Three days after being eliminated in the Eastern Conference Finals, the New York Knicks are going in a different direction as they fired coach Tom Thibodeau.
The two-time Coach of the Year led New York to four playoff appearances in five years but that wasn’t enough to keep his job.
Now, the focus of the organization will be to find the person who can lead them beyond the East Finals and make a return trip to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999.
Here are some of the top candidates to patrol the sidelines of Madison Square Garden for the 2025-26 NBA season and beyond.
Dan Hurley
The two-time NCAA champion coach of the UConn Huskies infamously contemplated, before deciding against, taking the Lakers’ head coaching job last summer. However, this opportunity would be different, primarily due to the location.
Hurley’s East Coast-based family played a role in him staying in Connecticut instead of moving to Los Angeles, so a job offer in New York City would be more appealing to the Hurleys. The coach was born and raised in Jersey City, N.J., which is just five miles from MSG, and both Hurley’s father and his son still live in the Tri-State Area.
Hurley also has more of an incentive to leave UConn for the NBA this year than last. The Huskies were coming off back-to-back titles last summer, while the Lakers were coming off getting bounced in the first round of the playoffs. Now, UConn is coming off its worst record since Hurley took the helm in Storrs, Connecticut, while the Knicks are coming off being two wins shy of the NBA Finals.
Michael Malone
Born and raised in New York City, Malone got his first NBA coaching job in his hometown as he was a Knicks’ assistant from 2001-05 but he really made his name over the last decade as the coach of the Denver Nuggets. He led the franchise to its first NBA championship just two years ago before being unceremoniously fired just two months ago. Thibodeau’s inability to get to the NBA Finals played a huge role in his dismissal, so having someone with that proven ability to not only get there but also win has to be extremely attractive to the Knicks brass.
Frank Vogel
The Knicks’ biggest on-court reason why they stalled in the East Finals was due to defense, specifically as related to their two best players in Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns. While Thibodeau was known as a defensive mastermind, that’s primarily from his time with the Bulls as over his last seven full seasons coaching both the Knicks and Timberwolves, his teams had a top 10 defensive rating just twice.
Enter Frank Vogel. The 2020 championship-winning head coach of the Lakers has fielded seven top 10 defenses across his 11 full seasons as head coach, including three units which ranked No. 1 in defensive rating. Additionally, Vogel has some local ties as he’s a native of New Jersey.
Jay Wright
The New York Knicks have been nicknamed the Nova Knicks due to them boasting three former Villanova Wildcats in Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, and Mikal Bridges. The coach who groomed them into NBA players in college, Jay Wright, is a two-time national champion who has been out of coaching for the last three years. He admitted that the changing nature of college basketball, with the NIL era and transfer portal, played a role in him stepping away but those aren’t things he’d have to deal with in the pros.
Chris Quinn
He may be the least-known of the coaches on this list and is currently Erik Spoelstra’s lead assistant with the Miami Heat. In addition to coaching under Spoelstra for the last decade, Quinn has also played for two of the all-time coaching greats in Pat Riley and Gregg Popovich.
Working against Quinn is that the Knicks have traditionally sought men with previous NBA head coaching experience for openings as of their last 10 head coaches, only Jeff Van Gundy had no prior head coaching experience. But one only has to look at the Oklahoma City Thunder’s sideline and Mark Daigneault to see what a fresh face with no prior head coaching experience can bring to a team.
Jeff Van Gundy
Why not reach into the past and bring back JVG? Van Gundy is the last coach to bring the Knicks to the NBA Finals, and while he was last an NBA head coach with the Rockets in 2006-07, Van Gundy has been more active in the coaching ranks in recent times than many think.
From 2017-19, he was the head coach of USA Basketball through various levels of qualifying for the FIBA World Cup, posting a 15-2 record. He also spent the 2023-24 NBA season as a consultant with the Boston Celtics, which includes winning his first NBA championship. JVG finally returned to an NBA sideline this past season as the top assistant for Tyronn Lue with the Los Angeles Clippers.
Having that recent coaching/consulting experience would give Van Gundy an edge over his former broadcasting partner—and former Knicks player, Mark Jackson—who has also been floated as a possible Thibodeau replacement.
However, Jackson hasn’t had any official basketball roles since being fired by the Warriors in 2014.
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