New York Knicks identify top candidate for head coach job
The New York Knicks are reportedly zeroing in on current Dallas Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd to fill its bench-boss vacancy after firing Tom Thibodeau earlier this week.
The Knicks fired Tom Thibodeau on Tuesday to the shock of many of the teams fans. His ouster came after New York's first trip to the Eastern Conference Finals since 2000.
After names like Jay Wright, Dan Hurley, Mike Malone, and Johnnie Bryant have been thrown around to replace Thibodeau, New York is focusing on a former player, per Marc Stein.
Kidd was a legendary NBA player from 1994 through 2013, with him beginning his coaching career immediately after retirement.
Kidd has been the head coach for the Brooklyn Nets and Milwaukee Bucks before a stint as an assistant for the Los Angeles Lakers.
Since 2021, Kidd has been the head-man in Dallas, with the team likely to try to retain him if the Knicks make an offer.
The Knicks fired Tom Thibodeau and are looking for a new leader for Jalen Brunson and co.
The Knicks' choice for their next head coach has to be one that brings a championship banner to Madison Square Garden, or it will be viewed as an unsuccessful tenure.
Earlier this week, NBA insider Brian Windhorst has revealed Thibodeau was fired by the Knicks for making personnel changes too late into the season.
'What Tom Thibodeau did to his coaching strategy during the Eastern Conference finals might've assured his firing. What I mean by that is after falling down 2-0 in that series, he made a whole bunch of changes,' Windhorst said on 'Get Up'.
'He changed his starting lineup. Then he extended multiple players into his bench - something that players, team personnel, and people across the league had been begging him to do for months. He also changed some of his strategies within the coaching of the game, and it worked.'
Yet, the changes may have been a little too late, in moves that were reactive and not proactive, to keep him with the franchise.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
33 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Simone Biles slams ‘sore loser' Riley Gaines over attacks on trans athlete
Seven-time Olympic gold medallist Simone Biles has publicly condemned former competitive swimmer Riley Gaines for her repeated attacks on transgender athletes, calling Gaines 'sick' and a 'sore loser' in a strongly worded social media post. The exchange erupted Friday night after Gaines mocked the Minnesota State High School League for turning off comments on a post celebrating Champlin Park High School's girls' softball team, which had just won the state championship. One of the team's players is a transgender girl. 'This championship was hijacked,' Gaines wrote on X, referring to the student-athlete as 'a boy' and ridiculing the league for disabling comments 'lol'. Biles, the most decorated gymnast of all time with 11 Olympic and 30 world championship medals, had seen enough. In a rare foray into online confrontation, she reposted Gaines' tweet and responded with a direct rebuke. 'You're truly sick,' Biles wrote. 'All of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser.' @Riley_Gaines_ You're truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser. You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender… The post referenced Gaines' performance at the 2022 NCAA championships, where she tied for fifth with Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer. Since then, Gaines has built a prominent public profile lobbying against the inclusion of transgender women in women's sports, becoming a fixture on right-wing media outlets and appearing alongside Donald Trump as he signed an executive order banning trans girls and women from competing in women's sports. But Biles didn't stop there. 'You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports,' she wrote. 'Maybe a transgender category IN ALL SPORTS!! But instead… You bully them… One thing for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around!!!!!' In a follow-up post, Biles added: 'Bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.' bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male @Riley_Gaines_ Gaines quickly fired back, calling Biles' remarks 'so disappointing' and insisting: 'Men don't belong in women's sports and I say that with my full chest.' A 12-time All-American swimmer at the University of Kentucky, Gaines has used her tie with Thomas as the basis for a national campaign opposing transgender inclusion in sports. She has frequently misgendered athletes in public forums and has drawn criticism from LGBTQ+ advocates and athletes alike for singling out individuals, often minors, by name on social media. In the case of Champlin Park, Gaines made multiple posts about the transgender pitcher, even mentioning the player by name and referring to her with male pronouns, despite the team's vocal support for their teammate. The Rebels won the Class 4A title game 6-0. 'She's a great kid and a great teammate,' one coach told local media after the game. 'Her teammates love having her out there.' The comments from Biles, who has long championed mental health awareness and survivor advocacy, drew swift backlash from conservative commentators, who accused the Olympic champion of hypocrisy and attention-seeking. Outkick, the right-leaning sports outlet where Gaines is a regular contributor, called her remarks 'self-contradicting'. Gaines reposted several replies from fans who echoed her position, arguing that Biles was undermining women's sports and confusing the issue by suggesting a separate transgender category. 'It's not my job or the job of any woman to figure out how to include men in our spaces,' Gaines wrote in response. Other conservative influencers piled on, questioning why Biles chose to weigh in and accusing her of 'siding with men' in women's athletics. 'If trans participation isn't a big deal, why propose a separate division?' one post read, summing up a recurring critique in her mentions. Despite the backlash, Biles has not walked back her comments. Supporters praised her for using her platform to defend marginalized athletes and push back against what they view as a pattern of bullying and scapegoating by Gaines.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Attorneys in NCAA antitrust case to share $475M in fees, with potential to reach $725M
The attorneys who shepherded the blockbuster antitrust lawsuit to fruition for hundreds of thousands of college athletes will share in just over $475 million in fees, and the figure could rise to more than $725 million over the next 10 years. The request for plaintiff legal fees in the House vs. NCAA case, outlined in a December court filing and approved Friday night, struck experts in class-action litigation as reasonable. Co-lead counsels Steve Berman and Jeffrey Kessler asked for $475.2 million, or 18.3% of the cash common funds of $2.596 billion. They also asked for an additional $250 million, for a total of $725.2 million, based on a widely accepted estimate of an additional $20 billion in direct benefits to athletes over the 10-year settlement term. That would be 3.2% of what would then be a $22.596 billion settlement. 'Class Counsel have represented classes of student-athletes in multiple litigations challenging NCAA restraints on student-athlete compensation, and they have achieved extraordinary results. Class Counsel's representation of the settlement class members here is no exception,' U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken wrote. University of Buffalo law professor Christine Bartholomew, who researched about 1,300 antitrust class-action settlements from 2005-22 for a book she authored, told The Associated Press the request for attorneys' fees could have been considered a bit low given the difficulty of the case, which dates back five years. She said it is not uncommon for plaintiffs' attorneys to be granted as much as 30% of the common funds. Attorneys' fees generally are calculated by multiplying an hourly rate by the number of hours spent working on a case. In class-action lawsuits, though, plaintiffs' attorneys work on a contingency basis, meaning they get paid at the end of the case only if the class wins a financial settlement. 'Initially, you look at it and think this is a big number,' Bartholomew said. 'When you look at how contingency litigation works generally, and then you think about how this fits into the class-action landscape, this is not a particularly unusual request.' The original lawsuit was filed in June 2020 and it took until November 2023 for Wilken to grant class certification, meaning she thought the case had enough merit to proceed. Elon University law professor Catherine Dunham said gaining class certification is challenging in any case, but especially a complicated one like this. 'If a law firm takes on a case like this where you have thousands of plaintiffs and how many depositions and documents, what that means is the law firm can't do other work while they're working on the case and they are taking on the risk they won't get paid,' Dunham said. 'If the case doesn't certify as a class, they won't get paid.' In the request for fees, the firm of Hagens Berman said it had dedicated 33,952 staff hours to the case through mid-December 2024. Berman, whose rate is $1,350 per hour, tallied 1,116.5 hours. Kessler, of Winston & Strawn, said he worked 1,624 hours on the case at a rate of $1,980 per hour. The case was exhaustive. Hundreds of thousands of documents totaling millions of pages were produced by the defendants — the NCAA, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC — as part of the discovery process. Berman and Kessler wrote the 'plaintiffs had to litigate against six well-resourced defendants and their high-powered law firms who fought every battle tooth and nail. To fend off these efforts, counsel conducted extensive written discovery and depositions, and submitted voluminous expert submissions and lengthy briefing. In addition, class counsel also had to bear the risk of perpetual legislative efforts to kill these cases.' Antitrust class-action cases are handled by the federal court system and have been harder to win since 2005, when the U.S. Class Action Fairness Act was passed, according to Bartholomew. 'Defendants bring motion after motion and there's more of a pro-defendant viewpoint in federal court than there had been in state court,' she said. 'As a result, you would not be surprised that courts, when cases do get through to fruition, are pretty supportive of applications for attorneys' fees because there's great risk that comes from bringing these cases fiscally for the firms who, if the case gets tossed early, never gets compensated for the work they've done.' ___
BreakingNews.ie
an hour ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Cristiano Ronaldo ‘will not be at the Club World Cup' with future still unclear
Cristiano Ronaldo has said he will not play at the upcoming Club World Cup after turning down offers from participating teams. The 40-year-old's contract with Saudi Pro League club Al-Nassr, who have not qualified for the tournament in the United States, expires at the end of June. Advertisement Earlier this year, FIFA president Gianni Infantino raised the prospect of Portugal captain Ronaldo joining one of the sides involved in the competition, which starts next Saturday. But speaking ahead of his country's Nations League final against Spain on Sunday evening in Munich, the forward said: 'I will not be at the Club World Cup. 'Some teams reached out to me. Some made sense and others did not, but you can't try and do everything. You can't catch every ball.' Ronaldo's club future remains unclear. Advertisement Sport A Tottenham Hotspur legend forever – Son Heung-min... Read More He posted 'this chapter is over' on social media following Al-Nassr's final league game of the season in May. However, according to reports, he could agree a new deal to remain with the club he joined from Manchester United in 2023. Five-time Ballon d'Or winner Ronaldo revealed a decision on his future was 'almost final'.
