From the outside it may seem like a subtle difference. Most won’t even notice.
For the players, however, the impact is palpable.
When Knicks coach Mike Brown takes players out of the game, he often takes a moment to talk to them before they sit on the bench.
That was rare under his predecessor Tom Thibodeau.
Under Thibodeau, players usually just went straight from the field to the bench.
“When you get out, you just tell them what you did wrong, and sometimes even if you didn’t do anything wrong,” Mikal Bridges said after the Knicks practice on Saturday. “Mike does a great job of that. For example, in the game I think he took me out and told me what the minutes would be. He kind of let me know, ‘I’m taking you out now, not because you did anything wrong, it’s just going to be that we put you back on here.’ [other] moment.’ It’s just communication. Sometimes you play hard and you don’t know if you messed up a few things. When you get taken out, you kind of look around and think, ‘Did I do something wrong?’ Verbalizing that gives you self-confidence. You don’t wonder.”
Brown learned that communication style while serving as an assistant under Steve Kerr and Greg Popovich.
It helps Knicks players know exactly where they stand and what Brown is thinking.
“They were the best communicators I ever had,” Brown said of Kerr and Popovich on Saturday. “It just seems very natural to them, and I don’t think they’ve ever felt like you can communicate too much. So I try to take that from both of them. And I’m human, I’m going to make mistakes and forget this or forget that or not do this or not do that, but I try to communicate with guys as best I can, whether it’s during practice, during shooting or even during a game. Because guys have questions.
“Everyone has questions all the time and sometimes they may not want to ask them because they don’t feel like it’s appropriate. So I try to be proactive by just letting them know what’s going on to clear up any doubts they may have.”
It is central to Brown’s philosophy of responsibility and discipline. And it marks a marked change from Thibodeau.
Brown is an explainer, not a shouter.
Thibodeau was much stricter and shouted a lot more.
Brown probably laughs more in a single press conference than Thibodeau did all of last season.
“No, he’s not really a shouter,” Josh Hart said Friday. “I think he will do well to hold you accountable.”
“He holds guys accountable, but he doesn’t really yell,” Bridges said. “He’s attacking you, but it’s all love and it’s all things you know you should do. You kind of know what you should do better. He just talks to you. To anyone, you can be the best player or the youngest player on the team. He’ll straighten every guy out, don’t let anyone get off track. I think it just shows a lot.”
Much of Brown’s personality is also inspired by figures outside of sports.
One of them is Kenneth Chenault, currently CEO of American Express.
He became one of the first black CEOs of a Fortune 500 company.
“His definition of leadership was very simple and I embrace it, I love it, it tells the story clearer than a blue sky,” Brown said. “What it really is is that as a leader you have to give hope while defining reality. So it doesn’t matter who it is, you have to keep it real with him. If someone goes left, right or away, you have to tell him the truth, and there are different ways to tell the truth. Sometimes you may have to shout. Sometimes you have to just talk. Sometimes you can ask him, ‘Should you have done this or that?’ But you have to define reality and keep it real, with everyone in front of everyone, so the guys know we’re all in this together.”
Brown’s player-friendly personality was one of the traits the Knicks liked when they hired him.
It quickly becomes appreciated.
“The experiences are always different,” Karl-Anthony Towns said Saturday, “but Mike is different than any coach I’ve ever dealt with.”
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