Sixers will benefit from the Knicks firing Tom Thibodeau and the tragic injuries of Damian Lillard and Jayson Tatum

At the Wells Fargo Center, the visiting coaches’ office sits between the visiting team’s locker room and the Sixers’ locker room. Anyone loitering between those two points — for instance, anyone pausing to text his wife about the next day’s carpools — might overhear particularly loud discussions behind that closed door.

Such was the case on the evening of Sunday, April 28, 2024, after a Sixers afternoon playoff game, when a local columnist got a notification, looked at his phone, and stopped to respond, because he can’t text and walk at the same time. Purely by coincidence, he stood about 10 feet from the door to the aforementioned office.

The discussion happening behind that door was so loud, so animated, and so loading-dock profane, he had trouble concentrating on the aforementioned text.

The loudest voice was berating officials, complaining about his players’ mistakes, and was livid over the Sixers’ physical brand of play.

This was Tom Thibodeau.

After a win.

A playoff win.

A win that gave his team a 3-1 lead in a best-of-seven, first-round series against the Sixers.

Thibs might be a miserable S.O.B., but he’s a hell of a basketball coach.

The Knicks then proceeded to make it to the Eastern Conference semifinals for the second straight season, where they lost to the Pacers.

In the offseason, they remade the team for the second time in two years. They shed Julius Randle, Isaiah Hartenstein, and Donte DiVincenzo and added Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges.

Sixers fans gnashed their teeth in envy.

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The Knicks proceeded to increase their win total for the third straight season. This time, they advanced to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since they employed Patrick Ewing and Latrell Sprewell 25 years ago.

Sixers fans gnashed their teeth in envy.

Alas, once there, the Knicks again lost to the Pacers last week. It was a good series.

And that cost Thibs his job.

Incredibly, on Tuesday, GM Leon Rose and owner James Dolan agreed to fire their MVP — their most valuable person.

Once again, fate has dealt cruelly with an opponent. This time, at least, the wound was self-inflicted.

The Sixers had nothing to do with the most significant move of their 2025 offseason. The Knucklehead ’Nova Knicks did it for them. One of the better coaches in the NBA, and perhaps the second-best coach in the East (I’m partial to Nick Nurse and Indy’s Rick Carlisle), and the biggest reason the Knicks matter, is gone.

This comes in the wake of Damian Lillard of the Bucks and Jayson Tatum of the Celtics rupturing their Achilles tendons in the playoffs and facing long, arduous rehab stints. The league has been less for their absences. Basketball got worse, and so did the sports-scape; both are outstanding young men.

That doesn’t change reality, and how it alters the Sixers’ future.

The Celtics are reigning NBA champions and a postseason nemesis for the Sixers. The Bucks probably were the second-best team in the East with Lillard. The Knicks probably were third or fourth, neck-and-neck with the Pacers.

Two months ago, the Sixers, even with Joel Embiid and Paul George healthy, and even with Tyrese Maxey developing into a perennial All-Star, were looking at three more years of playoff insignificance.

Now, if their superstars can stay on the court, they’ve got a chance.

The Knicks had cycled through 12 coaches (Herb Williams held the title twice) before hiring Thibodeau in 2020.

He then won with Randle, a ball-stopping lefty with a power game, playing alongside Jalen Brunson, a ball-stopping lefty with a power game. After Brunson landed three seasons ago, Thibodeau created an unlikely, starring role for him from whole cloth, the cleverest bit of innovation in the NBA in at least five years.

He won with DiVincenzo, the NBA’s version of Eminem, a conflicted sort who almost left Villanova before winning an NCAA title and was named Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four — as a sixth man.

He won with Towns, a soft 7-footer with a proclivity for bonehead plays.

He won with Josh Hart, a mini-Rodman who shares all of Brunson’s Villanova toughness but little of Brunson’s skill.

No, he didn’t win it all, but he won enough to make the Knicks a viable title contender for at least the next two seasons, a distinction they haven’t enjoyed in a generation.

It seems absurd to fire a head coach just one season into a remake of the roster.

In Towns and Bridges, they’d just added $75 million in prime-of-the-career, front-line talent. In Brunson, they have an MVP candidate. If there ever was a run-it-back scenario, this was it. If the Knicks flopped in 2026, sure, cut ties. But give it time to ripen.

It had become fashionable in New York to blame Thibodeau for the Knicks’ shortcomings — rigid structure, playing his best players too much, a deficiency of emotional intelligence. That’s understandable, considering the ironic and chronic lack of basketball sense in a place that considers itself the center of the hoops universe. In reality, the Knicks never underachieved. They overachieved every season since Thibs’ arrival; four playoff runs, no postseason regression.

If any place knows regression, it’s Philly. After 24 years of futility, the Sixers and their fans would have built Thibs a statue.

What’s more, Thibs just signed an extension after last season that doesn’t kick in until the upcoming season, for a reported $33 million.

This is so rich. He’s a two-time Coach of the Year because he routinely produces teams that are greater than the sum of their parts.

» READ MORE: Will Daryl Morey save his job and trade the No. 3 pick, or do the right thing and invest in the Sixers’ future?

No replacement is going to get from this team what Thibs got. Not Michael Malone, who won with the Nuggets; there’s no Nikola Jokić at Madison Square Garden. Not Jay Wright, who’d be crazy to try. Not ankle-biter Jeff Van Gundy, who couldn’t win in New York three decades ago with much bigger stars.

It’s the second time fate has cursed Thibs to this degree.

In Game 1 of the 2012 playoffs, his top-seeded Bulls lost reigning MVP Derrick Rose to a knee injury. Rose was never the same, and neither were the Bulls, and Thibs was fired in 2015.

He struggled at his next stop, in Minnesota, where Towns’ immaturity and Jimmy Butler’s antics complicated matters; it was a bed he made for himself.

But he thrived in the Big Apple. However, the Knicks being the Knicks, he somehow didn’t thrive enough.

To the Sixers’ unlikely, incredible benefit.