NEW ORLEANS — Mike Brown had plotted out his minutes schedule, a rough draft he creates for every game and he knew he had a wild card penciled on it, but he kept it to himself until five minutes and 11 seconds into the game Saturday night in Atlanta.
That was when he called down the bench for his first player off the bench — going past veterans like Mitchell Robinson and Jordan Clarkson, beyond the recently-ascended Tyler Kolek, and signaled for Kevin McCullar Jr.
“I knew a possibility was coming because guys were out with injuries,” McCullar said. “I just stayed ready. When my number was called I was the first one off the bench, kind of caught me off guard a little bit. But I was ready to go in and try to make an impact.”
It was just 11 seconds later he grabbed an offensive rebound and 36 seconds after that he handed out an assist on a three-point field goal by OG Anunoby. And he didn’t stop until he’d played 23 minutes — nearly as many as he’d accumulated in his career, now two months into his second season — and scored 13 points, four more than he’d totaled in his career, and grabbed eight rebounds.
“I don’t now if he knew,” Brown said afterward with a smile. “I didn’t tell him. He was scheduled on my little minutes sheet to come in at the 8 minute mark of the first quarter. I was going to throw him on Trae [Young] just to see what happens.
“Kev’s a young, really good defender, has a great feel on both ends of the floor, but especially that end of the floor. I wanted to give him a chance. I threw him out there a few minutes and he was fantastic. So he just earned more minutes. I didn’t have him down for that many minutes, but he definitely earned those minutes as the game went along.”
McCullar had a hint, at least that there was a possibility, with Josh Hart home recovering from a sprained right ankle suffered Christmas Day, and Deuce McBride testing his own sprained left ankle and scratched shortly before game time.
And maybe more important, he could see that Brown was willing to experiment with a lesson he’d learned as an assistant under Steve Kerr in Golden State — putting a young player into an unexpected, high pressure moment and seeing how the player would respond. So with barely a handful of minutes of mostly garbage time on his resume, McCullar was asked to go and chase Young around.
It’s not just McCullar. Rookie Mo Diawara got the start in Hart’s place. Kolek has become a fan favorite and relieved some pressure on Jalen Brunson by providing another ball handler in another Brown experiment, playing the two undersized point guards together.
“The way they came in and played is what we needed,” Brunson said. “…Just came in and did their jobs. Actually, they did more than their jobs.”
While these developments have been compared to last season’s team and critics of the prior regime flood social media with insistence that Tom Thibodeau would not have given these players a chance, it’s worth noting that McCullar came to the Knicks as a late second-round pick with medical red flags. He had a knee injury from his days at the University of Kansas that sidelined him most of the season and left him working his way back into form in the G League. He spent some time around the team and made his debut in late March and was given the game ball by Hart, who had set a franchise record for triple doubles in a single season that night.
“For me that’s an easy decision,” Hart said that night. “That record is cool and a blessing, but at the end of the day that record’s going to get broken at some point. … Getting your first NBA points, nobody can take that way from you. It’s important that he had that, got the game ball for that.”
Hart was back in New York, where he will remain for all three stops on this road trip, tweeting encouragement to McCullar when he saw him do, well, things that Hart does. Hart had grabbed four offensive rebounds and on one sequence dove into the Knicks bench to save a loose ball. He got to his feet, got the ball back and drained a corner three.
“Yeah, he’s like a big bro,” McCullar said of Hart. “Seeing how his energy is contagious on both ends of the floor. Just tried to go out there and make winning plays like he does.
“I learned a lot [last year]. I was banged up with injuries, but credit to all the guys in the locker room, all our older guys, stayed on me, helped me through my rehab process. Now I’m out here playing minutes. Give credit to the veteran guys in our locker room for keeping us ready and telling us when our opportunity is called to take advantage of it.”
What the Knicks and Brown have shown is that they are open to surprises. When Hart and McBride and Landry Shamet are back maybe the minutes are few and the opportunities are fleeting. But Brown won’t hesitate to take a chance.
“That’s what having a team is about,” Brown said. “I feel confident in all our guys. … So we’ve got to go to the next man. We just want guys to give us what they’re capable of. We don’t want them to go outside their box, but we just want them to give us hard minutes the time that they’re on the floor. I thought all our guys did.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.