Mike Brown looked around and was the odd man out.
In a coaches meeting a few weeks back, the Knicks’ head coach was deep in conversations with his staff about a potential change to the starting lineup. Injuries to key players forced Brown to re-shuffle the deck. The discussion at hand was about starting, or not starting, Josh Hart.
Brown thought the team should go one way. Everyone else in the room went the other way.
“I had reasons why I was starting that way,” Brown said. “My staff, all of them, were like, ‘Hey, these are the reasons it would be better (if you started Josh Hart).’ The reality of it is, I just listened to my staff. If I’m the only one thinking the other way might be better at that time, then maybe I’m wrong. I have been wrong before and I will be wrong again in the future. That’s what I love about my staff. I have guys who aren’t afraid to tell me what they think. At the end of the day, it’s on me to make the decision. I’m not going to always listen to them. But if my whole staff is telling me something, I better open my eyes and ears and figure out what they’re trying to say and follow their lead instead of following my lead all the time.”
When the Knicks’ decision-makers made the surprising decision last summer to fire their most successful head coach this century right after making the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in 25 years, collaboration was a quality they were chasing in the next coach. The need for it apparently came up routinely throughout the decision-making process. Brown, once he met with those in charge, revealed himself to be someone eager and willing to play ball. Not just with the front office, though. But with his coaching staff, with his players.
It’s Brown’s job to make the final call on all things relating to the on-court basketball. That, after all, is what he gets paid to do. However, he’s created an open-door policy for everyone to have input on how things will be run.
“I definitely don’t have all the answers,” Brown said. “I’m definitely not the smartest cookie in the jar. 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 anytime you give anybody in the group ownership of the process, they tend to buy into it more. It feels like it’s their own. Our players have been really good giving suggestions. My staff has been really good.
“There were a couple times — we have a big staff — there have been a couple of times when I was thinking this and everyone else was thinking that so I even said in front of the group, ‘I got to look in the mirror if I’m the only one thinking this.’ I’m probably wrong, so I’m going to roll with y’all.”
Before every game, Brown shares his rotation chart with Knicks executive Leon Rose, so he knows what to expect while watching and conversations can be had after games if anyone thinks there should be a tweak. In timeouts, after meeting with his coaches, Brown sometimes hands the clipboard to his assistants like Chris Jent and Brendan O’Connor to diagram something for the team, while Brown stands behind them staring and analyzing like one of his players.
Upon arrival, Brown wanted to overhaul the defensive and offensive systems that New York was used to. He did things his way, with his philosophies and principles, as he tried to implement a new style. As time passed, though, and games piled up, he made tweaks based not just on suggestions from his coaches, but his players, as well.
“He might like this and that, but if it doesn’t work for us, he might sub it out,” Mikal Bridges said. “In the beginning, he was throwing everything out there, which he should … he’s a new coach. We all try to learn it. Some things we need to fix and tweak out a little bit, we do.”
In the midst of a game, Brown also gives the players the freedom to not necessarily improvise but suggest a different alternative. Hart said one thing Brown allows his players to do is go with certain play calls that they might feel work better in a certain situation. He also said there have been other examples of how Brown allows the players to have input, but he doesn’t want to give away too much to rivals who may be reading this.
“Sometimes we might see something and we’ll call something and he’s cool with it,” Hart said. “The communication, and there’s been a couple of other things I don’t want to put out there, he’s very open to our voice.”
There’s a level of trust Brown has built up early into his Knicks tenure by simply creating a village, one where everyone plays a part and has a voice. His assistants have great responsibilities. His players are able to go to him with proposals. The front office often gets explanations and sees their input in action.
What stands out most about Brown from some of the players, though, is that he’s not afraid to admit to them when he was wrong. And while listening, being willing to change and so on are pillars of collaboration, so is his humility.
“He holds himself accountable,” Hart said. “He communicates with us. Sometimes, I don’t want to say it’s rare because coaches do hold themselves accountable, but they do it within each other or do that behind closed doors. They don’t really acknowledge it in front of the team. So him doing that is rare, but it also shows the accountability.”