Speaking of the Pacers, they earned their right to play for an championship by defeating Karl-Anthony Towns and the New York Knicks in a six-game Eastern Conference Finals that made sportsbooks a ton of money via diehard Knicks fans who believed this was their year.

As history has now told us, it was not their year. Instead, just like the Wolves, they are watching the final round of the 2024-25 NBA Playoffs from their couch. And now, former Minnesota Timberwolves — turned New York Knicks — head coach Tom Thibodeau couldn’t go to work, even if he tried.

Former Minnesota Timberwolves coach Tom Thibodeau fired by New York Knicks

Tuesday afternoon, at approximately 1:40 p.m. CDT, news broke (via Shams – ESPN) that Thibs was being “relieved of his duties” as New York Knicks head coach, marking the second time he has been fired from a team that rostered Karl-Anthony Towns as one of its featured stars.

BREAKING: The New York Knicks are relieving Tom Thibodeau of his duties as head coach, sources tell ESPN. Thibodeau led the Knicks to their first East Finals in 25 years, made playoffs in 4 of 5 years and led Knicks to consecutive 50+ win seasons for first time since the 1990s. pic.twitter.com/B7w8KhoEcF

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) June 3, 2025

Tom Thibodeau went 226-174 in his five seasons leading the New York Knicks, lifting Thibs overall head coaching record to 578-420 in his 13-years leading NBA teams.

Related: Suns Seeking a Timberwolves-Friendly Return for Kevin Durant…

The only real stain on Thibs’ head coaching career, from a wins/losses standpoint, was his three-year stint with the Minnesota Timberwolves, in which he went 97-107. It’s the only NBA head coaching job Tom Thibodeau has had in which his team didn’t have a winning record when he left.

At the U of M, we have seen the extremes on both sides. PJ Fleck was hired as Golden Gophers head football coach back in 2017, following a sexual assault scandal involving 10 football players from Tracy Claeys’ team in 2016.

When they were hired, both Fleck and athletic director Mark Coyle were seen as “fixers”. Not just fixers of the football program, but from a Norwood Teague athletic department wrought with documented scandals and inappropriate behavior during his three-year tenure as AD, from 2012-2015.

Today, we seem long removed from all of the chaos that engulfed the Minnesota Gophers athletic department in the early to mid 2010s, but that doesn’t mean other schools around the country aren’t dealing with similar incompetence.

Former MN Gophers running backs coach in big trouble at Kent State

What I didn’t expect was for one of those programs in turmoil to be Kent State University, which on Thursday night placed its head football coach (and former Minnesota Gophers running backs coach) Kenni Burns on paid administrative leave.

The reasoning for Burns’s suspension was not given, but it’s not believed to be due to the dreadful Golden Flashes being 1-21 in two seasons under Kenni Burns, the 41-year-old former running back at Indiana.

Sources: Kent State football coach Kenni Burns has been placed on administrative leave.

— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) March 27, 2025

“Kent State has placed head football coach Kenni Burns on administrative leave with pay. Greg Glaus, executive deputy athletics director, will continue to oversee the administrative responsibilities related to the program. Offensive coordinator Mark Carney will direct on-field activities at this time. No further comments on this personnel matter will be provided.”

Kent State statement regarding HC Kenni Burns’ suspension

Kenni Burns coached running backs at the University of Minnesota from 2017-2023. He came to Dinkytown as part of PJ Fleck’s original Gophers coaching staff. He was hired as Fleck’s running backs coach in 2016, while PJ was still the head coach at Western Michigan.

Prior to joining Fleck’s staff, Burns coached at Southern Illinois (TE), NDSU (WR) and Wyoming (WR). He also employs multiple former Fleck assistants at Kent State, along with arguably the greatest running back in Golden Gophers history, Mohamed Ibrahim, who was hired by Burns just a few months ago.

Look behind curtain not good for Kenni Burns

While we do not know exactly why Kenni Burns was put on administrative leave, there are some concerning developments that have been both reported and rumored, including a November 2024 CBS Sports report that detailed a legal battle with Hometown Bank of Ohio for over $24,000 in unsettled credit card debt.

In a complaint filed on Sept. 13, Kent-based Hometown Bank alleges Burns applied for and was issued a credit card and failed to make minimum monthly payments on the card as well as exceeding the credit limit of $20,000.

It is unclear when the credit card was issued or the purchases that contributed to the debt, but an attached credit card statement that closed on August 5th, 2024 stated that the account was 60 days past due.

Richard Johnson – CBS Sports

On social media and within the message board community, there’s A LOT of chatter surrounding possible gambling infractions. If true, that would explain why the Kent State head coach and former MN Gophers running backs coach has been placed on administrative leave. But again, those rumors are (for now) just circumstantial.

While at the University of Minnesota, Kenni Burns had other legal issues he dealt with that are all public record, most of them speeding or other traffic/parking related infractions.

• January 2023: Parking in Contract Parking + Failure to Display Current Registration – Expired Plates
  • 5 Other similar parking zone + licensing infractions (2018-2023)
• March 2018: Traffic-speeding-Exceed interstate limit 65 mph in urban 80/60
• October 2017: Traffic – Speeding – Exceed Speed Limit Posted in Local Jurisdiction Speed Zones 70/55
• June 2017: Traffic – Speeding – Exceed Speed Limit Posted in Local Jurisdiction Speed Zones 74/55

His resignation as Wyoming WR coach in 2015, right before he was hired by Fleck as MN Gophers RB coach, left a lot of questions unanswered, as well. Combined together, this situation portrays Burns as a longtime college football coach who probably never should have gotten his head coaching job to begin with…

Medved was hired to replace Ben Johnson, who was fired after his fourth season as head men’s basketball coach at the University of Minnesota. In that time, Johnson accumulated a 56-71 overall record, which stands as the worst winning percentage (.441) of any men’s basketball head coach to last more than one season since World War II, when Carl Nordly’s Gophers went 17-23 between 1943 and 1944.

Ben Johnson’s predecessor found success in New Mexico

But the University of Minnesota’s men’s basketball struggles predate Johnson’s forgettable tenure as head coach. Prior to Ben taking over for the 2021-22 season, the Golden Gophers were coached for eight years by then 30-something, Richard Pitino, whose dad is known as one of the greatest basketball coaches in the sport’s history.

Pitino went 141-123 at Minnesota, but failed to make the NCAA tournament in his last two seasons at the helm. Just in case you’re counting, that makes it six college basketball seasons since the Minnesota Gophers have made the dance.

Of course, the same cannot be said about Pitino. Since Richard left Dinkytown and landed in the Mountain West Conference, as head coach of the New Mexico Lobos, he’s thrived, posting an overall record of 88-49 at New Mexico, including three-straight 20+ win seasons and two-straight NCAA Tournament appearances.

In 2024-25, Richard’s Lobos went 27-8 and — much like his Mountain West rival Rams and now Gophers head coach Niko Medved — won their first round March Madness matchup 75-66 vs Marquette. New Mexico then fell to Michigan State in round two.

Richard Pitino lands head coaching job at Xavier

On Tuesday evening, Pitino was rewarded for his success down in the desert with the new head coaching job at Xavier University. Coincidentally, Xavier is where Ben Johnson was an assistant coach from 2018-2021, prior to being hired as Gophers head coach.

Sources: Xavier will hire New Mexico's Richard Pitino as its next head basketball coach.

— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) March 26, 2025

Wanna go even further down the rabbit hole of weird basketball connections? Before landing at Xavier, Johnson was one Richard Pitino’s Gophers staff from assistants on the Gophers staff. Basketball is a small world, after all…

Richard Pitino never got a fair shot at the University of Minnesota. Immediately upon being hired, and even after winning the NIT Tournament in his first season and making two NCAA Tournament appearances in three seasons from 2016-2019, Pitino was always seen by local media as an emergency Norwood Teague hire that was mostly based in nepotism.

Related: New Gophers MBB Coach Supposedly Bringing Talent with Him to Minnesota

Now, just four years after he left, those who chased him out of town are now clinging to hopes that another new coach can get this program back to where Richard Pitino had it, then hopefully beyond. Meanwhile, Pitino is now back in a traditional basketball power conference (Big East), ready to prove himself beyond his father’s shadow, yet again.