From the outside, it might seem like a subtle difference. Most won’t even notice it.
For the players, though, the impact is felt.
When Knicks coach Mike Brown subs players out of the game, he often takes a second to speak with them before they sit down on the bench.
That was rare under his predecessor, Tom Thibodeau.
Under Thibodeau, players usually just went straight from the court to the bench.
“When you come off, just telling you what you did wrong, and sometimes even if you didn’t do anything wrong,” Mikal Bridges said after Knicks practice Saturday. “Mike does a great job of that. For example, in the game, I think he was taking me out and telling me what the minutes were going to be. He kind of let me know ‘I’m taking you out right now not because you did anything wrong, it’s just going to be we’re putting you back at this [other] moment.’ It’s just communication. Sometimes you can be playing hard and you don’t know if you messed up on a couple of things. If you get taken out, you’re kind of looking around and it’s like ‘did I do something wrong?’ Verbalizing that gives you confidence. You’re not wondering.”
That communication style is something Brown learned while serving as an assistant under Steve Kerr and Greg Popovich.
It’s helping Knicks players know exactly where they stand and what Brown is thinking.
“They were the best communicators I’ve been around,” Brown said of Kerr and Popovich on Saturday. “It just seems really natural for them, and I don’t think they ever felt that you can over-communicate. So I try to take that from both of them. And I’m human, I’m gonna make mistakes and forget about this or forget about that or don’t do this or don’t do that, but I try to communicate as best I can with guys whether it’s in practice, shootaround or even over the course of a game. Because guys have questions.
“Everybody has questions all the time and sometimes they may not want to ask because they may not feel it’s appropriate, so I try to be proactive in just letting them know what’s going on to erase any doubt that they have in their mind.”
It’s central to Brown’s philosophy of accountability and discipline. And it marks a distinct change from Thibodeau.
Brown is an explainer, not a yeller.
Thibodeau was much more stern and much more of a yeller.
Brown probably smiles more during a single press conference than Thibodeau did all of last season.
“Nah, he’s not really a screamer,” Josh Hart said Friday. “I think he’ll do a good job of holding you accountable.”
“He holds guys accountable, but he doesn’t really yell,” Bridges said. “He gets on you, but it’s all love and it’s all things you know you should be doing. You kind of know what you should be doing better. He’s just talking to you. For anybody, you can be the best player or the youngest player on the team. He’s going to set you straight every single guy, don’t let nobody off the hook. I think it just shows a lot.”
Much of Brown’s personality is inspired by figures outside of sports as well.
One of them is Kenneth Chenault, who is currently the CEO of American Express.
He became one of the first black CEOs of a Fortune 500 company.
“His definition of leadership was real simple and I embrace it, I love it, it tells the tale clearer than a blue sky,” Brown said. “Basically what it is, is as a leader, you’ve gotta give hope while defining reality. So it doesn’t matter who it is, you’ve gotta keep it real with them. If somebody goes left or right or off, you’ve gotta tell them the truth, and there’s different ways of telling the truth. Sometimes you may have to yell. Sometimes you may just have to talk. Sometimes you may ask them, ‘Should you have done this or that?’ But you’ve got to define reality and keep it real with everybody in front of everybody so that guys know we’re all in this together.”
Brown’s player-friendly personality was one of the attributes the Knicks liked when they hired him.
Quickly, it’s become appreciated.
“The experiences are always different,” Karl-Anthony Towns said Saturday, “but Mike is different from any coach I’ve ever dealt with.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
