Knicks still growing, improving near halfway point of season
Knicks coach Mike Brown directs his players in the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Boston Celtics at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 24, 2025. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
SACRAMENTO — The Knicks have talked often, almost daily, about being a work in progress, learning and adapting to a new coach and a new system. And maybe there was no better place to remember that than here, where Mike Brown was fired just over a year ago.
Brown was building something in Sacramento and when adversity hit, the Kings waited a few more games and then, reluctantly, they insisted, pulled the plug on his tenure there.
But in New York, where patience is rarely tolerated, winning has eased the process. So while the team, which returned nearly the entire nucleus intact from last season’s run to the Eastern Conference finals, and coach are still learning, they prepare to hit the halfway mark after Thursday night’s game at Golden State.
“I mean, what are we in the East? Second?” Karl-Anthony Towns said after Wednesday morning’s shootaround. “We’re not playing our best basketball whatsoever and we’re second in the East. Obviously, there’s a lot of good in the bad, but it should make us feel better coming to work knowing that we could be three times better and we have so much room to grow and we’re still second in the East.
“Take the good with the bad, understand that the bad will teach us and allow those teachings to make us a better team in the long run. I think that I know it’s New York and we always like things happening. And when things aren’t going right there’s expectations of us to do better. But we’re in a good spot right now as a team, for a team that’s really learning and adapting to a whole new system, a whole new coaching staff.
"I think that through the mud we’ve found ourselves second in the East, in a good spot to control our destiny and that’s all you can ask for.”
Towns may believe it more than anyone else on the roster. His struggles to find his fit in Brown’s system have left him with inconsistent performances and an endless number of Giannis Antetokounmpo-fueled trade rumors. Rumors which Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan dampened last week when he said in an interview on WFAN, “We love our team right now. They have chemistry, they all like each other. I’ve never seen a locker room more copacetic.
"There’s a lot of energy in there. Leon [Rose] can always overrule me. But I don’t see us making a big change. Because we got to keep building up this group. This group can win a championship.”
The Knicks brought a 25-14 record into Wednesday night’s game against the Kings. They won the NBA Cup, but have stumbled a bit, going just 7-7 since then. The plans to change up the offensive and defensive schemes were ambitious for Brown once he took over for Tom Thibodeau, who had led the Knicks from decades of dysfunction to contender status.
But the players have not only been learning how to fit in the system. Brown has been learning, too, adapting and adjusting, shifting the lineup to return Josh Hart to the starting five after an early-season experiment, putting the ball in the hands of Jalen Brunson and Towns more regularly.
“He’s been good,” Mikal Bridges said. “Just putting new defense, offense, we’ve been changing some things around and I think he’s been great with communication and if you have anything you have to say or you have a feeling about, you go talk to him.
"Having a coach you’re able to sit down and go talk to helps and I think he also adjusts with us, too. You come in with coaches with a whole offense, defense that they think’s going to work, but sometimes you don’t know how it’s going to be with the players and everything and I think they’ve adjusted through the schemes of how the players are and just trying to find the right offense and defense for us.”
It is where the Kings thought they were when Brown was the coach, winning 48 games and then 46 before struggles in the first two months last season ended his tenure there. He’s got another chance and a better team. And maybe surprisingly, he’s in a place willing to wait and let him and the team learn each other. At least until the postseason this time around.
Notes & quotes: Mitchell Robinson has yet to play in back-to-back games, but was on the floor against the Kings. Brown said he was unsure if he’d be available Thursday against Golden State. “At the end of the day it's going to be the medical team's choice,” Brown said. “As we've gone along, his minutes have increased and he's been able to do more things in practice . . . So whatever they tell us tomorrow, we'll listen to.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
