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Several reports now indicate that the New York Knicks are expected to come up short in their pursuit of Dallas Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd as their replacement for Tom Thibodeau. ESPN reported Wednesday morning that Dallas gave a "firm rejection" to the Knicks when they requested permission to talk to Kidd. Disappointing as that outcome may be for New York, it's hardly a surprising one. Kidd is under contract with the Mavericks. Dallas has no obligation to allow Kidd to interview with New York. Sure enough, they appear poised to keep their head coach.

That is a word the Knicks are starting to get used to in this search. So far, at least five plausible candidates have either removed themselves from consideration or been removed by their current teams:

  • The Knicks requested an interview with Houston coach Ime Udoka and were denied by the Rockets, according to ESPN.
  • The Knicks requested an interview with Minnesota head coach Chris Finch and were denied by the Timberwolves, also according to ESPN.
  • Former Villanova head coach Jay Wright, who won national championships with Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges, is not interested in the job, according to CBS Sports' Matt Norlander.
  • Connecticut head coach Dan Hurley responded to a question about the Knicks job by saying "not another summer of that," referring to his dalliance with the Los Angeles Lakers last summer and indicating that he is not interested in the job. 
  • Now, the Mavericks have made it known they intend to keep Kidd.

Now, it is not clear if the Knicks ever considered Wright or Hurley to be serious candidates for the job. No reporting suggested that either were genuinely in the mix. Still, this is not a normal NBA head coaching job. This is a conference finals roster in the league's biggest market. It seems notable that the Knicks have thus far hit a brick wall on the NBA candidates that they have pursued and generated little interest from the big-name college coaches we might have assumed would be options. It has been more than a week since Thibodeau got fired, and so far, no serious frontrunner has emerged here.

In fact, even one of the pre-search favorites has seen water thrown on his candidacy. Even before Thibodeau was dismissed, fans frequently linked for Denver Nuggets coach Michael Malone to the job. He is a Queens-born former Knicks assistant with a championship pedigree, but the New York Post's Stefan Bondy all but dismissed his candidacy in the immediate aftermath of Thibodeau's firing. "You can forget about Michael Malone as a replacement for Thibodeau. Not going to happen," Bondy tweeted.

At this stage, the Knicks are not known to have interviewed a single candidate. They have been loosely linked to a handful of candidates, with Bondy recently dropping former Sacramento Kings head coaches Mike Brown and Luke Walton as names he's heard, but with the big names dropping like flies, it seems as though the Knicks are gearing up for a long, thorough process here that includes several interviews. This is supported by the reporting suggesting that the Knicks are comfortable not having a head coach in place by summer league.

So where does that leave the Knicks? Well, fortunately, despite the recent rejections, there is no shortage of candidates who seemingly would be interested in the Knicks job. The question now is which ones the Knicks are interested in pursuing. Here are a handful of possibilities:

  • Just because the Mavericks, Rockets and Timberwolves are saying no doesn't mean the Knicks won't consider pursuing coaches currently employed by other NBA teams. They face an uphill battle given their limited tradable draft capital, but hey, there's no real downside to asking a team for permission to interview someone on the off chance that the team is willing to let them go.
  • There are a number of former NBA head coaches who would appear eager to get back into a top job. Malone and Mike Budenholzer are former NBA champions on the open market, and both are represented by Leon Rose's former agency, CAA. Brown has reached the NBA Finals. Taylor Jenkins has earned the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference twice. These are accomplished NBA head coaches, the sort that figure to regain top jobs at some point in the near future whether in New York or elsewhere.
  • There are similarly a number of former NBA head coaches currently in assistant roles with other teams that are possible candidates for the Knicks job or others down the line. Walton, currently in Detroit, is one that has been reported. Former Hornets coach James Borrego is currently in New Orleans, and he almost got the Cleveland job a year ago before it went to Kenny Atkinson. Darvin Ham made the playoffs in both of his seasons with the Lakers, but has returned to the Bucks to work under Doc Rivers. He will likely get head-coaching interest again at some point.
  • If the Knicks are looking for a creative and open-minded coach to counter the rigid Thibodeau, it might make sense to pursue a first-time head coach. The obvious name here would be Johnnie Bryant, a former Thibodeau assistant who spent last year in Cleveland and very nearly got the top job with the Phoenix Suns before losing out to Jordan Ott. The Athletic similarly named former Knicks assistant Dave Bliss, currently the lead assistant for the Thunder, as a possibility. Though they lack obvious Knicks ties, reporting has suggested that the Knicks would prefer to hire a former NBA player for the top job, so top Celtics assistant Sam Cassell and top Heat assistant Chris Quinn both make sense.

These are some of the names you'll likely hear in the coming days and weeks. There may be more. If there was a home run candidate available to the Knicks, they likely would have emerged by now. Instead, this is probably going to be a lengthy process featuring several rounds of interviews. The Knicks don't seem to mind the idea of doing this slowly so long as they do it right.