Knicks Morning News (2026.08.16)

I think we can all agree that Mike Brown proved to be a fantastic coach. He deserves all the praise he has gotten, both here at KB and in the local and national media.

I think we can all agree that in the Brown vs. Thibs convo:
1) Brown was better at managing minutes in general
-he didn’t coach every game like game 7 of the finals
-he trusted players on the bench during the regular season
-he didn’t really have a long-term doghouse (Exhibit A: Clarkson)
2) Brown was better at getting players to be their best selves in a collaborative, non-alienating way (Exhibit A: KAT)
3) Brown was more willing to go deeper into his coaching “bag” than Thibs on both sides of the ball
4) Brown was quicker to make in-game adjustments
5) Brown was more likely to listen to his players, assistants, and team executives in making adjustments, both in-game and in-series.

One can fairly wonder how Thibs would have done had he coached this team this year and faced the same opponents in the playoffs, especially without the baggage of coaching them the previous years, which I think was an advantage for Brown. I truly believe that the Knicks would have beaten all three EC teams we faced, although perhaps not in such dominant fashion. But I also think that there is less chance that the team would have been as healthy and rested a) going into the playoffs, and b) for each successive round. Our stamina advantage vs. the Spurs was a huge factor in out comebacks. But having to rely on that stamina advantage to come back from significant deficits in all 5 games is not exactly a feather in Brown’s cap. Nor was his bench going utterly silent for most of games 4 and 5. The Spurs were a green team with a green coach, historically green for a finals team. I don’t think it took a genius coach to figure them out. In fact, it was pretty predictable….just look at the pre-series predictions here at KB. But Brown’s coaching was a huge reason why that stamina advantage existed, and that alone would give him the nod over Thibs.

At the end of the day, Brown was awesome and got the job done. He inherited a team that had gone to the conference finals and that had clearly been well coached and took them to another level. Thibs had run his course and deserved to be let go. Dolan did it the right way by getting direct player feedback in player meetings. We don’t really know how keen Leon was on defending his old friend. We do know that he had to scramble to find a suitable replacement, and that he got rebuffed re: his primary targets. We know that he interviewed a bunch of guys in the picked-over bin (and one woman with no NBA coaching experience) and that Mike Brown was not viewed here as a sexy hire. But in retrospect, he turned out to be a perfect fit, maybe the only perfect fit out there. I can’t imagine the team doing better under Jason Kidd, Taylor Jenkins, or Mike Malone, or James Borrego, or Terry Stotts, or any of the other names being thrown around. Brown elevated himself into the top shelf of coaches out there…with Kerr, Spo, Carlisle…and should remain there until proven otherwise.

“My sole problem with Thibs was not his minutes allocations, doghouses, I know what I’m doing so don’t give me advice, etc. It was that he effectively called his own player a liar. Even if it was motivated by some old-school what said in the locker room stays in the locker room mantra. And not because it was an important player, but anyone on the roster. That had to be rectified even with a private apology. Suspect he never got the chance with all the other stuff. With all the flips and flops up to our playoff run, no idea what he would have accomplished in the postseason. But I do know that Brown is easily one of the top 5 reasons we are opening next season with a ring ceremony.”

I had lots of problems with Thibs, but also always thought that he was an excellent coach, not a top-teir guy, but very comparable to this year’s HOF inductee Mike D’Antoni.

I agree that the way he dismissed Mikal’s public comments was extremely off-putting. But it was consistent with the take that Thibs listened to nobody unless he wanted to, which was rare. I think he felt that he was entitled to feel that way because he was singularly dedicated to coaching, at the expense of any kind of personal life outside of coaching. Derrick Rose referred to him as a “martinet” which is pretty accurate. I don’t believe I ever heard Thibs express any kind of humility. And the weird thing is, I don’t think he cared about getting credit, because he didn’t value anyone’s opinion about his coaching enough to consider praise from others to be the least bit meaningful.

In contrast, Brown defers credit so often and profusely that so much that it sometimes comes across as overkill, but I think he really means it. The most notable example is the way he described his back-and-forth with KAT over the course of the year. It never became a feud, even with some obvious frustration on both sides. Brown probably would have turned the Mikal comment into a positive, an opportunity for collaboration. Thibs turned it into a “STFU and just do what I tell you” moment, not even acknowledging that Iron Man Mikal, who would be the last guy to flippantly bitch about excessive minutes, was making a valid point.

“If you haven’t done so in a while, I suggest you go back & watch some of our old playoff games. It’s like watching this team play in mud. The degree to which Thibs actively made these guys worse is pretty remarkable.

(The most notable exception is the second round series v Boston, which I thought was his best work.)”

In the three years prior to this one, The Knicks had the 3rd, 7th, and 5th best offenses in the NBA. In 2024-25, Boston had the 5th best defense in the NBA and somehow Thibs’ team scored enough points to beat them, but not Indiana. Maybe it’s because Indiana was an excellent 2-way team that happened to match up very well with us on both ends, and that Carlisle is a great 2-way coach. The Knicks actually lost that series because they couldn’t stop Indiana’s offense (Siakam in particular), not because the Knicks’ offense was stuck in mud. Indiana had a team eFG% of .563 against us in a 6-game series. That’s about what the Knicks was in 6 games vs. Atlanta’s meh defense. You ain’t gonna win many series when your opponents shoots that way. We beat the Celtics because we held them to a .515 eFG%, not because of our offense, which was actually worse than it was against the Pacers.

Here are the eFG%’s against us in the playoffs this year:

ATL: .504
PHI: .514
CLE: .498
SAS: .493

Mike Brown’s offense that wasn’t “stuck in mud” could only generate a .495 eFG% against the Spurs. His well-oiled bench, while making some big buckets situationally, shot like total ass in general, especially in games 4 and 5. Brown’s offense depended on Brunson being unstoppable in isolation and OG being on an all-time shooting heater. And, of course, on our defense getting huge situational stops, and the Spurs fucking up time after time.

“They held OKC to a .497 eFG% and OKC fans will tell you they played the same Roberto Duran style defense against the Thunder as well with the same loose whistle.”

Yet the Pacers held an OKC team with a healthy Jalen Williams to the same .497 eFG%. So can we now conclude that Indiana’s defense was actually better than the Spurs’? Or that Thib’s offense was better than OKC’s?

“The Spurs were at a rather large disadvantage in those 4th quarters against us because we had a guy who could go get us a bucket when we needed it and they didn’t. Wemby doesn’t create his own shot much, and so they came up empty on so many of those high leverage possessions. It was basically the complete opposite of Becky Hammon’s theory.”

+100000

The Spurs were a deceptively lousy offensive team, meaning that they could make hay against teams with gaping defensive holes but not against a team like ours that could handle Wemby and Castle. That Brunson could score so prolifically against them even when their defense was set, and not be responded to by an equally prolific scorer against our set defense, was the main difference in the series. Maybe one or all of Wemby, Castle, or Harper will evolve into that guy but none of them are there yet. All they needed was a couple of clutch buckets down the stretch to pull out any of those games, and they only got them in Game 3 (Fox and Castle both hit huge shots.)

“Lindor is 32, and has become prone to pulling a lot of rocks in the field. Lindor fell off quite a bit on defense last year and has been downright mediocre in the field this year.

An excellent two-way SS like Lindor is a rare bird, but he just might not be that player anymore. This year he has played like a 3 WAR player. Thats good enough to hold down the job for another couple of years, but any further decline and he’s going to become a problem.”

I get the skepticism about Lindor, but he doesn’t seem like a particularly old 32. He’s been dynamite at the plate for the last two months, and while his fielding probably has something to do with his injury recovery and initial struggles. I don’t think they will find a better hitting SS than him unless they pay top dollar for it. And if it takes moving him to 2B with some DH duty to keep him fresh, I’d be good with that. Of all the recent vets, including the ones moved last year, he’d be the one I’d least want to see moved.

When discussing the intricacies of team-building under the current CBA, the Thunder, long brewed under the patient genius of Sam Presti, should be treated as an extreme outlier. We had this discussion previously, when you held them up as an example of a team that was going into the second apron. Alas, they are back under it. But they are still taxpayers.

“The hard cap itself has already cost us more than the penalties likely ever will.”

This is false. You can continue to bend yourself into a pretzel trying to prove that it is true. But it isn’t.