Why did Knicks fix a system that wasn't broke?
New York Knicks head coach Mike Brown. Credit: AP/Morry Gash
CHICAGO
Let’s start with this: It’s too early in the season to panic.
It’s five games in. The Knicks have played one game — the last one — with a complete roster. They’re at home for the next seven games. All reasons not to worry.
But . . .
I was speaking with a former NBA player as the Knicks made their way through their road trip and he watched them and said, “Something doesn’t look right. I could understand changing coaches if they wanted to, but why would they change the entire system that worked?”
And he wasn’t the only one, the only scout or broadcaster or observer, who wondered aloud, will this work?
The Knicks have brought in Mike Brown, and you can debate whether Brown or Tom Thibodeau is the better coach. Both have won multiple Coach of the Year awards and led teams deep into the postseason. But what does not look right at the moment is that the Knicks built a roster that fit Thibodeau’s style and have tasked Brown with trying to fit these square pegs into the round holes of his coaching style.
Chicago, a team no one projects as a powerhouse despite its 5-0 record, put a fast, young team on the floor and easily ran by the Knicks. The Knicks’ two most vital players, All-NBA players Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, are not built to race. But the front office wanted pace and a coach who would give playing time deep into the bench.
Again, maybe they just need time together, but in 10 more games, the Knicks are not going to change who they are, and right now, it just looks clunky. They are 23rd in pace and 17th in offensive rating (after finishing fifth in offensive rating last season). So how does it change?
“Short-term memory. After wins, after losses, it’s the same,” Brunson said. “We got to move on. You can’t harp on it. You can’t be too high, be too low. The next day that you wake up, do what you got to do to get better. You have to prepare for the next game. That’s the beauty of the league.”
“This is a great test for us,” Brown said. “It’s early, but it’s a great test for us and I’m looking to see what type of resiliency we have as a group. Got to keep telling them the truth. I’m going to keep coaching them. I’m going to keep trying to keep putting them in the best position to win.”
Towns has seemed particularly uncomfortable in his role. He did play power forward for the Timberwolves after they acquired Rudy Gobert. But in making room for Mitchell Robinson, who has played only one game and seems bound to miss plenty of time, the Knicks are asking Towns to run the floor like a wing. While he has some elite skills — he’s among the best-shooting big men ever to play the game — racing to the corner is not one of them.
Josh Hart, one of the vital do-everything connector pieces for Thibodeau, played only 15 minutes Friday. He never got off the bench in the fourth quarter and left the locker room without speaking to the media. That was a rare occurrence for a player who is always accountable.
Towns would not point to any of his personal play, but as a team, he said, “Just obviously we’re not happy. We had three winnable games and we didn’t do enough to close the game out. For someone like us, that was our identity last year — close games we usually win. So obviously it’s a different feeling not being able to close the games out.”
There is a different feeling. Maybe it’s only five games and in time it will come. But today, nothing seems to fit just right the way it did before.
Teaching on the run
One thing that Brown has done that hadn’t been seen is in-game teaching. Through the preseason and the start of the season, he will pull a player from the lineup and impart a lesson on the spot.
In Miami, he had a long talk with Towns at one point before Towns took his seat on the bench. At another point, he called Tyler Kolek over and not just instructed but demonstrated what he was seeing.
“For sure. I’ll definitely do in-game teaching at any time,” Brown said. “But I can’t remember exactly what I was teaching him. If I see something, I’ll try to correct it, even if I’ve got to demonstrate it, because we’re all still learning on the fly. They’re learning me, I’m learning them. We’re all learning what we need to do out there, so we can’t ever afford to not teach when we have moments to do so. Because it just happened and I don’t want it to happen again. So it was a big enough deal.
“Not only do we have time at that time because it’s a dead ball, but it’s a big enough deal for me to teach him. Sometimes what I’ll do is: Somebody makes a mistake, I might send somebody in the game and I’ll tell them, ‘Hey, you’re just going in the game for a second.’ I’ll bring a guy out. I’ll talk to him. Sometimes I’ll put him right back in. It’s all about teaching and growing.”
“I think it’s great for the players to be connected to their coaches during the game,” Kolek said. “I’m out there running the second unit, I want his opinion on what he sees and what he thinks we should be doing out there. I think it’s great.
“In college, every free throw, I would go over to Shaka [Smart], ‘What are you seeing? What do you want here?’ Having that constant communication so you don’t feel like you’re out there just with the players. It’s the players and the coaches trying to win the game.”
Hart of the matter
It’s not unusual for Josh Hart to have his moments when frustration bubbles up, whether it is about his own role or the play of the team. But he admitted — even while saying that he told Brown he doesn’t want to shuttle between starting and coming off the bench — that he might have his moments this season with the new role as sixth (or seventh or eighth?) man.
“I think throughout the season, it’ll be a battle of, you know, kind of fighting the egotistical view of it,” Hart said Friday morning. “I think I did have a good year last year. And you know, with a different role, now it’s totally different. I think the biggest thing, I’ve had to sacrifice my whole career.
“I talked about it the whole time last year. You know, that’s something that I try to do every year and try to make sure whether I’ve got to sacrifice or not, make the team the best that we can be. So it’s never like, OK, cool and it’s seamless.
“There’s going to be days where I’m just like, ‘Man, that’s some bull.’ You know what I mean? But it’ll be a constant thing of fighting that but making sure I know that this is what’s best for the team and locking in on that.”
One problem is that Hart missed much of the preseason with a back issue. More pressing, an injury to the ring finger on his shooting hand in last season's playoffs was surgically repaired but has been a lingering issue. Hart said he is still struggling with numbness in three fingers but said he will not have surgery again during the season because the procedure would require a lengthy shutdown.
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.
