Knicks coach Mike Brown defends keeping in Jalen Brunson during blowout loss
Knicks head coach Mike Brown reacts in the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Memphis Grizzlies at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Tom Thibodeau had a story he would break out any time he was questioned about why he hadn’t thrown in the towel and removed his starters in a blowout. He would recall his days as an assistant coach with the Rockets and the game on Dec. 9, 2004, in which Tracy McGrady scored 13 points in the final 35 seconds, including a three-pointer with 1.7 seconds left that gave Houston an 81-80 victory over the Spurs.
Mike Brown has his own version. Just out of college, he was serving as a video assistant for the Nuggets, and with the Jazz leading by eight points and a little more than 30 seconds remaining on Feb. 8, 1994, he .saw the Nuggets' Rodney Rogers sink three three-point field goals in nine seconds. Denver celebrated too soon, though, and a length-of-the-court pass resulted in a jumper by Jeff Malone that gave Utah a 96-95 victory.
Like Thibodeau before him, Brown is learning that the stories do little to soothe the fan base when the stories are told to explain away why the star player — Jalen Brunson in this case — was still on the floor and injured in the final minutes of a game that already seemed long lost. So the Knicks were without Brunson on Friday night as they hosted Miami. He has a Grade 1 ankle sprain that they hope won't sideline him for long.
“I’ve been a part of some crazy comebacks,” Brown said before Friday’s game. “I’m trying to win the game. A couple minutes left. [Get a] stop and two threes and it’s a two-possession game. And that’s all I was trying to do was win the game.”
The numbers though, were far-fetched. The Knicks had been trailing all game long, falling behind by as many as 22, and were down 16 with 1:54 remaining against Orlando on Wednesday when Brunson drove the lane and came down awkwardly, rolling his right ankle — the same ankle that had sidelined him for 15 games last season. He drew a foul, took the shots, intentionally fouled to get out of the game and headed straight to the locker room.
The head-scratching part of this is that while Thibodeau never wavered from his argument, Brown spoke during the preseason about doing the opposite, waving the white flag and choosing to live to battle another day.
“The biggest thing is, you know, trying to make sure you watch everybody’s minutes instead of trying to chase games,” Brown said when the team was starting to prep for the preseason opener in Abu Dhabi. “There might be some games that, maybe throw the towel in early.”
So if not on Wednesday, the second night of a back-to-back set when the team had looked gassed nearly from the start, then when?
“It can change,” Brown said. “And sometimes it may be four minutes left in the game, depending on the flow of the game. Sometimes it may be down to the last second . . . If I feel like our guys are still being competitive, they’re still trying to play the right way and win the game, and I feel like there’s a chance — then I’m going to try to win the game.”
Brown has admitted more than once that just as his players are learning him, he is still learning them, finding the most effective times to insert players into the game and when to take them out.
But all of those decisions are easier when one of the players he is relying on is Brunson, a crutch he wouldn’t have Friday night after the point guard left the Garden on crutches two nights earlier. The Knicks have had the complete projected starting five together only five times in the first 12 games, with Deuce McBride replacing Brunson on Friday.
Every time Brown has to shuffle a bench piece into the lineup to replace a missing starter, the math on his minutes chart changes. And sometimes that is going to bruise egos in addition to changing the production. Josh Hart sat out the entire fourth quarter Wednesday, something he did in Chicago earlier this season. Mikal Bridges played only two minutes in the fourth quarter Wednesday and said afterward he didn’t know why.
“Again, that’s why this is a process,” Brown said. “It’s about having the next-man-up mentality. If this guy’s out, next man step up, and you don’t have to do anything extraordinary, just do your job.
"No different for me. If a guy is down, I’ve got to do my job and not try to be too creative or go too far right or too far left. Gotta plug the next guy in and just make sure that guy feels comfortable knowing what he’s supposed to do on both ends out on the floor.
"That’s why you have 18 — or in our case right now, 17 players. It gives guys an opportunity to get out on the floor that may not have had an opportunity in the past. And then it lets you know kind of, more about your team. At the end of the day, it’s a process that everybody has to go through, and we don’t expect this thing to happen overnight.”
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.
