The decision to replace Tom Thibodeau with Mike Brown as head coach of the New York Knicks last summer was met with some serious head-scratching by both media pundits and the franchise's faithful followers.
Nearly eight months later, it's still being hotly debated.
Now, with the playoffs right around the corner, some, such as Bleacher Report's Greg Swartz, believe that the "biggest fear" for this Knicks team in 2025-26 is the idea of missing the Eastern Conference Finals.
Make no mistake about it: should this hypothetical scenario become a reality, come season's end, the decision to move on from Thibs in favor of Brown will almost certainly be looked back on as a cataclysmic disaster.
Biggest Knicks fear would make Tom Thibodeau firing look even worse
Coming straight from team owner, James Dolan's mouth during an appearance on WFAN back in early January, the goal of this year's Knicks team is "absolutely" to clinch their first NBA Finals berth of the 21 Century, even going as far as to agree to the notion that anything short of winning a title would be a disappointment.
This was less than three months ago.
Surprisingly, Swartz has seemingly moved the failure goal post to simply falling shy of a third-round appearance, something New York was able to do for the first time in a quarter of a century last season with Thibodeau, the man Dolan suggested this team couldn't sustain long-term success with at the helm.
Heading into a Finals-or-bust season, the idea of moving on from a coach who paved the way toward the club's ascension from the rock bottom of the Eastern Conference standings to legitimate contender status and, as Dolan even admitted, was integral to the formation of this current on-court core, is truly a quagmire on its own.
With this in mind, having this team regress to anything less than being a final-four team in the association by the time June rolls around would officially make the Brown hiring go from questionable to point-blank apocalyptic.
Throughout his first-year with the organization, the two-time Coach of the Year recipient has certainly had his fair share of successes that deserve recognition and celebration.
From being on the verge of surpassing the legendary Pat Riley for the record of most wins in his debut season with the team to simply upping New York's intensity against upper-echelon conference foes, Brown has proven to be far from a poor hire during these early stages of his tenure.
Failing to at the very least reach the same heights as last year, however, may just be all it would take to completely cancel out these accomplishments in the eyes of Knicks fans.