For Mike Brown, the Knicks’ NBA Finals run is far greater than he envisioned
· Yahoo Sports
CLEVELAND — Well before he was offered the job to replace Tom Thibodeau as head coach at Madison Square Garden in July, Mike Brown took a long look at the Knicks roster. What he saw lit his mind on fire.
Brown saw Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, a pair of perennial All-Stars capable of rivaling any duo in the league. He saw OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges, a duo affectionately referred to as “Wingstop,” potentially the best two-way pairing in basketball. He saw Josh Hart, Mitchell Robinson, Miles McBride and Landry Shamet as valuable rotation players. And he saw a front office hellbent on improving what was the NBA’s least-productive scoring bench last season — which they went on to do by acquiring Jordan Clarkson on the buyout market and Jose Alvarado via mid-season trade.
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Brown came into his first year in New York with ideas, with strategies, with a plan to help elevate the Knicks from an Eastern Conference Finals appearance to, dare he dream, the franchise’s first NBA title since 1973.
And on the doorstep of that dream, right before taking a commanding 3-0 conference finals lead over the Cavaliers, Brown admitted all of those ideas went out the window. This is not what he envisioned when he took the job 10 months ago.
It’s far greater.
“You come with an idea in mind. This is a players’ league and you have to be able to adapt, adjust – whatever you want to call it – to whatever your group’s strengths are on both sides of the basketball,” Brown said. “It may take you a month to figure it out. It may take you half a year to figure it out. And I ain’t that smart, so it took me a little longer.”
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In many ways, the Knicks are still protective of Thibodeau and his New York legacy. They are thankful for everything he did to restore one of the NBA’s most storied franchises after years as a punching bag at the bottom of the standings.
Without Thibodeau, the Knicks would not be here, on the brink of franchise history, today. The same could be said of the Golden State Warriors: Mark Jackson coached the Warriors from 23 to 47 to 51 wins in his three-year coaching stint from 2011-14. The Warriors fired him anyway after a first-round playoff exit and replaced him with Steve Kerr. They immediately rattled off three championships in a four-year span.
The Knicks faced a similar decision over the summer: The improvement under Thibodeau from a win-loss standpoint was tremendous — 41, 37, 47, 50, then 51 wins plus the franchise’s first conference finals appearance in a quarter-century. Much like Warriors history cannot be recounted without Jackson, Knicks history cannot be told without Thibodeau.
“Thibs did an amazing job and gave us the experience and the education and the opportunity to show the world what we could do as a team,” said Karl-Anthony Towns. “When Mike came in, making the Eastern Conference Finals this year was going to be the bare minimum. We stepped into this season with a lot of expectations.”
Yet what was missing with Thibodeau has been abundant under Brown: collaboration, the aspect the organization buzzed over from ownership and the front office down to the players and coaching staff when the hire became official in July.
And the Knicks have leaned on every bit of that teamwork approaching heights this franchise hasn’t seen this century.
“With Mike, he had to learn us and adjust to us. On the flip side, we had to do the same, as well,” said Towns. “Now, we are at a point where we are both working seamlessly. We understand each other’s language. He is getting the best from us and we are getting the best from him.
“I think that speaks to a season, especially a first season with a new coach and a new system and a new philosophy. It’s a testament to the players to do an amazing job coming together and showing that unity that made us special last year. But the coaching staff being receptive to the players and adjusting with us and finding the way to get the most out of us.”
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The stakes were undeniable. Brown didn’t need to hear James Dolan’s NBA Finals-or-else mandate on WFAN in early January. He’s completely capable of reading the room — provided he’s got his glasses on-hand — and the room said anything less than a Finals appearance would be a failure at Madison Square Garden.
“Obviously he got put into a tough situation,” said Josh Hart. “We were in the Eastern Conference Finals last year, gave away Game 1, probably could have been in the Finals if we didn’t, so he was put in a tough situation with a lot of expectations but he’s handled that unbelievably.”
Fifty-three wins later, it still wasn’t enough. And when the Knicks — Brown’s Knicks — were on the verge of a first-round collapse in Atlanta against the Hawks, the coach showed why he was the right pick, the person to move the organization forward.
Just as he did in January, when the Knicks spiraled out of control, losing nine of 11 games shortly after winning the NBA Cup Final over the San Antonio Spurs.
In January, he changed the offense to be less reliant on Brunson’s individual scoring abilities. Against the Hawks, he changed the offense again, this time to run through Towns, who went on to post two triple doubles in three games to closeout the Hawks — then average 7.5 assists in a four-game sweep of Joel Embiid and Philadelphia 76es.
Every step of the way, he’s thanked his assistants by name: Chris Jent, Rick Brunson, Maurice Cheeks, Mark Bryant, Darren Erman, Ricardo Fois, Brendan O’Connor and TJ Saint — not to mention the Knicks’ shot doctor, Peter Patton.
“I thank our guys because their patience has been unbelievable, and they’ve just gone with every single adjustment that I’ve thrown at them starting with Josh off the bench, experimenting with things to try to [improve] the group,” Brown said. “Hopefully, you get it sooner or later. That’s why it usually takes a couple of years to get it in sync with the coach and players, especially when one of them is new.”
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The Xs and Os are one thing. Every coach has to live and die on their schemes and adjustments. But in the premier media capital of the world, protecting one’s peace could be the difference between winning and losing. Between being fully locked-in on a game plan and being distracted by outside noise.
Brown has muted the outside world as best he can. He doesn’t read Knicks coverage and tries to stay away from talking heads on TV.
“I think he’s really, really good at not letting any of us — he talks about human nature a lot. He’s very upfront about it,” said Landry Shamet. “When you win games in a row, respectfully, getting questions like this from you guys, he talks about it, and it’s human nature to kind of get comfortable sometimes. So he’s always checking us, curbing us on that, reminding us of kind of fighting that off.
“It’s a lot of the intangible stuff like that that I think he’s spectacular at, keeping us in our right headspace. Obviously, Xs and Os and game plan and how it communicates with everyone. This is a great coach. We trust him. You follow his lead.”
As a result, the Knicks have gone radio silent, tunnel vision, their sole focus raising a championship banner for the first time in over 50 years. Brown has brought the Knicks closer to realizing that dream than the franchise has been since 1999.
Only it looks nothing like he envisioned when he first took the job. It looks better. It looks like a team truly capable of winning it all.
“He’s coaching us in his way, his style. He’s taking input from everybody,” said Hart. “His ability to lead us to adapt to things has been great. That’s just the kind of person he is. He’s a high-character, and a great person first and foremost.”