Nix head coach Mike Brown According to an assistant coach, he doesn’t get enough credit for the role he played last season Rick Brunson.
At the Locked on Knicks team show (Link to YouTube), Brunson said Brown met with all five starters individually at the end of the regular season, when the team was struggling, and asked them to air their grievances. Then he gathered them all together and told the group what they had been saying about each other so they could figure it out for themselves.
“Obviously, it was all basketball, like, “I can do it, or you do it too much, or you don’t do it enough.”” Brunson said (Link to video on Twitter via New York Basketball). “And they really talked to each other and understood each other.
“And I swear that was the moment we took off. I really believe that. Like right at the end of the season, the last couple of games and then right into the playoffs. Even though we were down 2-1 (in the first round against Atlanta), we still felt like we were the better team, but obviously you have to go out there and prove it.
“And then when we went on a 13-game streak (in the postseason), I’d say Mike didn’t get enough credit. Mike was awesome.”
Here’s more on the Knicks:
- During a question and answer session at Binghamton University Miles McBride discussed his NBA journey, style of play, winning in June, his relationship with his daughter and what lessons he hopes to teach her, for Samuel Weisberger of Pipe Dreamthe BU student newspaper. “I always felt that as soon as (a) basketball touched my hands, I was going to make it to the NBA somehow” McBride said.And I feel that in a way you don’t have to be delusional, but you have to have a different belief in yourself to achieve great things. And I always had this positive mindset that I could do it if I just worked hard. So honestly, from the day I started playing basketball, I believed I could make it to the NBA.” The 26-year-old guard recently said that “a bit disappointed” as his extension negotiations with the Knicks progressed.
- How can the Knicks avoid the “complacency” that sometimes comes with winning a championship? Stefan Bondi of The New York Post investigates the matter, writing that the team will be looking to turn the page on the 2025/26 season with training camp starting this week. “Is it a cliché if I say 0-0 again?» Karl-Anthony Towns said Thursday on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. “That’s pretty much the same thing we said every playoff game, and when we won and kept winning, that was great. But this season we go out and start again at 0-0. Bringing in the same hungry team, the one hungry to prove everyone wrong. Outsiders.”
- In two other stories for The New York Post, Bondi lists some of the training camps story lines to watch, including the battle for the 14th place in the standard squad, and breaks down every player on the camp roster.