Mike Brown was hired by the New York Knicks to win the NBA Finals. It's that simple. That conclusion doesn't require any assumptions or reading between the lines, either. It comes from the team firing its coach after making the Eastern Conference Finals and then owner James Dolan saying that the Knicks making the Finals is something they, "got to do."
Thus, Mike Brown was under pressure the second he took the job as head coach. It was Finals or bust the second he set foot in Madison Square Garden. There was always going to be pressure on this team to win the East, and this year's playoffs were going to be tense, just like all playoffs are. Mike Brown had no chance of avoiding that.
But the Knicks being down in the first round of the playoffs has put the Knicks at an inflection point far earlier than fans hoped for. In other words, the pressure was expected — the scary part is how early it's coming. Just three games into the postseason, the Knicks don't look untouchable. Heck, they don't even look like the clear better team against the Atlanta Hawks.
Knicks can get back on track, but it won't be easy
This is why being down 2-1 in the first round feels so bleak. Of course the Knicks can win this series, of course they can win the Eastern Conference. No one looks unbeatable right now — in fact, maybe there's some comfort knowing that every team in the conference appears to be in a dog fight in round one.
But if the first few games of this series have showed anything, it's that the Knicks keeping together the same roster that probably hit its ceiling last season and hiring a new coach to "fix" things that weren't broken was probably never going to work in the way the front office thought it would.
This isn't me hating on Mike Brown — sure, it's easy to criticize him after such a fun season last year. But did this plan ever make sense? Making the conference finals is hard for any team. So much has to go right. To think that ditching a great coach was the one thing that needed to be changed was, flatly, nonsensical from ownership.
Whether it's deserved or not, Mike Brown is quickly facing pressure as the Knicks look to get back in the series against the Hawks. For plenty of Knicks fans, this doens't come as much surprise.
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