Steve Popper: Knicks' Mike Brown will be judged by postseason, but so far, so good
Knicks head coach Mike Brown during a game against the Boston Celtics during the second quarter at Madison Square Garden on Thursday. Credit: Brad Penner
Three days after the Knicks’ 2024-25 season came to a crashing end, Tom Thibodeau received the blame, fired despite orchestrating a culture shift from a deeply dysfunctional franchise to a championship contender. And when the team finally settled on Mike Brown as the replacement, there was a long list of reasons whispered about why he was the choice and how different things would be.
As Brown led the Knicks to a 112-95 win over the Toronto Raptors on Friday night, slotting the Knicks in at the same No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference that they were last season, there are plenty of things that you could point to that Brown has done differently from Thibodeau. The assistant coaches have a greater voice and the front office is heard regularly, with the demand for collaboration. Brown has been open to change, shifting lineups and roles as he takes a democratic approach to the decision-making process.
But just as much has not changed. That, maybe as much as the change, is why the Knicks (53-28) are winding down the regular season with a record even better than the 51-31 mark Thibodeau posted last season.
It was the Knicks’ 13th straight win over Toronto, including 5-0 this season. The Raptors could be the Knicks’ first-round playoff opponent, although that won’t be settled until Sunday night.
“I feel like I’m a competitor,” Brown said. “I didn’t even know — somebody brought that up the last game or Memphis. But I probably saw it some ways, but it didn’t register that they had 51 wins or whatever and I wasn’t trying to pass what they had last year.
“I was trying to get the best possible seed we could get going into the playoffs. I was trying to hopefully help the team improve going into the playoffs and then hopefully make a run at this thing.
“I’ve said this before: Thibs is a great coach. I’m not trying to be him or replace him. I’m just trying to do the best that I can do with this team. So I don’t really think of that. It’d be great to get 60 [wins], and not because we had 60 last year but 60 sounds better than 52 or 54, but that’s kind of how I look at it.”
But it wasn’t the numbers that really were going to reflect what Brown accomplished or how he has survived the pressures of Madison Square Garden, where Hall of Fame coaches have been chewed up and discarded.
He had his moments. Karl-Anthony Towns questioned his role and Josh Hart was unhappy on the bench early in the season. But he navigated his way to this point with the team on his side.
“I think one of his great attributes is he’s willing to listen,” Hart told Newsday. “He takes what we say into account. He gives everyone a voice. That’s something that’s unique in his role, his industry, but something that is really cool. He had us prepared already to make a push.”
Brown has bested the franchise record for a first-year coach, which was 51 by Pat Riley in 1991-92, but he won’t really be judged until the postseason. Thibodeau was dismissed after finishing two wins shy of the NBA Finals, and Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan said on WFAN earlier this season that he expects the Knicks to reach the Finals. Coaches change regularly throughout the NBA, but few step into such pressure — NBA Finals or bust.
“Yeah, 100%,” Hart said. “He definitely was and I think he’s done an amazing job. I don’t know if you can do much better. He’s answered that. He approached it with grace and he’s done an amazing job.”
If Brown won’t be judged until then, he also hasn’t taken the time to look back at what he’s accomplished. “It’s a good question. I haven’t really thought of it,” he said. “I just expected to try the best I can to win at the highest level. I hope that we can climb [upward] and I can continue to learn the group and they can learn me along the way. You hope that you’re competitive during the Cup. You hope that you finish first in your conference with the best record and then you hope that come playoff time, you’re [ascending] and you’re connected.
“The things that you set as your standard are the things that I brought to the table for the standard in terms of sacrificing, being connected, everybody having a competitive spirit and everybody having true belief of each other in the process. While I’m trying to hold people accountable, people are holding me accountable, too. All those things are the things you hope for. I didn’t put a number on how many wins or anything like that.”
That’s something he has in common with Thibodeau. While teams around the league were resting players down the stretch, Brown insisted he was viewing these final games of the regular season the same way as the first 80.
“We’re heading in the direction of being where we need to be,” Brown said. “I like the climb that we’ve made the last week or so, the last three or four games, and we’ve got a couple more games to get there. For us, we’ll take it one game at a time. We’ve got these two left. We’d like to win both of them. What does that mean? I don’t know. We’ll see at the end of the day. But when we lace them up, we’re playing to win.”
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.
