LAS VEGAS — Mike Brown has a habit, a lighthearted routine, of interrupting his own interviews to stare directly into the camera and deliver a message, a joke or even a hello to someone who might be watching.
This week, with the spotlight of the NBA Cup, Brown had a chance to do it once again and provide an important word — an “I told you so.” He could have taken a shot at the Sacramento Kings as he was seated in front of the cameras chasing a trophy with the Knicks, almost a year from the day that the Kings fired him last season.
But Brown took the high road, thanking Sacramento for the opportunity and moving forward to where he is now.
“In life, change happens, not just for me, but for everybody else. And you’ve got to be ready to pivot,” Brown said. “I feel fortunate, blessed, lucky, however you want to call it, to be in this situation here with the New York Knicks. You don’t have a lot of control over your destiny or your path a lot of times. And so, for me to be able to land within an organization like this with the type of players that are here, with the owner and Leon [Rose] and his group, again, you just take advantage of it.
“So I don’t have a lot of time to reflect on the past. I’m about being present and trying to figure out where we can go as an organization and a city going forward. That’s what I look forward to and am extremely excited about, more than anything else, on a daily basis.”
The coming anniversary of his firing didn’t do anything to dim his optimism or mood. And that has been perhaps his greatest trait since arriving in New York. His hiring came laden with as much pressure as any coach has stepped into in recent Knicks history, replacing Tom Thibodeau, who lifted the franchise to levels that it hadn’t seen in a quarter century.
And unlike most coaching changes, this one took place with Thibodeau pushed aside just days after he brought the team to the Eastern Conference finals, rather than in the wake of some losing streak or prolonged failure. The only failing was not getting to the NBA Finals and winning the Knicks’ first championship since 1973. So for Brown, that was the benchmark — get to the NBA Finals with a team that was improved, and experienced this time.
Brown arrived with his own plans and schemes and while some of them remain intact, he has also shown a willingness to learn, reverting to what worked before him — reinserting Josh Hart into the starting lineup and having more of the offense focus around Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, pushing the minutes of the core pieces to whatever is necessary on any given night.
And what he’s really done is listen.
“Yeah, I was very excited when Mike got the job,” Brunson said. “First thing we did is, he called me and we went to dinner and talked for like two, three hours. Not really talking about anything basketball-wise, X’s and O’s or Knicks-wise; we were just talking. I really appreciated the time he spent coming down to see me. It was great. It was a great first impression.
“Since then, our relationship has grown. Our communication is great, the way we talk about things. Haven’t really had any negative conversations or anything like that, but he’s been great. The way he’s holding all of us accountable, pushing us, it’s something that we need from him, and we’re really thankful for him.”
A win in the NBA Cup isn’t close to the end goal for the Knicks — something that Thibodeau and Brown have in common is that they stress focusing on where the team is at the end of the season more than any step in the process of getting there. But it would provide him with a chance for an ‘I told you so’ that you know he won’t take, at least relieving a measure of the pressure on his shoulders.
“I think the Cup is big for us, just for the energy it brings to our team,” Towns said. “To have the opportunity to win it and how blessed we [would be] to win it… I think it brings great energy to the team, great mojo to the team.
“It also brings that feeling of winning. No matter if it’s the Cup, NBA Finals, winning any game, when you get that feeling of winning, it’s addictive. Obviously, I want us to have that mindset where we’re addicted to the next championship, if we can win this one.
“I think this is a great start for us to understand the standards needed to win at a high level, at a championship level, and also giving us that feeling of, there’s nothing better than belief when you know you can do something, and I think this will be a great start for us.”
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.
