Thibodeau is giving Knicks fans what they need most ... hope

NEW YORK — You never know who is going to be the one who makes you believe in your team again, the way Tom Thibodeau is starting to make Knicks fans believe again, something that seems like as much of a lost art at the Garden as the dancing of Dancing Harry.

Sometimes you don’t see these guys coming. Joe Torre, who became the most important manager in the history of the Yankees, had been fired three times before he got to Yankee Stadium, once by the Mets. Bill Parcells went 3-12-1 in his first season coaching the Giants, and George Young nearly fired him in favor of Howard Schnellenberger. Before he got to the Rangers Mike Keenan was such a joy that he had twice lost jobs — Philadelphia, Chicago — after taking teams to the Stanley Cup finals. Keenan didn’t just burn bridges. He blew them up. But then came June of 1994 at Madison Square Garden, when all the waiting ended for the Rangers.

Pat Riley we knew about, he was the Showtime Lakers, and he’d won titles and then he came to the Garden and made the Knicks matter again. His Knicks nearly won it all in June of ‘94, same as the Rangers did, and what a double that would have been in the big city. But the Knicks lost Games 6 and 7 to the Rockets. They couldn’t get past Michael Jordan. It doesn’t change the fact that Riley while he was here changed everything.

Riley was one of those guys. There have been other coaches and managers who have won in New York over the last half-century, and won championships, and changed cultures in the process. It was just different with Torre and Parcells, Keenan and Riley.

And so it may be with Thibodeau, who came to this moment with the Knicks after having been fired in Minnesota. Basketball people knew how well he could coach. He had even coached at the Garden under Jeff Van Gundy, and then had been on the bench with Doc Rivers in Boston. He had done some job in Chicago when Derrick Rose was young and an MVP.

But these were the Knicks. No team in the history of New York sports had been this bad for this long. You know the record the way you know your screen name: One victory in a playoff series since 2000. In Basketball New York, James Dolan’s Knicks, Dolan’s Garden, became a boneyard for the resumes of legendary NBA figures, from Isiah Thomas to Larry Brown to Phil Jackson.

The Knicks have been a disaster. Now Dolan has hired Leon Rose to run the basketball operation at the Garden. Rose hired Thibodeau and the Knicks are fun to watch again. They look like a team again, one that has some life to it, some energy and, for the first time in such a long time, some possibilities.

Does it mean that they’re going to make the playoffs? It doesn’t. Does it mean that for the first time in this century that 33rd Street might become a preferred destination for a star currently playing somewhere else? We’ll have to see about that. But maybe if Thibodeau had arrived a couple of years sooner, Kevin Durant might be playing on the Knicks’ side of the East River.

The Knicks are really, really young. Even Austin Rivers, Doc’s kid, is still only 28. Julius Randle is 26, Reggie Bullock is 29, Mitchell Robinson is 22, so is Obi Toppin. Eflrid Payton is 26. And the kid, RJ Barrett, is still only 20. But Thibodeau doesn’t coach them as if he’s coaching some kind of kindergarten rebuild. He coaches them as if he’s also gotten them to believe.

Could things go sideways with the new regime? Of course they could. This is Dolan, this is the Garden, these are the Knicks. After they did win 54 and a division one time, Dolan’s first big move after that was firing his general manager, Glen Grunwald. Knicks fans know the drill with the owner. Love fades.

For now, though, the long-suffering Knicks fans have a team they want to watch, a .500 team that feels like more than that right now. A team about which fans clearly care, even from a social distance. Maybe before this season is over, we may even discover what a team like this sounds like at the Garden.