In 2022, Mike Brown took over a team that had won 30 games the previous season with an offense that ranked No. 24 in the NBA. When training camp began, the Sacramento Kings‘ new coach told them that they’d have five offensive staples: pace, floor spacing, quick decisions, paint touches and ball reversals.
Brown wanted the Kings to attack early in the shot clock. If they couldn’t find a high-percentage look right away, he wanted the ball to move side to side. Their first action might not generate an advantage, but if they flowed right into another one, they’d loosen up the defense. They needed to drive, cut and roll to the rim hard, not necessarily to score but to force the opponent to react. Brown didn’t want anybody pounding the ball, and he didn’t want the defense to be able to load up on Sacramento’s best players.
Those Kings won 48 games, and they finished the regular season with the best offense in the league. Brown won the Coach of the Year award. Now, months after Sacramento controversially fired him, he’s reportedly on the verge of replacing Tom Thibodeau, whom the New York Knicks controversially fired after making the conference finals. If Brown could breathe life into a franchise whose last playoff appearance predated the iPhone, imagine what he’ll do for the Knicks!
That’s the rose-colored view, anyway. For those who were outraged by New York’s decision to fire Thibodeau, Brown will not be given the benefit of the doubt. To make them get over Thibodeau, he and the Knicks will have to get them excited about something new.
For a while, the 2024-25 Knicks’ offense was interesting. They weren’t fast, they didn’t take a ton of 3s and they relied on one player to do the vast majority of their playmaking, but they were putting up elite numbers anyway. From Jan. 1 onward, though, they ranked just 16th in offensive efficiency, and it wasn’t just because All-NBA guard Jalen Brunson missed a month with an ankle injury. Their starters, who logged a lot more minutes together than any other lineup last season, were just average offensively in the 2025 calendar year.
If there aren’t significant personnel changes coming, I hesitate to predict that Brown will have New York running and gunning like the 2022-23 Kings. Last year’s Knicks, though, had a tendency to get stagnant in the halfcourt, particularly when opponents put smaller defenders on Karl-Anthony Towns. As awesome as Brunson is as a one-on-one scorer, I suspect that Brown will try to make the team less Brunson-centric: More player movement, more ball movement, more of an emphasis on getting the ball across halfcourt quickly. Maybe the Knicks will even be able to find Brunson some easy looks. Only 46% of Brunson’s 3s were assisted last season, by far a career low, per Cleaning The Glass.
When New York met the Indiana Pacers in the conference finals, the style-of-play contrast was stark. With their commitment to playing with pace, their franchise player getting off the ball quickly and their unpredictable halfcourt system, the Pacers made the Knicks’ approach look almost antiquated. Brown will not and should not ask Brunson to do a Tyrese Haliburton impression, but he and his staff can at least nudge New York in Indiana’s direction. I’ll be particularly interested to see how the Knicks’ offense changes if James Borrego ends up being Brown’s lead assistant — a few years ago, his Charlotte Hornets teams were a model of spacing, speed and creativity. Just like the Pacers, they ran off makes and “ghosted” ball screens to cause confusion. New York could use a bit of that juice in their offense.
When Thibodeau arrived in 2020, the most important thing he brought the Knicks was stability. At this point, what Brown needs to bring them is flexibility. That means not just diversifying the offense, but experimenting with lineups and game plans. That way, when the playoffs come around, they won’t, for example, have to ask Towns to defend pick-and-rolls differently than he had all season.
It was weird that, when Mitchell Robinson returned from injury late in the regular season, New York didn’t prioritize getting him minutes alongside Towns. It weird, too, that the Knicks didn’t want to see what five-out lineups featuring Miles McBride could do for them. Brown can add value by simply trying stuff out. Why not see what it looks like with Guerschon Yabusele — or OG Anunoby, for that matter — at the 5? Why not play zone every now and then?
Every team must have its non-negotiables regardless of who is on the floor. Eighty-two games, though, gives a coaching staff a lot of time to figure out what trade-offs it is willing to make and when. Brown surely has some ideas about what lineups will optimize the Knicks’ spacing, rebounding, turnover-forcing, etc., and ideally he will spend the regular season testing those ideas and learning everything there is to know about the tools at his disposal. Even the New York fans who were heartbroken when Thibodeau was fired would admit that the team valued consistency more than adaptability during his tenure. If that stays the same under Brown, then what was the point of making a change?
