The second-oldest active player in basketball is no more, as OAKAAK Taj Gibson announced his retirement on Monday afternoon following his release by the New Orleans Pelicans last week. He will join the Chicago Bulls’ coaching staff under Tiago Splitter for 2026-27.
Gibson, a Brooklyn native, was selected No. 26 overall by
the Bulls in 2009 out of USC. It was with Chicago that he spent the bulk of his career, debuting as an extremely old rookie at the age of 24 and growing into one of the best backup power forwards in the game.
He finished fifth in Rookie of the Year voting in 2010, fifth in Sixth Man of the Year voting in 2012, and had the best season of his career in 2013-14, where he played all 82 games and averaged 13 points, 6.8 rebounds, and 1.4 blocks in a bench role, finishing as an extremely close runner-up to Jamal Crawford for Sixth Man of the Year.
It was in Chicago that he grew close to head coach Tom Thibodeau, a connection that would pay dividends down the road. Thibs coached the Bulls from 2010-15.
Shortly after he was canned, Gibson left Chicago as the Bulls entered a rebuild. He was traded to Oklahoma City in February 2017 with Doug McDermott and a 2018 2nd for Cam Payne, Anthony Morrow, and Joffrey Lauvergne. An interesting fact here: McDermott and the Bulls’ 2018 2nd would be flipped a few months later to the Knicks for Carmelo Anthony, and that 2nd became Mitchell Robinson.
He’d slide in next to Steven Adams as the Thunder’s starting power forward for the rest of the 2016-17 season in the first year of the post-KD era, but left in the offseason when Thibs’ new team in Minnesota came calling with a two-year, $28 million pact.
It was there that Taj emerged as a full-time starter as a grizzled veteran, posting 11.5 points and 6.9 rebounds across 153 games as a Timberwolf, but when Thibs was canned, he was out the door as well.
The most relevant chapter of his career to us came when he inked a two-year, $20 million contract with the Knicks in 2019 as part of the “four PFs” offseason in the aftermath of the KD/Kyrie disaster. David Fizdale and Mike Miller would utilize the 34-year-old as more of a center for the first time in his career, using him as a mentor for Robinson. He’d play just 16.5 minutes a game, but started 56 of the 62 games he played as a shield for a young and erratic Robinson’s foul trouble.
His team option was declined for 2020-21, but we should’ve read the tea leaves as soon as Thibodeau was hired as coach that summer. After the Nova Knick 1.0 prototype (Omari Spellman) fizzled out in the first week of January, Gibson returned to fill out the depth chart behind Robinson and Nerlens Noel.
This year marked the backstretch of Gibson’s career, where his experience and mentality were significantly more valuable than his on-court contributions. He would grow into a solid role off the bench, particularly when Robinson was injured.
With the Knicks surprisingly competitive, we suddenly saw the 35-year-old put into the spotlight when Robinson was ruled out for the season, and both he and Noel were stuck as overmatched bigs against Clint Capela and the Hawks. Of the 20 career playoff starts he had, three of them came in that first round series.
He was re-signed for 2021-22 and played a similar role, this time being forced to step up into a backup role due to Noel’s long-term injury. In a frustrating season for the team, he showed a new, interesting wrinkle to his game: shooting threes.
It looked like his time in New York was over when he signed with the Wizards in 2022-23, where he played 49 games as a vet for a very young and bad team, but he’d get one more chance to play for his hometown soon enough. When Robinson suffered a seemingly season-ending ankle injury in December 2023, it was Gibson who got a non-guaranteed contract to fill his shoes.
He’d be yo-yo’d around for the rest of the year, being released in mid-January to avoid guaranteeing his contract before inking a pair of 10-day contracts later in the season, but with Robinson’s unlikely return nearing ahead of the playoffs, Gibson played his final game as a Knick on February 14, 2024, going scoreless in nine minutes.
He finished his Knicks career averaging 4.9 points and 4.4 rebounds on 56.7% from the field in 175 games (64 starts) across four seasons. From there, he continued to be the token veteran on bad teams, playing four games in March 2024 for Detroit before signing one-year deals in both Charlotte and Memphis.
He hangs it up after playing 10 games for the Grizzlies down the stretch in 2025-26 before being traded in the Jordan Hawkins deal to the Pels, who subsequently waived him.
Gibson’s spot in Knicks lore is not that of someone who had an iconic moment that will be replayed forever, but as someone who was there as a transitional piece from the bright times to the bad times. Playing for the team he likely dreamed of playing for growing up, he transitioned from a starting caliber forward to an end-of-roster veteran, providing depth and experience.
People forget this, but Gibson is the only player aside from Julius Randle and Mitchell Robinson whose Knicks career spanned from David Fizdale to the year 2024. He was there for LolKnicks, the We Here season, and (very briefly) the Brunson revival. Championships are not entirely built by the stars that finished the job, they’re fortified by players who built the foundation.
Maybe Gibson wasn’t a true foundational piece of the rise from irrelevance to competence, but he was a constant throughout it. It’s a great hire for a young Bulls team under an inexperienced head coach in Splitter.
