With season spiraling downward, how will Knicks respond?

With 22 games left, injuries mounting and the standings and schedule conspiring to make a playoff appearance unlikely, the reality has begun to set in for the Knicks that this season won’t be a success.

But the real issue is just how the team will respond to the failures. For a franchise that has been marked by dysfunction and instability for more than two decades, do the Knicks resort to more of the same?

Tom Thibodeau came home to New York, not far from his childhood home and the place where he spent the formative years of his coaching career as an assistant during the last run of steady success for the franchise. He took the head-coaching job and last season, in his first year at the helm,…