Further Details Emerge Following Tom Thibodeau's Knicks Firing

With the New York Knicks' head coaching spot vacant for about a week now, further details have emerged about the surprise ousting of Tom Thibodeau.

New intel from insider Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo! Sports revealed that the decision to fire Thibodeau came after exit interviews that featured a prominent role for team owner James Dolan, who is said to have "spearheaded" the switch. Goodwill's report also states that Thibodeau's propensity to rely on his primary men for many minutes might've come back to bite him one last time.

"A couple of players felt like Thibodeau played the starters too many minutes and felt he had an inability to adjust, sources said," Goodwill's report said. "Another player said he didn’t feel like he could play for Thibodeau if the coach returned next season."

This, of course, isn't the first time that Thibodeau workloads have been debated and it almost certainly won't be the last.

Three of the Knicks' five regular starters (Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby) ranked in the Association's top five in minutes per game and the other two (Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns) were in the top 20. Bridges, commonly regarded as the NBA's modern iron man, previously made headlines for asking Thibodeau to cut down on the minutes prior to a March game in Portland.

The Knicks are now on the hunt for a new head coach for the first time since the in-season departure of David Fizdale just before the end of the decade. The new boss will have to pick up where Thibodeau left off, as he guided the Knicks to playoff appearances in all but one of his five seasons at the helm, winning a round in each of the last three.

His last season ended with the Knicks' first Eastern Conference Finals showing since 2000, one that saw Thibodeau break his longstanding loyalty to the typical seven-to-nine man set and add some new men to the rotation. It wound being too little too late, as Thibodeau was none the less ousted as the fourth-winningest head coach in franchise history.