The real reason everyone's wrong about the Knicks' coaching search

The New York Knicks' head coaching search has led them down a rabbit hole of rejections, and is easy to poke fun at from a distance. In all actuality, though, their failed attempts at poaching already-employed candidates may actually be a good thing—a sign of necessary, if extraordinary, due diligence.

Oh, make no mistake, the optics here are hysterical. The Knicks have reportedly requested permission to speak with Jason Kidd of the Dallas Mavericks, Ime Udoka of the Houston Rockets, and Chris Finch of the Minnesota Timberwolves, and been rejected at every turn. Funnier still, we can now add Quin Snyder of the Atlanta Hawks to that list:

And Billy Donovan of the Chicago Bulls, too:

New York better at least finish the bit, and eventually ask for permission to speak with Erik Spoelstra of the Miami Heat, Mark Daigneault of the Oklahoma City Thunder, and Rick Carlisle of the Indiana Pacers.

In all seriousness, though, this isn't the farce it's being made out to be—including by yours truly.

If nothing else, the Knicks are at least being thorough

On its face, this search reeks of a team that fired Tom Thibodeau without a plan. And look, that's to some extent true. The Knicks clearly dismissed a head coach who just led them to the Eastern Conference Finals without having a specific successor in place.

And, um, well, that's kind of how these things work.

Seldom do we see teams hire new head coaches immediately, or without reported attempts to land multiple candidates. When we do, we tend to eviscerate those teams for failing to do enough legwork. Just ask the Sacramento Kings, who received plenty of criticism for elevating interim head coach Doug Christie to the permanent position, ostensibly without much of an offseason search.

New York couldn't follow that blueprint if it tried. Unlike the Kings with Christie and the Denver Nuggets with David Adelman, the Knicks didn't have an interim name in place. Thibodeau was canned after the season. The team is starting from square one.  If it weren’t, lead executive Leon Rose would be getting investigated for tampering. Again. 

This won't quiet the hullabaloo over the Knicks targeting so many head coaches already under contract. And there is a level of overkill here, both in the number of attempts, and the breadth of leaks about them.

Still, ask yourself this: Would we be destroying New York for the absence of a plan if it lined up a bunch of interviews with current assistants and free-agent head coaches, and still didn't have a Thibs replacement basically one week after firing him? Of course not!

The Knicks deserve the benefit of the doubt—to a point

Though the Rose-led front office has been far from perfect, it has by and large acted deliberately—with intention, and largely without impulse. It has earned some latitude from fans, and media.

Moving on from Thibs is a controversial move, and it won't fix all of New York's problems. But it remains a defensible axing, and the front office deserves a chance to actually name a successor before declaring it a failure.

There are legitimate reasons to be worried about the Knicks, not the least of which is owner James Dolan's apparent re-entry into day-to-day operations. Their decision to turn over a bunch of rocks in search of a new head coach, meme-able option and all, isn't one of them.