NEW YORK — The first time Jalen Brunson heard from Mike Brown, basketball never came up. There wasn’t any talk of how the All-NBA guard, who has terrorized the league with the ball in his hands, might have to alter his existence as a star, or how the new coach wants to get the meticulous point guard to pick up the pace. The second time, again, nothing about philosophies, principles or Brown’s plans to get New York to where it fell short last season.
The third time … the fourth. Nothing. Not a word.
“We’re going to have plenty of time to talk about basketball to a point where they’re going to be tired of me talking about basketball,” Brown told The Athletic. “I want to get to know them for who they are because this relationship is about trust. It doesn’t start talking about basketball. It starts with him getting to know me and me getting to know him. What better way to do that than talk about your family, what you like to do, where you live and where you like to spend your offseason? Now, I can really get to know him for who he is.”
For Brunson, the Knicks’ star player who, just a few months ago, helped the organization reach heights it hadn’t in 25 years, that meant something. Brown didn’t come in as hot as the offense he wants to implement. Brown wasn’t telling Brunson everything he thought kept them from reaching the NBA Finals as the former watched from his couch. Brunson, whose long, personal relationship with former coach Tom Thibodeau is well documented, felt that Brown prioritized him as a person, not as the player who will help decide how this experiment goes.
“It was a point of his to make sure that I was comfortable with him and getting to know him,” Brunson said. “The relationship piece is very important to him as it is to me.”
Brown is here in New York with the sole purpose of winning an NBA championship. The Knicks’ decision-makers made it clear after Thibodeau was fired that anything short of a title is unacceptable. And if any season was the season to do it, this is it. The East is battered and bruised, with several star players injured and previously contending franchises toggling between the present and future.
It’s a high-risk situation to be in, especially for a coach who is no spring chicken. It also comes with the ultimate reward if the goal is met. Winning a title in New York would make you a star of stars in a city full of them, both past and present. It would grant you a free, standing reservation at the Polo Bar. It would get you a statue similar in size to that green lady in the New York Harbor. Twenty-three coaches have tried and failed since Red Holzman manned the sideline in 1973, delivering the Knicks’ last championship. A title now, with so much despair over the last 50-plus years, would solidify anyone who ended the drought.
How Brown ended up coaching the Knicks is a story in itself. Thibodeau was fired days after not just leading the Knicks to their first Eastern Conference finals in 25 years, but aiding in turning New York from a punchline of a franchise to a respectable one. Not everyone saw it coming, including those within the organization. The Knicks then did a wonky coaching search, attempting to lure away head coaches from other teams and leagues before turning to assistant coaches and those out of work.
In the end, Brown prevailed as the guy. His experience coaching stars like LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kobe Bryant went a long way with those making the decision. The veteran coach helped turn franchises around in the past, most recently in Sacramento. His offenses were modern. He’s known for collaborating with both his staff and the front office, which was appealing to the higher-ups. Brown has been to the NBA Finals as a head coach and as an assistant. He’s been fired after one season. He’s been fired six games into a season. Brown has seen it all.
Very few, though, have seen this. It takes some Big Apples to take a job in this city with these expectations coming off the most successful campaign this century.
Brown will either be immortalized forever or just another Knicks coach.
“Nobody has bigger expectations, first of all, than I do,” Brown said at his introductory press conference. “My expectations are high. This is the Knicks. I talked about Madison Square Garden being iconic. I talked about our fans. I love and embrace the expectations that come along with it. I’m looking forward to it.”
Mike Brown has a wealth of NBA experience from which to help guide the Knicks. (Sergio Estrada / USA Today Sports)
Brown has ideas as to how he will unlock New York, and he shared those with Brunson when the time was right. He wants the Knicks to play fast. New York didn’t last season. The offense was routinely stagnant. The ball pounded the hardwood so much that it got splinters. The Knicks’ success was largely due to talent. Brunson is one of the league’s great shot-makers. The same for Karl-Anthony Towns. New York won a lot of games but it was a chore at times — more than it should have been for a team that was one of the final four standing. Brown wants the team to get up 3s — a lot of them. Around 40 per game would make him happy. Last season, the Knicks were one of the more accurate 3-point shooting teams in basketball, but ranked toward the bottom in attempts. He’s going to spruce up the defense, not relying so much on man-to-man every night.
Brown isn’t a scientist, he’s just a coach who’s been around the block and evolved. He understands the importance of pushing the pace. He gets why it’s important to sprint to the corners, “so that the defense is flattened.” He gets that moving the ball side to side makes you less predictable. Brown has refreshing thoughts as to why it’s no longer taboo to play two big men together, which he will this season by starting Towns and Mitchell Robinson together.
“First thing is skillsets are a lot better or people are at least recognizing it with bigger guys,” Brown said. “And because of the attention to detail that everybody gives to spacing, you want more length. You want more length to make the court look smaller defensively. Long shots lead to long rebounds, so you want more length out there to get rebounds and stuff like that. And then everybody switches a lot. If a guy messes up on a switch or they switch a small guy on a big, that’s something that, again, with people paying attention to spacing with player movement, you can take advantage of not only in post-up situations, where a guy can turn and just shoot over a guy, but offensive rebounds (are) a big emphasis now.”
Brunson is going to be used off the ball more under Brown than he has been in recent years. You’re going to see Towns in the corners, the left wing and right wing. Mikal Bridges might initiate the offense. The goal for Brown is not to make the Knicks predictable, which hindered them last season and was part of why, despite their success, they weren’t always easy on the eyes and still felt underwhelming at times.
A week before the start of the regular season, the Knicks hadn’t practiced a single play. There was no Brunson package. There were no Towns or OG Anunoby or Bridges plays designed to get them looks. Those came in the final days leading up to the regular season. Instead, Brown spent the bulk of training camp hammering home his offensive principles. He wants his players, first and foremost, to play fast but, equally as important, be able to read and react to what is in front of them. The reason for no designed plays, Brown said, was so that when a play doesn’t work, the players still know how to generate offense. A play not working, in his mind, shouldn’t make the players revert to standing still or waiting for someone to make something happen.
To the outside world, not having designed plays this late in the preseason might appear blasphemous. Maybe Brown is a mad scientist who either is ahead of the curve or will fall on his face. Regardless, to the players tasked with executing the coach’s vision and principles, it’s been a welcome approach.
“I like it a lot,” Bridges said. “The biggest thing that helps is that a lot of us were here last year, and I feel like you can learn plays a little bit faster than concepts. With concepts, you have to start from the beginning and really grow them out and work on them every single day. With plays, you draw up some plays and learn them, but I think we’ll learn them pretty fast.”
Brown is implementing a defensive system that even some veterans need to get used to. It’s not as man-to-man dependent as the Knicks have been in the past.
Robinson will anchor the defense. His presence last season was felt immensely when he returned from an injury that sidelined him from the start of the season until March. He’s played seven NBA seasons and said he hasn’t quite played in a defense like this, one that guard Miles McBride said is predicated more on body help, or as Brown calls it “shifting,” than stunting on a ballhandler or cutter and retreating to your man.
“It’s a different style,” Robinson said. “It’s sort of like a zone but not quite. We’ve never really did that. We’ve always played man-to-man defense. The adjustments we have to make, the communication, different calls that we didn’t have last year. It’s a totally different ball game.”
Ultimately, unlocking the Knicks’ offense will determine if this team can get to the promised land, but so will being able to find a way to mitigate having both Brunson and Towns together on the floor defensively — both players compete on that end but have limitations that opposing teams like to hunt — in the most critical moments of games. That’s just another challenge tossed Brown’s way.
Not every coach walks into a ready-made situation like Brown has in New York. He’s got a chance to rewrite his career. He’s got an opportunity to feed, arguably, the most starved fan base in the world. Success — sorry, a championship — with the Knicks means his name could hang in the rafters of the world’s most famous arena.
The Knicks stated by firing Thibodeau that, more than anything, they believe a change in coach is what will get them over the hump. There were no major roster moves to speak of. The front office didn’t change. Swapping out Thibodeau for Brown was it.
With that, New York has to look different. It has to go further. It has to win a championship. Those were the prerequisites for this job at this time, unfair or not.
And, yet, as tremendous as the expectations are, Brown wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Our goal, starting with (James) Dolan, to Leon (Rose), to the players, all the way down to the fans, is to build a sustainable, winning culture that produces championships,” Brown said. “That’s why I’m here.”