Unafraid to Fail

Mike Brown deserves all the flowers.

Good morning! The Knicks are back in action tonight at 8pm against the Pelicans in New Orleans. For New York, Josh and Mitch are out while Deuce is questionable. For the Pels, Herb Jones is injured and Jose Alvarado is suspended.

Unafraid to Fail

Let me first say thank you to everyone for not minding this newsletter hitting your inbox a day late.

Having done this for a few years now, I have something of a formula for making it through the 82-game regular season without keeling over. I hit the ground running out of training camp, take a week or so around Christmas time to breathe, go hard for six weeks until the All-Star break, then take another week to recharge before settling in for the stretch run. It requires trusting you, my readers, to not only understand the necessity of these breaks, but also to appreciate that my coverage of the team will be better off in the long run.

Dare I say, it seems I have something in common with New York’s current head coach.

Longtime readers of this newsletter know full well the complicated feelings I had upon the departure of the last man to hold this job. There were countless reasons for that, but of the many ways I felt a kinship to the man through his five-year run, chief among them was his steadfast unwillingness to compromise his values.

That very lack of fungibility was perhaps the single biggest gripe held by most of his detractors, but that only made me respect him more. There was something about how, in a society that has increasingly become a popularity contest, here was one man who seemed to revel in the discontent he caused those outside his immediate circle. It made me forgive his clearly recognizable sins because if a steely resolve was the foundation of all the good stuff, who was I to question when and where that resolve was deployed?

Thibs held his core beliefs so dearly that he was never phased by repeated calls to expand his horizons, and the limited horizon that garnered the most attention was his rotation, which was as limited as any team in the NBA.

Not that all of the attention was bad, mind you. For the #WeHere Knicks, pushing guys past their reasonable limit was a welcome, novel concept for fans who just wanted serious people running their team. The post-Randle 2023-24 Knicks will similarly live on in the collective memory of this city largely because they pushed their tank past empty so damn often. Even with last year’s group, there was talk after Games 1 & 2 in Boston that New York held onto qthe rope the longest because they had become so accustomed to extending their own internal boundaries.

But the flip side of that coin ultimately won out, starting with the disaster that was the ‘21-22 season and followed by the group running out of gas in different ways in both 2024 and 2025. In all of those instances, the specter of the unknown hovered over the proceedings. People from both sides of the aisle would scream at their adversaries in prosecution or defense of the status quo. Ultimately, no one knew for sure which side was right because we only saw one outcome, and the team almost always did enough winning for the ends to justify the means if you squinted just so.

Even among his most passionate supporters though, it was hard to watch the Knicks and not feel like they were a team walking a tightrope without the safety of a net. The fact that Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and later Mikal Bridges had skeletons made of adamantium wasn’t a luxury; it was a necessity. When the unthinkable happened - Brunson going down for a month last season, for instance - we knew the extended playing time that resulted for some players would be short lived. It was very much a “next an up” mentality in that the replacement would go back to being the backup the moment the original option returned.

That was the old way of doing things and it was never going to change, not unless and until there was a different the man in the chair.

That different man turned out to be Mike Brown.

It’s not that Mike Brown is above many of the things Thibodeau became infamous for. We’ve seen Brown use an eight-man rotation in several halves this season, and even lean heavily on seven guys on a couple of occasions. Multiple guys topped 40 minutes in both the Cup semis and final. Jalen Brunson has more 39+ minute games under his belt through 29 games this season (five) than he did through the same total last year (four). Even Saturday night in Atlanta, three players played 37 or more minutes. Brown, like Thibs, knows that at the end of the day, games are won by your best players.

But whereas Thibodeau took that mentality to the absurd extreme of playing every player the most possible minutes he thought he could before diminishing returns set it, Brown is trying to have his cake and eat it, too. By exploring every corner and crevice of his available roster, Brown is finding out just what all the tools in his toolbox can do. Whether he ultimately decides to use them in a big spot or whether they are the best option for that particular task isn’t important. For Brown, having the knowledge about what the tool is or isn’t capable of when put into action is the real prize.

In no game this season was that mentality clearer than on Saturday night in Atlanta. Even with Josh Hart, Deuce McBride and Landry Shamet all sidelined, Brown could have easily gone with more known quantities to fill the gaps. He could have replaced Kevin McCullar Jr’s 23 minutes by giving extended run to Tyler Kolek and Jordan Clarkson, or even Mohamed Diawara (quietly at 111 minutes on the season, more than 15 players drafted ahead of him last June) or Ariel Hukporti. It would have been a reasonable decision.

It also would have been a wasted opportunity, at least as far as Mike Brown was concerned.

Now, Brown has confidence in one additional tool in his tool chest. For Thibs, that potential upside was never worth the downside risk, because to him, any single play could be the difference between a win and a loss, between success and failure, between life and death.

No matter how well Brown ends up doing in this job - and I hope, pray and believe he will wind up doing quite well before all is said and done - it won’t ever change my feelings about the man he replaced. We should all be so fortunate to have the level of conviction about anything that Tom Thibodeau had about even the most minute details of his job. That conviction got the Knicks to where they are, and maybe if a ball off the hands of Tyrese Halliburton bounces one inch to the left or the right, it would have gotten them even further.

But even if that conviction created the mold from which this team was formed, someone needed to break that mold for them to truly reach their peak, and with each additional game he coaches, Mike Brown is showing everyone just what sort of hammer he can wield.

Fearless coaching isn’t for the faint of heart. The downside risks are real, especially when you’re coaching a team with these expectations in this market. Brown just seems not to care.

Maybe that’s the secret to making the most of a precious opportunity:

Don’t treat it precious at all.

💫 Stars of the Game 💫

⭐️ Kevin McCullar Jr: Jalen Brunson hit three massive buckets down the stretch, including a step-back triple to give the Knicks the lead, capping off a 34-point night. OG Anunoby hit four clutch free throws and swiped a game-sealing steal that only he could make. Neither makes the podium today.

Thems the breaks when a player came into the game with career totals of 34 minutes, nine points, nine rebounds, two assists and one steal and put up 13 points, eight boards, two dimes and two steals in 23 minutes against the Hawks. McKullar was nothing short of a revelation, from his ability to knock down threes to his surprising passing on the move to his damn near lockdown defense in big spots.

Mike Brown’s cup runneth over.

⭐️ ⭐️ Mitchell Robinson: The All-Defense caliber player we’ve known for the last few years is slowly but surely making his way back into the picture. That part of his performance was impressive in its own right, but his impact on the offensive glass continues to be massive, both from an individual standpoint and in the opportunities he opens up for others because opposing teams are so concerned with boxing him out.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Karl-Anthony Towns: I woke up feeling pretty annoyed with myself yesterday morning.

Early on in Saturday’s postgame, I said that I didn’t think this was a great Towns game by his lofty standards. As impressive as it was for him to bulldoze his way to 18 free throw attempts, I didn’t feel like he did anything spectacular, which we know he’s more than capable of.

But then I thought about it some more, and specifically what I’ve been saying about why we should try and be more forgiving of KAT’s bad moments. They’re often so loud that they have an outsized impact in our mind.

If that’s the case though, then shouldn’t the opposite also be true? As in, why should I diminish an objectively great game just because the good stuff wasn’t loud in a positive way? The dude put up 36 points on 15 shots and pulled down 15 rebounds, including five on the offensive glass. Any way you cut it, that’s a masterpiece.

The fact that he seemed to get the biggest issue with his offensive game - offensive fouls - under control should give us more reason to praise the outing, not less.

So here’s three stars KAT. I hope they help you accept my apology.

Final Thought

Eff Trae Young. That is all.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”