Tom Thibodeau and the Most Shocking NBA Coach Firings of the Last 10 Years
The New York Knicks had the worst record in the league from 2001-02 through the end of their last season without Tom Thibodeau. Over the last five seasons, all under Thibodeau, they've made the playoffs four times, advanced past the first round three times, won 50 games twice and been to the conference finals once.
Things were undoubtedly heading in the right direction in New York, but on Tuesday, the Knicks fired Thibs anyway.
ESPN's Shams Charania was first with the news.
There were certainly some inklings that this may be coming, particularly if you believe noisy fans on social media, but Thibodeau's track record with the organization still makes this a surprise.
And unfortunately for coaches, surprise firings have become one of the NBA's constants. Over the last decade, we've seen several.
The biggest ones can be found below.
David Blatt, Fired by the Cavaliers on January 22, 2016
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David Blatt was hired by the Cleveland Cavaliers as one of the splashiest non-NBA names in the same summer that LeBron James rejoined his hometown team.
Blatt had had plenty of success overseas, particularly with Maccabi Tel Aviv, and he was seemingly going to bring some fresh ideas and approaches to the league.
In his first season with the Cavs, that felt largely true. They went 53-29. They made the Finals. And despite getting rocked by injuries, they won two games against the Golden State Warriors in that final series.
But there were certainly some rumblings about LeBron being dissatisfied with Blatt throughout that campaign. And despite starting 2015-16 with a strong 30-11 record, he was fired in January of that season.
Again, there were at least some hints that this one could be coming, but firing a coach with a Finals appearance and a 67.5 percent winning percentage before he even finished his second year was surprising.
Kenny Atkinson, Fired by the Nets on March 7, 2020
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This is another one that at least had some breadcrumbs leading to the firing.
In 2019, the Brooklyn Nets overhauled their roster, dismantled the upstart team Kenny Atkinson helped overachieve and added two superstars.
And, as is often the case when big-name players join an NBA team, there was some speculation on whether Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving would want to play for the relatively unknown (at the time) Atkinson or get their own guy in there.
Well, you know the rest of the story.
Despite coaching the 2019-20 Nets that got zero appearances from Durant and just 20 from Kyrie, Atkinson was fired in March. One year earlier, he took a team led by D'Angelo Russell, Joe Harris and Jarrett Allen to the playoffs.
Frank Vogel, Fired by the Lakers on April 11, 2022
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As we move forward in time, we get to the first in a growing line of coaches who were fired within a few short years of winning a championship.
Frank Vogel had three seasons with a 60-plus winning percentage for the Indiana Pacers. In his first year with the Los Angeles Lakers, he went 52-19 in a COVID-shortened season and won the NBA Finals.
And just two years later, after an injury-plagued season that also saw L.A.'s front office orchestrate the disastrous trade for Russell Westbrook, Vogel was out.
In his first two seasons with the Lakers, Vogel coached his team to way-above-average defensive ratings. The Purple and Gold haven't come close to that qualify of defense since.
Nick Nurse, Fired by the Raptors on April 21, 2023
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Nick Nurse was maybe the hottest name in coaching in the summer of 2019.
He'd just gone 58-24 in his first season as an NBA head coach. He won the 2019 Finals over the Golden State Warriors. And seemingly every NBA fan knew the young Toronto Raptors coach played the guitar.
But that campaign was obviously unique. It was Kawhi Leonard's only season with the Raptors. Kevin Durant only played 12 minutes in the Finals. And an injury knocked Klay Thompson out of that same series early.
Still, despite losing Kawhi in the 2019 offseason, Nurse followed up the championship campaign with 53 wins and a Coach of the Year in the COVID-shortened 2019-20 campaign. Things still seemed generally headed in the right direction for Toronto.
But Nurse and the Raptors missed the playoffs in two of his last three seasons there, and that was enough justification for the organization to move on from the only coach that ever brought it a title.
Monty Williams, Fired by the Suns on May 13, 2023
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Monty Williams breaks our little streak of title-winning coaches, but he also starts a new one.
Just one year after winning Coach of the Year, the Phoenix Suns fired Williams, who'd also taken the team all the way to the NBA Finals in 2021.
Phoenix went 45-37 in Williams' final year there, but Devin Booker only played 53 games. The midseason Durant trade completely overhauled the roster, too.
It was certainly going to take some time for Williams to figure out how to coach Booker, Chris Paul and Durant together, but he never got it.
Williams won 62.8 percent of the games he coached for the Suns.
Mike Budenholzer, Fired by the Bucks on May 4, 2023
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The coach who beat Williams and the Suns in the 2021 Finals, Mike Budenholzer, is a two-time Coach of the Year who won a whopping 69.3 percent of his games with the Milwaukee Bucks.
His second COY nod came with the Bucks. And his firing came just two years after he won the championship.
What made the move even more stunning was the fact that Milwaukee won 58 games in the season immediately preceding his ouster.
And though the Bucks were knocked out in the first round of the playoffs that year, it's hard to imagine any team surviving a series after losing its best player.
Giannis Antetokounmpo was limited to 11 minutes in Game 1 and missed all of Games 2 and 3.
Adrian Griffin, Fired by the Bucks on January 23, 2024
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The Bucks haven't really been a model of stability since letting Budenholzer go.
They replaced him with Adrian Griffin, and organizational tension almost immediately followed. The veteran Milwaukee brought in to help its first-time head coach adjust to his new role, Terry Stotts, stepped down from his position as an assistant before the year even started.
But even if Griffin was butting heads with players and his own staff, it still came as a surprise to see him fired just over halfway through his first season, especially since the Bucks were 30-13.
What made the move even harder to accept was the fact that Griffin was replaced by Doc Rivers within that same season. And though Rivers won a championship, that was all the way back in 2008. That accomplishment has since been buried by several playoff failures.
Taylor Jenkins, Fired by the Grizzlies on March 28, 2025
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Taylor Jenkins isn't even 41 years old yet. But he already has (almost) six full seasons of NBA head coaching experience.
He finished second in Coach of the Year voting in 2021-22. He cleared 50 wins in both the 2021-22 and 2022-23 campaigns. And despite leading a team with a notoriously unavailable star guard, Jenkins won 53.9 percent of his games with Memphis.
That didn't stop the Grizzlies, who were on the way to making the playoffs, from firing him with less than a month to go in the regular season and turning the reigns over to 42-year-old Tuomas Iisalo.
With this one, the timing is every bit as surprising as the move itself.
Michael Malone, Fired by the Nuggets on April 8, 2025
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But Memphis' timing wasn't quite as surprising as the Denver Nuggets'.
With just three games to play in the 2024-25 campaign, Denver cut ties with the only coach who's ever won it an NBA title. And the firing happened just under two years after Malone led that championship run.
Subsequent reporting revealed that Malone and general manager Calvin Booth (who was fired the same day) had been in something of a cold war with each other throughout the two seasons following the championship, but Denver tying for first in the West in 2023-24 and trending toward the playoffs again in 2024-25 papered over the trouble.
Things evidently hit a breaking point on the eve of the playoffs, so much so that a title-winning coach who had been with the organization for a decade didn't get one last postseason run.
Tom Thibodeau, Fired by the Knicks on June 3, 2025
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There were certainly some viable reasons for the Knicks moving on, but the contrast between the pre-Thibs era and this one still makes the move surprising.
New York was a borderline laughingstock for most of nearly two decades. Under Thibodeau, the Knicks were at least a near-lock for the playoffs. And things were clearly trending up.
Basketball culture may just be too hard to overcome, though.
Reporting for SportsCenter, Charania said only that the Knicks wanted a "new voice" when trying to explain this move.
And as unsatisfying an explanation as that may be, it's also probably the closest to the truth.
Basketball players spend their entire lives bouncing from coach to coach every few years. Most NBA players have been through dozens. Many only played a year or two in college. When that's what a roster full of players is used to, a coach's message can get awful stale awfully quick.
And in recent years, it feels like organizations are acting on that reality more aggressively than ever before.
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