You would be hard-pressed to find a coach more polarizing in the NBA than Tom Thibodeau. Half the Knicks fans are willing to fight tooth and nail for their coach, and the other half think he should have been fired by now. Whichever side you fall on, it is hard not to give Thibodeau some credit for Game 5. He pushed all the right buttons, stuck with the double-big lineup after it was ineffective in Game 4, and got the Knicks their biggest win in 25 years.
Thibodeau should not be completely off of the hook. He has flaws that have been on full display this series and season as a whole. His most evident flaw is how he has managed his personnel all season. He stuck with one lineup all season, playing them for 940 minutes, in place of taking time to experiment with other options.
Then, when the lineup, which was mediocre in the regular season to begin with, was abysmal in the playoffs, Thibodeau was left playing catch-up.
However, if we all pile on Thibodeau when things go wrong, he deserves some credit when they go right as well. And in Game 5, everything went right for the Knicks.
Double-big lineup worked
In Game 5, Karl-Anthony Towns and Mitchell Robinson shared the court for a total of 13.2 minutes. During that time, the Knicks were a +18, with three blocks and three steals. On the offensive side of the ball, the Knicks shot 50 percent from three and 63.6 percent from the field.
Robinson has missed 166 games over the previous two seasons. Now that he's healthy, he is playing the best and most impactful basketball of his career, and fitting seamlessly into Thibodeau's lineup vision of dominating the rebound battle and playing sound defense.
I still am not sold on if Thibodeau is the right man for this team. With a roster built around two bad defenders in Jalen Brunson and Towns, I truly believe a lineup that leans into spacing and offense would be better equipped to compete for a title. Whether or not I am right, we will probably never know, at least while Thibodeau is here.
That said, he does deserve a slice of the credit for the dominating win. If he runs the same lineup out in Game 6 and the Knicks lose by 40, then this conversation will need to be revisited, but for now, well done, coach.