Life in the Fast Lane
From the moment Tom Thibodeau took over as head coach of the Chicago Bulls, he was saddled with a reputation of believing wholeheartedly that slow and steady wins the race.
Gifted one of the fastest and athletic point guards in the history of basketball, Thibs nonetheless had Chicago's offense running at a bottom-10 pace. Whether Derrick Rose was off the court or on it, it didnt matter.
Through the rest of Thibodeaus Bulls tenure and nearly the entirety of his Minnesota one, that did not really change. Chicago was in the bottom-four in pace for three straight seasons after that first go around, and topped out at 19th in Thibs final year there. Then in his two full seasons in Minny, the Wolves ranked 23rd each year.
Thibodeau himself will be the first to remind you that the second of those campaigns saw KAT, Jimmy & Co sport the 4th ranked offense in the league, so it aint like slow was not the way to go, at least for them. But then in his final half season, something funny happened. On the day Thibs was fired, the Wolves ranked 12th in pace, which was by far the highest number one of his teams ever achieved.
Which brings us to the tin-foil hat theory of the day, and the reason why I do not necessarily think what we are seeing from the Knicks - current owners of the 13th fastest offense in the league - is foolz gold. If you believe that the preseason is a time for experimenting with stuff you
are not completely comfortable trotting out in games, it seems Thibodeau was working his way up to having a faster team over the course of several years.
After never having his team play fast during their preseason outings in Chicago, Thibs had the Wolves playing at the 9th fastest pace of any NBA team during his first preseason there, then 8th the year after that, and then 5th in his third and final season. The games may not have counted, but the trend was clearly pointing up.
And then last season, pffft. The Knicks played at the slowest pace in the league, something Thibs apparently felt mighty comfortable with from the outset of camp, as the Knicks were 29th in the preseason as well.
But they did not have Derrick Rose to start the year surely they improved after that!
Indeed they did, all the way up to 29th.
While Rose certainly helped, if you look at the on/off numbers, they indicate that the team actually played faster with Elfrid Payton on the floor. The fact is that Thibs knew that the best way to maximize a roster with so little offensive firepower was to grind the game down to a fine powder and hope that opponent got lost in the dust. For the most part, it worked.
Except fast forward to playoff time, and the only team left blindly feeling their way through the darkness was New York. They did not have another gear, and the result was ugly.
But they also did not have much of a choice. As Thibodeau correctly identified, New York did not have the personnel to aptly run like the wind. That has very much changed, and now, New York can put four players on the court at all times who can both move with the ball and shoot it. The early results have been encouraging.
-Jonathan Macri
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