The Knicks made seeking someone who would be open to collaboration a clear priority in their coaching search during the summer. But while it’s certainly easy to present the corporate-speak in an interview, it’s less common to find it once the job is filled.
But Mike Brown has opened his doors — to players, to the front office, to ownership — and as he has found his way as the Knicks’ head coach, he has done something rare: listening.
So after he made his offseason plans, his staff came to him with an idea: that he was wrong.
He’d plotted out a lineup, putting Josh Hart on the bench, and he’d already admitted he’d kept him there too long in games. Now his staff, coaches who’d been here and seen what Hart could provide, wanted more.
“You wanna know the truth?” Brown said after Wednesday’s 119-104 win over Charlotte pushed the Knicks (14-7) to 5-1 since they made the move to return Hart to the starting lineup. “I rely on my staff, and I had reasons why I was starting it that way, but my staff, all of them were like, ‘Hey, these are the reasons why it would be better.’ And the reality of it is I just listened to my staff.
“I said, OK, if I’m the only one thinking that the other way may be better at that time, then maybe I’m wrong. And I have been wrong before, and I will be wrong again in the future. And so that’s what I love about my staff is I have guys that aren’t afraid on staff to tell me what they think. At the end of the day, it’s up to me to make the decision.
“I’m not gonna always listen to them, but if my whole staff is telling me something, then I better open my eyes and my ears and figure out what they’re really trying to say and maybe follow their lead instead of them following my lead all the time.”
Hart’s numbers have jumped since the move, going from 9.9 points, 6.6 rebounds, 4.5 assists, .482 shooting and .348 three-point shooting in 26.0 minutes per game to 17.0 points, 10.3 rebounds, 6.7 assists, .522 shooting and .438 three-point shooting in 36.7 minutes per game. But it’s what the team has done, what the team has looked like, since the change that really makes the difference.
The defense has been better, even with Mitchell Robinson and his rebounding and defense removed from the starters. The Knicks have gone from allowing 116.1 points per game to giving up 105.2 points per game with Hart as a starter. And that’s something Brown wouldn’t know unless he’d been with the team and seen Hart and the starters function together for 82 games and through the postseason run.
In posting the 5-1 record — and even in the only loss in Boston, with Hart leading a first-quarter run that had the Knicks up 14-2 on the Celtics — the Knicks have shown what they can be and a little bit of what they were last season.
But it isn’t just the lineup change. The new system implemented by Brown remains in place; the concepts of pushing the pace, running the floor and cutting to create space still are being used. But there also is a return to what the Knicks excelled at before, putting the ball in the hands of Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns and letting them create. Opposing coaches have noted that they look a lot like the group that Tom Thibodeau led last season.
“He’s great at holding himself accountable, communicating with us,” Hart said. “I think that’s sometimes — I don’t want to say rare because I think coaches hold themselves accountable — but sometimes they do that within each other or do that kind of behind closed doors and don’t really acknowledge that in front of the team. Him doing that is rare, but shows that accountability.
“Even with some of his things, he’ll listen to us and you feel like he might like this and that, but if it don’t work with us, he’ll take it out and sub something else for us,” Mikal Bridges said. “That’s one thing I learned from that . . . He throws everything out there, as you should as a new coach, and we all try to learn it. Then some things that we’ve got to fix and tweak out a little bit, we’ll do.”
It’s still early in Brown’s time leading the team, only 21 games into the season. The preseason and the start was the time for Brown to put his plans in place. And it’s understandable that it now is a work in progress.
“That’s what my job is,” Brown said. “I definitely don’t have all the answers. Definitely not the smartest cookie in the jar. So I lean on people. At the end of the day, I do have to make the final decision because there are a lot of voices. But any time you give anybody in a group that you’re leading ownership of the process, they tend to buy into it more because it feels like it’s part their own.
“As the head coach, I even said in front of the group, I’ve got to look in the mirror. If I’m the only one thinking this, I’m probably wrong.”
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.
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