Mike Brown is no stranger to benching Mikal Bridges. The New York Knicks’ head coach decided seven times during the 2025-26 regular season that Landry Shamet gave his team a better chance to win.
The team's NBA Championship victory rendered those games water under the proverbial bridge — no pun intended. Whether they were more punitive toward Bridges, complementary of Shamet, some combination of both, or related to something else entirely was suddenly irrelevant.
This season, though, Brown already seems to be taking things to the next level. The coach has been completely unafraid to uphold a championship standard as strictly as he deems necessary. He benched offseason signing Andre Drummond for the second half of the Knicks' third game of the season, against the Orlando Magic, and has already benched Bridges three times in seven games.
Whether Bridges' play has specifically been deserving, or Brown is trying extra hard to send a message to his entire team as the league's eight-year streak of failed repeats looms over them, one thing has been clear each time. The play of Landry Shamet and Jordan Clarkson off of the bench enables Brown to sit Bridges and still put a highly-competitive, if not more competitive, lineup out there on the court.
Brown can only be as harsh on his starters as his depth allows him to
James Wiseman hasn't given Brown the same flexibility with regard to his centers. When he punitively benched Drummond against the Magic, the Knicks lost Wiseman's seven minutes by five points.
Bridges earned and made four free throws against the Brooklyn Nets on Monday night, but converted on just one of his seven field goal attempts. Just over three minutes into the second half, Brown sat him. He wasn't subbed back into the game for the rest of the night.
Shamet led New York in scoring, with his 3-point marksmanship and consistent effort on both ends of the court giving Brown a foundation to build off of. Clarkson's gift for scoring and patient pick-and-roll navigation, as well as his relatively newfound dedication to physically dominating games on the margins, made it even easier for the Knicks' coach to rely on his bench.
Both Shamet and Clarkson getting extra run meant that another starter had to sacrifice playing time. Against the Nets, it was Josh Hart. He played just 27 minutes — but was also crucial in the fourth quarter as the Knicks pulled away.
Brown should continue to show his starters that bringing anything less than the expected amount of effort will lead to those players playing less than they may have expected on a given night. It may be the only way the Knicks will have a chance to defend their title by the end of the season. New York's head coach, who helped the Golden State Warriors repeat as champions in 2017 and 2018 as their defensive coordinator, would know best.
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