Brown says his early struggles with Karl-Anthony Towns almost cost the Knicks their season.
Mike Brown just wrapped up his first year as Knicks head coach by delivering New York's first title since 1973, but he admitted this past week that getting there with Karl-Anthony Towns was not smooth from the start.
Appearing on The Roommates Show with Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart, Brown looked back on how hard it was to figure out his new center early on, and how close things came to spiraling.
The Right Fit
Towns was already in his second season in New York when Brown replaced Tom Thibodeau last spring, and the early going between them was rocky.
Brown had specific ideas about how to use Towns, from bringing him off the bench in some matchups to what he expected on both ends, and squaring that with what Towns actually gave him some nights took time.
He got specific about it on the show.
"Dealing you know with the highs and lows with KAT especially the first time was pretty tough because you know again you have a thought in your mind what you want to do, similar to bringing them off the bench, what you want to do offensively, what you want to do defensively, and to see what you envision not fit KAT, but you still think he could, was tough kind of going back and forth with him and trying to figure out what we needed to do."
The Noise Got Louder
That back and forth spilled into a miserable stretch right after New York won the 2025 NBA Cup in December, when the Knicks dropped nine of 11 games in January and fell to just 2.5 games up on the eighth seed.
Fans called for Brown's job, and that's the noise he pointed to next.
"And then it got bigger than what it should have because the media started getting involved. I thought that was a distraction, and others started getting involved, and I thought, so I didn't know if we would recover from that."
Towns Turned It On In The Playoffs
New York finished the regular season 53-29, then answered a shaky playoff start.
After falling behind Atlanta 2-1 in the first round, the Knicks ripped off 15 wins in their next 16 games, and Towns turned into a different player.
His scoring dropped from the 20 points a game he averaged in the regular season to under 17 in the playoffs, but his efficiency and playmaking took off, shooting nearly 57 percent from the field and setting up teammates more than five times a night.
Towns has credited Brown's openness for that shift, tied to the coach's own definition of winning, which had little to do with raw talent.
Jalen Brunson still carried the load as Finals MVP, scoring 45 points in the Game 5 clincher, but the Towns playing next to him barely resembled the one Brown described struggling with early on.
Towns later opened up about what the title meant to the city that adopted him, and with both stars back next season, New York likes its chances to do it again.
