New York Knicks head coach Mike Brown has been open all season about making changes. The 55-year-old head coach has told reporters about simplifications on both sides of the ball, particularly with regard to All-Star big man Karl-Anthony Towns' role within the Knicks' offense.
Brown has credited assistants like Rick Brunson and Darren Erman for suggesting changes that have proven pivotal to the team's success over the course of the regular season. But ahead of team's most important playoff run of the century, Brown revealed something about this Knicks squad that is sure to either mollify fans' concerns – or make them feel more justified than ever.
The coach told reporters after practice on Wednesday that, in his experience as an NBA head coach, he's never made as many adjustments during a season as he had with this New York team. That's either a great sign regarding some of their early-season struggles, or a sign of struggles to come regarding their potential lack of a bona fide identity and familiarity with any given approach.
Brown's revelation regarding Knicks adjustments is a good thing
Ultimately, it's extremely rare that a team comes into a season with a perfect idea of how they'll be approaching games in Game 1 of their playoff run, if they can even be so sure that they'll make it to the postseason in the first place.
Brown told reporters at the team's Tarrytown practice facility that the Knicks started playing "one way on offense and one way on defense," but have made plenty of changes to their approaches on both sides of the court. According to The Athletic's James L. Edwards III, the coach added that he "liked the way the team developed and kept working at all the changes."
The Knicks' defense picked up majorly from February 1 and on, resulting in them finishing the regular season with the fourth-highest offensive rating, seventh-lowest defensive rating, and fifth-best net rating overall. That's a far cry defensively from the 18th-ranked defensive rating the team "boasted" on January 19.
If New York had played the same way all season, or only made slight adjustments over the course of their peaks and valleys, Brown's admission regarding the sheer amount of changes they've made might be concerning.
But for a team that's only gotten better at playing sustainably well on both ends of the court as the year has gone on, it might not be such a bad thing that they haven't been playing this way all season.
Since that date of February 1, the Knicks (23-11) have the second-best record in the NBA behind the Boston Celtics (26-8). If that's more of who they are, that's a good thing.
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