Why Mike Brown's first Knicks season will answer one big question

Yahoo

a day ago

Yahoo Sports fantasy basketball analyst Dan Titus and NBA writer Dan Devine discuss how New York's new head coach will adjust the team's playing style this coming season and whether the current roster will be ready to adjust. Hear the full conversation on 'Good Word with Goodwill' and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
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Video Transcript
How much pressure do you see on Mike Brown right now?
Do you think he's the right man for the job to potentially take the Knicks to the promised land?
Mike Brown is under pressure because the bar that we've set is, if you make the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in 25 years, you could still get fired.
The Tom Thibodeaux situation is emblematic of the windows are so small and so short, it's opened for such a short period of time, and it's getting narrower and shorter every year, it seems like.
And I think the message of 'we're moving on from Tom Thibodeau' is like it's not, that's not a move that you make as an organization if you feel like you're where you are supposed to be.
It's a move you make if you feel like you've got a championship roster that isn't being maximized.
Mike Brown is, I think, an interesting kind of needle-thread choice because this is somebody who is capable of being conversant in a number of different styles, can bring you a lot of the same, we do not compromise on our defensive principles, period.
Kind of you know, hard assery, for lack of a better term, of Tom Thibodeaux, but has shown a willingness to be more flexible, to go deeper into his rotation, to say, I'm gonna take the talent that I've gotten and I'm gonna institute more ball movement, more player movement, more fluidity, more motion, and not just have it be station-to- station basketball where everybody's watching one guy cook.
We're gonna find out if the Knicks' more stagnant approach was coaching oriented or star oriented.
And I think that's gonna be pretty interesting to find out because we know that Mike Brown, given his druthers, wants to play more passing, more movement, faster into your sets, across half court earlier, get into your actions with, you know, more time on the shot clock, be able to go deeper and spread the floor, all those sorts of things.
Now we're gonna find out if Jalen Brunson wants to play that way, and I think he's capable of it.
I think guys like Josh Hart and McHale Bridges and maybe a larger role for McHale Bridges.
Towns, if he's not sort of minimized as a spacer, all these sorts, like there's opportunities for higher-end offensive creation there, but it's got to come from the top down.
And I think if Jalen Brunson shows that he's willing to buy into that, uh, the, the sky could be the limit for the next offense under Mike Brown.
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