CHARLESTON, S.C. — It’s the work, see. It’s always about the work, always been about the work. Last year, when a longtime friend of Tom Thibodeau’s handed over a picture of Thibs at the beach, everyone — starting with the Knicks’ chief instigator, Josh Hart — had a good laugh at that one.
But it wasn’t the same kind of laughter that usually accompanies unfortunate raids on attic-bound scrapbooks, the amusement of hair no longer long enough to be brushed, of faces without wrinkles, or the innocent smiles of youth.
“It’s just hard,” Hart said in a quiet moment last year, a wide smile on his face, “to think about that dude ever being on a beach.”
Years ago, Jeff Van Gundy once discussed his appearance thusly: “I’d be a hell of a centerfold or a cover model for ‘Gym Rat Illustrated.’ ”
If Van Gundy was the Christie Brinkley of that particular proclivity, then Thibodeau is Kathy Ireland. There are some guys, no matter the profession, you know how many hours they put into a job. It’s the circles under the lawyer’s eyes, the blisters on the landscaper’s hands, the sallowness of a surgical resident’s face fresh off a double shift.
And there is the perpetual rasp lurking just outside a coach’s voice box, on those days when it hasn’t completely invaded their throats. Coaches can hear it in each other’s voices in the same way singers can.
“This is his life,” Jalen Brunson said.
Starting Tuesday morning, inside the brightly lit walls on the courts inside the Col. David S. McAlister Center, it also became the shared life of all the players on the Knicks roster. Those who gathered harbor hope of this particular chapter to last about a month longer than the last one. And they know there’s little secret about how it starts.
“He brings a fire every day,” Brunson said. “He wants us be better and he’s going to push us. He just wants to win.”
Thibodeau’s critics say — sometimes directly, sometimes subtly — that sometimes he pushes too much, wants to win too much. It is an interesting dynamic. In a time when it’s hard to identify a more unwelcome phrase in the sports lexicon than “load management,” when teams resting players generates more outrage than it seems even social media can handle, there is an odd Thibs Backlash, too, a curious zag.
He was actually ripped in certain circles last year for having the audacity to keep driving his teams toward 50 wins and the highest available seed. When his players started getting banged up in the playoffs, instead of rounding up the usual suspects — the fickle nature of the human body, the long season, the intense grind of a playoff run — more than a few fingers were pointed at Thibodeau.
See? He drives them too hard!
And, of course, there is the always-reliable annual poll of players granted anonymity who calculate Thibodeau’s approval rating around the same level as a tax collector’s.
“There was the fear factor,” Mikal Bridges said, smiling widely to make sure you knew: with him, at least, there was no fear factor. “When I’m around Thibs, he cracks me up all the time. But I know how serious he is. Off the court, I can mess with him. I love the intensity. He’s not as bad as people think.”
It’s as relevant now as it’s ever been because the one person who wasn’t on the court Tuesday — Karl-Anthony Towns — has a past relationship with Thibodeau that doesn’t exactly conjure images of Belushi & Aykroyd or Pitt & Clooney.
Thibodeau was KAT’s second coach in Minnesota. Thibs was — is — old-school. That doesn’t often jibe with young players. KAT was reportedly unhappy that Thibodeau held Jimmy Butler to one set of standards and the rest of the team to another, and that led to Butler’s ugly exit from Minneapolis and Thibodeau’s exodus not long after.
When both men are allowed to talk about it, both surely will. But both are at different parts of their careers now. This is almost certainly Thibodeau’s last NBA job, and he’s freshly re-upped, and he’s established now in a way that he wasn’t in Minnesota, even with all his prior success in Chicago. And KAT — speaking frankly — was just removed from a team many thought could compete for a title last year. It’s in his power to replicate that kind of feeling with these Knicks.
They need each other far more now than before. And one of the things you hear about KAT, for all his other quirks, he’s never been shy about the work. There’s no reason to think this won’t be a lot better marriage the second time down the aisle. Mostly because it has to be.
“The important thing is to understand the work that goes into it,” Thibodeau said. “You look past that, you’re skipping past things and you’re not going to get there. If you get the team committed to doing that then good things will come from it.”
Outside the gym, many of The Citadel’s corps of cadets walk from class to class, many of them in double time, offering salutes when necessary. That must make the coach of the Knicks smile. None of them is soon to enjoy a day at the beach.
