What's going on with the Knicks and their coaching searches?
Knicks head coach Mike Brown speaks during his introductory press conference at the team's training facility in Tarrytown, N.Y., on July 8. Credit: Newsday/Kendall Rodriguez
LAS VEGAS
The Knicks managed to finish off their search for a head coach before the Las Vegas Summer League began, maybe a low bar, but an accomplishment nonetheless. But as the gathering has worn on, the Knicks remain oddly incomplete.
The Las Vegas Summer League has grown steadily over the years and now is more than just a showcase that gives fans a glimpse of the stars of the NBA Draft and intriguing prospects. It has become the NBA version of baseball's winter meetings, giving executives, coaches and even owners (or a proxy for the Board of Governors meetings) from every team an opportunity to spend time face to face. It’s not always where deals are completed, but the groundwork often is laid for trades down the line. It's also a time for finding jobs.
That brings us back to the Knicks. They did introduce Mike Brown as the head coach, replacing Tom Thibodeau, before this began. But it's not unusual to run into someone here asking a very general question: What is going on with the Knicks?
Brown has been courtside for every game and taken the opportunity to converse with the handful of rotation players on the Knicks' roster to get to know them better. What he hasn’t done is finish off his coaching staff. The Knicks have been rebuffed in efforts to land an associate head coach nearly as many times as they were shot down in requests for permission to speak to other teams' employed coaches during their head-coaching search.
This might seem like a minor issue, and it could be. The Knicks have plenty of time before training camp begins in September. It's not as big an issue as the teams that have key players injured — either the long-term situations (Jayson Tatum, Tyrese Haliburton and Damian Lillard) or the surgical procedures with possible returns for the start of the season (Paul George and Joel Embiid).
But it is an odd uncertainty that has surrounded the team. The Knicks fired Thibodeau just days after the regular season ended, and while it may have been a debatable move, it wasn’t shocking. Rumors floated throughout the postseason that some voices in the organization were lobbying for the change. But if you were going to pull off the bold move of replacing a coach who'd stabilized the organization and brought the team to the Eastern Conference finals — the franchise's best coach in a quarter-century — one would think you'd have a better option in place.
The Knicks instead went through a long process, making requests to five teams, most notably Dallas and Jason Kidd, and getting rejected. They called it thorough, but here in Vegas, there are loud whispers from other organizations and other coaches that the choice was not as clear-cut as the Knicks want to make it sound.
And now you can argue timing and importance, but the Knicks removed Rick Brunson from the lead assistant role he held last season. That has always been an awkward situation, even though he is a well-qualified assistant who has been in the game as a player and coach for decades. However, the Knicks didn’t have a replacement in place. So they have run through efforts to bring in James Borrego, who remains with New Orleans, and Jay Triano, who was a top assistant to Brown in Sacramento before joining Dallas. The Mavericks are not allowing him out of his contract.
The New York Post reported that the Knicks were informed by the Milwaukee Bucks that Darvin Ham cannot exit for a lateral move.
The Knicks have spoken to Lakers assistant Greg St. Jean, the son of longtime NBA coach and executive Garry St. Jean. St. Jean spent four seasons at St. John’s as an assistant on Chris Mullin’s staff and worked in different roles for Sacramento, Phoenix and Dallas before joining JJ Redick’s staff.
The associate head coach's role is an important one. One coach described it as a trusted voice for the head coach to bounce ideas off and problem-solve alongside. If Brown hoped to bring in some of his key assistants from Sacramento, his last job, all three of the front-of-the-bench assistants already have taken other jobs. Triano went to Dallas, Jordi Fernandez is the head coach of the Nets and Doug Christie replaced Brown in Sacramento.
“I want to be collaborative,” Brown said when he was introduced before heading to Vegas. “I want to form that partnership with Leon [Rose]. I’m excited to do that with him, and so he and I, we’ve just started sitting down and talking about different ways to formulate a staff. So that’s going to be a process that’s ongoing and who knows how long it will take?”
How long? Who knows? Maybe there's no rush, but it certainly feels as if the Knicks pushed out the pieces in place without an answer to those questions.
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.
