Jalen Brunson, and Josh Hart – each played more than 50 minutes. If that sounds like an incredible statistic to you, it's because it is.
The ABA and NBA merged ahead of the 1976-1977 season, creating the structure for the modern NBA. Since the start of that season through the start of tonight, there have been 3,490 NBA playoff games. Of them, three teammates had played 50+ minutes in the same game just 20 times. Twenty times out of 3,490. That's less than one percent – .00573, to be exact (quick and dirty table at the bottom of the post. Sorry, I'm tired). Of those 20 times, just one was a game that went into only a single overtime – the infamous Kevin Durant foot-on-the-line Nets vs. Bucks game on June 19, 2021. That was slightly more understandable because it was a Game 7, and the winner would advance to the Eastern Conference Finals. The rest were were all double, triple, or quadruple overtime games.
Tonight was hardly the same scenario. The Knicks surely wanted to win so they could advance to the next round, but their backs were not against the wall. Precious Achiuwa had seven rebounds, four blocks, and was a +11 in Game 4, and then didn't leave the bench in Game 5. Alec Burks has been completely mothballed, and with Bojan Bogdanovic unavailable, Thibodeau shortened his rotation to seven guys. One of those guys, Mitchell Robinson, is just a couple months out from ankle surgery, and that very same ankle kept him out of Game 4. Another, Anunoby, also has missed significant time due to injury this year.
If the Knicks had won, maybe you could justify this ridiculous playing time and shortened rotation. But they lost. Now they get no rest, and have to play on the road on Thursday. It's a worst-case scenario. It may cost them Game 6, and in my opinion, it cost them Game 5. At the end of overtime, Brunson jumped and got caught in the air, and threw the ball out of bounds for a debilitating turnover. Look at his face afterward:
This is the face of a player who had nothing left. He pushed as hard as he could, I am not faulting Brunson here. He scored all nine of New York's points in overtime. I am faulting his coach. This isn't an isolated incident either. Thibodeau has been doing this for much of the past few months. You can ascribe all the tough-guy platitudes to this strategy that you want, but this kind of strategy is going to get someone hurt. If Thibodeau isn't careful, he's going to get someone hurt badly, and potentially ruin this season and next. Given how bright the future is for this Knicks team, you have to wonder if common sense will prevail at any point, but it certainly doesn't seem like it will.
