If sabotaging the fate of your own team was a stat line, Mike Brown is currently putting up Wilt Chamberlain-esque numbers with the rotation decisions he’s making against the Atlanta Hawks. In the event he doesn’t get his act together soon, the New York Knicks will lose before ever sniffing the first round, and this roster will be blown to smithereens.
Entering Game 3, Brown was receiving endless amounts of flack for running lineups that included neither Jalen Brunson nor Karl-Anthony Towns to start the second and fourth quarters. Despite suggesting he would continue to view that pattern as a staple, he almost entirely abandoned it on Thursday. New York racked up just two minutes and 39 seconds of action without either star, compared to over 11 minutes in Game 2, and around nine minutes in Game 1.
Hooray for adaptability!
If only this were Brown’s only issue.
Mike Brown keeps making detrimental decisions
Remember how the Knicks were conserving Mitchell Robinson so he’d be ready for the playoffs? About that…They’re not really using him.
Robinson is averaging under 15 minutes for the series, and played under 12 minutes in Game 3. At one point on Thursday, the Knicks opted to go without a center. They were promptly outscored by five points during a two-and-a-half-minute stretch.
Brown has explained away Robinson’s limited usage by noting that he doesn’t want to play Karl-Anthony Towns less, and how the dual-big lineups aren’t working. The latter point is just bizarre.
New York has played Robinson and Towns together for 15 minutes through three games, and been outscored by two points. That’s not great, but it’s far from evidence the combo isn’t worth further exploration, particularly when they played better across a larger sample during the regular season.
What’s more, Brown is rolling out lineups the Knicks barely tested all gosh darn year. In the fourth quarter of Game 3, he played Robinson with Deuce McBride, Jose Alvarado, Josh Hart, and Mikal Bridges. That group received exactly zero minutes during the regular season. Brown also fielded Jordan Clarkson in Alvarado’s place. That fivesome tallied a whopping four minutes prior to Game 3.
Oh, and who could forget the timeout snafu at the end of Game 2?
The Knicks won’t beat the Hawks unless Mike Brown does better
Brown is not on the floor. He cannot force Bridges to score more than (checks notes) zero points, or defend CJ McCollum himself. You can nevertheless make the argument that, so far, the head coach is the Knicks’ biggest problem.
To be fair, Brown is not beyond adapting. He winnowed down the no-star minutes in Game 3, and shifted the Knicks’ defensive approach. He also deserves credit for yanking Bridges off the floor when it became clear it was #OneOfThoseNights.
This is ultimately damning with faint praise. Brown is coaching the Knicks as if they’re a science project. While experimenting in the playoffs is fine, it shouldn’t be the default. Getting away from what worked in the regular season is baffling. Ditto for not giving battle-tested positives more runway to yield better returns.
Brown even deserves blame for mounting frustrations with Towns. The big man isn’t always as aggressive as he needs to be, but New York—and, by extension, its head honcho—are doing a poor job of ensuring he’s activated.
Fortunately for the Knicks, Brown has proven to be flexible all year, and certainly not above distilling the obvious. They better hope that doesn’t change now. They’ll lose in the first-round if it does, and go down as an abject failure as a result.
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