It's official: the New York Knicks finally have their head coach. After an exhaustive thirty-day process in which Leon Rose interviewed multiple candidates, and asked permission to speak with several more, the President and GM chose two-time NBA Coach of the Year Mike Brown.
Brown's credentials are impeccable. He was an assistant under Gregg Popovich, during which time the San Antonio Spurs won the title in 2003; he took the Cleveland Cavaliers to the finals in 2007 in just his second season as head coach; in 2009, he won the first of his two Coach of the Year awards when the Cavs won a franchise record 66 games; he was an assistant under Steve Kerr, during which time the Golden State Warriors won three championships, two back-to-back; and he won his second Coach of the Year award in 2023 when he guided the Sacramento Kings to their first playoff appearance in 16 seasons.
He has a regular-season record of 454-304 and a postseason record of 50-40, which includes two trips to the conference finals and one trip to the league finals. Not only is he eminently qualified to coach this team, he is a considerable improvement over the man he is replacing.
This is not a knock on Tom Thibodeau, but anyone who watched the Knicks play last season knew there was something wrong. Despite having more talent, they looked disjointed at times, and often lacked the resiliency and toughness that had come to define past teams. Some of that is the players fault, but ultimately it's the coach's responsibility to make things work. Thibs' reluctance to hold his players accountable and his stubbornness when to came to making adjustments proved to be his undoing. The Indiana series was the final nail in the coffin, as far as Rose was concerned.
It is highly unlikely Brown will make the same mistakes. Indeed, all indications are that he is the polar opposite of Thibs. He has a history of getting his players - all of them - involved. In the 2022-23 season, the Kings not only had the number one rated offense in the NBA, they had six players score in double digits. He's coached such notables as LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Kyrie Irving. If he can deal with those personalities, he should have no problems with Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns.
So now that Rose has his man, what next? Well for starters, Brown will have a deeper and more productive bench than Thibs did. That's because in addition to looking for a head coach, Rose was busy signing Jordan Clarkson and Guerschon Yabusele. The former is a guard who can play either the one or the two and averaged 16.2 points and 3.7 assists per game last season for the Utah Jazz; the latter is a center who averaged 11 points and 5.5 rebounds per game last season for the Philadelphia 76ers. Rose was able to get both and still stay $2.2 million under the second apron. Last season, the Knick bench averaged a paltry 15.8 points per game. Clarkson and Yabusele all by themselves can put up 27 per game.
As for those LeBron rumors, you can forget them. If Rose didn't want Kevin Durant, what makes any body think he would agree to take on a 40 year-old, soon-to-be retired Hall of Famer? Besides, once he opted in to his contract with the Lakers, it pretty much put the kibosh on him going anywhere. With the apron system now a reality in the NBA, high-priced contracts are almost impossible to move.
So what are the expectations? Given that Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Halliburton will both be out next season with torn Achilles, the Eastern Conference is there for the taking. I'm sure Brown knows, and has been told, that anything less than a finals appearance will not be acceptable, especially for an owner whose franchise hasn't won a title since 1973. The natives aren't just restless, they're downright ugly.
Parallels have been drawn to the Yankees of the mid-1990s. After George Steinbrenner fired Buck Showalter in 1995 and replaced him with Joe Torre, a lot of people thought he was crazy. Buck was a proven manager, while Torre had never won a thing. But Torre proved to be the right manager at the right time, and in '96, the Yanks went on to win their first World Series championship since 1978. While it's a little premature to predict whether history will repeat itself, it's worth noting that we are hearing a lot of same second guessing coming from both Knicks fans and beat reporters alike.
Could lightning strike again? Only time will tell.
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