Mike Brown and the Knicks found redemption together on magical NBA Finals run

Mike Brown’s road to the Knicks’ NBA Finals runs through two firings, one big bet by New York, and a coaching style built on collaboration—turning an early season struggle into a postseason surge that has New York two wins from the title against the Spurs.

When the Knicks took the court in Game 3 of the 2026 NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs, it didn’t feel like just another matchup. It felt like a test—one that Mike Brown had already been forced to pass once before, and nearly failed to ever get another chance at again.

Brown is the head coach now. But his path to New York was built on fragility. In his profession, the pattern is brutal: head coaches are often blamed first and praised last, and it’s easier for organizations to change seats than it is to find a new star.

Brown lived that reality in Sacramento. In 2024, he was fired by the Kings after a run that looked, on paper, like success. In his first season, Sacramento won 48 games. The next season, the Kings won 46. That marked the first time the franchise had won 40 games in back-to-back seasons since 2004-06. The rebound looked real. But midway through his third season, the Kings slowed down enough that Brown was dismissed after a slow start.

Sacramento, which had spent decades as a laughingstock, then turned its eyes elsewhere. The Kings haven’t had a winning record since.

New York made the same kind of gamble last summer—only this time, it wasn’t about chasing a star. It was about changing the voice leading the team. The Knicks believed a new coach was the only shift needed to push further.

Under Tom Thibodeau, the Knicks went from being a joke to something people respected. The high point came last year. when New York reached the Eastern Conference finals for the organization’s first trip in 25 years. But the end arrived quickly after that. Decision-makers pulled the plug on Thibodeau shortly after the Knicks fell in six games to the Indiana Pacers.

Per league sources, the Knicks wanted something different: a collaborator—someone willing to experiment and bring a different voice.

That’s where Brown and the Knicks become inseparable.

Brown didn’t just end up in New York. In one season, he has the Knicks in the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999. They’re facing the Spurs, the same organization that gave Brown an opportunity as an assistant coach in the early 2000s. New York is now two wins away.

From the outside, it looks like a redemption story. From Brown’s perspective, it was also a reminder of how easily the door can close in coaching. After being fired, he hadn’t been a head coach since 2014 before being hired by Sacramento in 2022. When that Sacramento job ended, he didn’t drown in worry.

“First of all, I have to thank (Kings owner) Vivek Ranadivé for giving me an opportunity. Obviously, it didn’t work out,” Brown said. “When I got fired, I really didn’t think much of anything. My wife and I, we went to Sydney, Australia, to see UFC 313. We went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. We went to St. Barts … I just wanted to have fun.”.

He kept going with the point that stuck: he hoped for another opening, but he didn’t plan his life around fear.

“If an opportunity came up, great. If it didn’t, I felt lucky, blessed and fortunate. I had a good run. I hoped at some point I’d get another opportunity as a head coach or assistant coach. I just rolled with it and didn’t think much about it.”

When the Knicks called him last summer, they didn’t treat the search like a single-track process. They also reached out to several teams to inquire about the availability of their head coaches. It’s not uncommon, but the volume of teams they contacted was rare. New York knocked on the door of Chicago (Billy Donovan), Houston (Ime Udoka), Dallas (Jason Kidd) and several others. Those coaches declined the request, and New York found itself staring at Brown as the lead candidate.

Oddly enough, two of those three—Donovan and Kidd—are no longer with those teams at the end of this season.

The Knicks front office knows whether Brown was at the top from the beginning. What they did know was how he’d been described: well-recommended as a collaborator and communicator from his time as an assistant with Steve Kerr and the Warriors. They also believed he had experience coaching stars—he had been the head coach of LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. and he’d been part of the staff when Steph Curry and Golden State were building a dynasty.

Brown didn’t frame it as being “the first choice.” He saw a team he believed could win a championship, led by Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, after New York had reached the Eastern Conference finals.

He wanted pressure.

“I respect (team president) Leon’s (Rose) process,” Brown said back in July. “I feel like I’m a detailed guy, thorough with everything I try to do. It’s no different here. I was just myself throughout the process. I had great conversations with (James) Dolan and, obviously, Leon and his group. My whole thing is that I want to form a partnership with (Leon). I want to do this together. It’s impossible to do it on your own.”.

“The outcome, obviously, is exciting for me because I’m sitting in the seat that I wanted to be in.”

Even so, it took about five games for him to stop feeling like the new kid in the room. The Knicks’ season didn’t begin the way their expectations demanded. They opened at 2-3. The movement offense Brown was trying to implement wasn’t working for his players. The defense meant to push everything middle wasn’t either.

Brown also made a decision with Josh Hart—taking the veteran forward off the bench after Hart had been “ol’ reliable” as a starter last season.

Then came the part that separates plan from reality: Brown had to adjust, fast. He had to massage personalities. During a rough patch, the work started to click.

“Everyone was real welcoming, and we all agreed to be open and honest,” Brown said. “We started 2-3 and had real conversations at that time.”

A big piece of that early stabilization was the staff Brown inherited. Several voices on his coaching staff had been with the team last year under Thibodeau. and Brown leaned on them to get a read on the players and tweak what needed to change. Brown and his group weren’t a dictatorship in practice: decisions would often be discussed as a team. with Brown having the final say—but if his staff believed changes were needed. Brown would listen.

One of Brown’s strengths, people around the league say, is that he doesn’t want to be the smartest guy in the room. The Knicks responded to that.

It wasn’t just meetings, either. Brown scrubbed and rebuilt parts of what he wanted to run.

He scrapped many of his initial offensive ideas and started running an offense more similar to what the Knicks used a season ago. He switched the defense to a more traditional “ICE” coverage—funneling ballhandlers to the sideline and baseline. That was familiar territory, because the Knicks had used it under Thibodeau too.

He listened to players. He listened to his staff.

And there was a visible shift during games. If you watch the Knicks closely, you could see assistant coaches drawing up plays in the huddle during timeouts. Thibodeau rarely consulted with assistants during those moments. Brown arrived with an idea: everyone should get a voice. The job then became his—listen or don’t—and he more often than not applied input from others.

“He’s not too high, not too low,” Hart said of Brown. “He allows himself to be coachable in the sense of listening to other coaches and players. He has our input instilled into what we do. He’s been the same all year long. That’s what you want as a coach; you don’t want him to get too high or too low. He has a real comfort in his role.”.

Jalen Brunson carries another message as he plays: “Don’t be afraid to fail.” Brown brought that same permission into his experiments—lineups, offensive principles, defensive adjustments—all season long.

He gave a second-round rookie, Mo Diawara, a rotation spot for a large chunk of the season, and Diawara improved as his reps increased. Brown also leaned on second-year point guard Tyler Kolek at times. Kolek played a big role in the Knicks winning the NBA Cup in December.

Brown began the season with veteran Jordan Clarkson in the rotation. but he took Clarkson out around the trade deadline when poor performances stacked up. Then. on a March night in Utah. when the Knicks were getting beaten by the lowly Jazz. Brown pulled Clarkson off the bench and put him back into the fire. Clarkson scored 27 points in 26 minutes, and New York won by 17 after trailing by as many as 18 points.

One of Brown’s assistant coaches, Maurice Cheeks, urged the head coach to consider that move, and Brown obliged.

Landry Shamet’s role tells a quieter story: he was largely out of the rotation during the first round because a knee injury had hampered his play. Brown dusted him off in the next round against Philadelphia, and Shamet hasn’t left the rotation.

The Knicks won the NBA Cup partly because a lineup featuring Brunson, Kolek and Clarkson played well together. That group had barely played together before that night, and it wasn’t very good when it did.

For much of the season, New York had scrapped Brown’s initial plans for the offense—until the playoffs pushed him back toward what he wanted to build. Down 2-1 in the first round to the Atlanta Hawks, Brown reverted back to his roots. This time, he got the players to embrace the movement offense.

It featured Towns in the pinch post as a passer, with several players setting off-ball screens and others cutting. The result was to shift the burden away from Brunson trying to beat his man off the dribble every other possession.

New York won Game 4 and tied the series behind a 16-point victory.

Since then, the Knicks have won 12 straight playoff games. They’ve also won 10 of their games by double digits—multiple by 30-plus points.

Brown’s environment. built on flexibility and repeat opportunities. has players staying ready because they’ve seen others come off the bench and get another shot. The offense can play several styles depending on the opponent. The defense, tied together, looks like it belongs to the same system—year after year after year.

“It shows the confidence and trust Mike has in us to figure things out,” Brunson said. “He’s not afraid to fail either. Having the mindset of not being afraid to fail is good for us because it allows us to continue to fight and not worry about the result. We might go out there, play good defense and then they hit a tough shot. We may play a great game all game and then lose at final buzzer.”.

“We’re not afraid of failure, and I think it’s a big-time thing about us.”

Brown is 56. By the time you get to the Finals, age matters less than what you’ve already proven. He’s done what he said he’d do when he got the job—at least in the only way that counts.

The Thibodeau firing, paired with expectations that felt like a trap waiting to snap shut, looked like it could backfire. Instead, the Knicks are in the NBA Finals. And Brown’s path—from a Kings firing after a slow start to a Knicks job that began with a 2-3 record—lands in the same place: a willingness to let other voices shape how the work gets done.

For most coaches, the door closes long before they see what the plan can become. Not Brown. In New York, his experiment kept evolving until it worked—until Game 3 of the 2026 NBA Finals arrives with New York two wins from the championship.

Mike Brown Knicks San Antonio Spurs NBA Finals 2026 Jalen Brunson Karl-Anthony Towns Josh Hart Tom Thibodeau Leon Rose Vivek Ranadivé NBA Cup Tyler Kolek Jordan Clarkson Mo Diawara Landry Shamet