New York reached the Finals by asking its veterans to give up minutes and shots.
Mike Brown spent nine years out of a head coaching job before the Knicks hired him last summer, and he had been to just one NBA Finals in his whole career, back in 2007.
Now he has New York in the Finals for the first time since 1999.
When people ask how a 53-29 regular season turned into an 11-game playoff run, he does not point to a scheme or a star.
He points to the players who agreed to take smaller roles so the team could win.
"When you go on those runs, sometimes a guy is not on the floor," Brown said. "One game, Josh [Hart] didn't play at the end of the game, and he was freakin' great. He sacrificed who he was for the betterment of the team. Landry [Shamet] wasn't playing, he sacrificed."
Shamet Turned a Bench Spot Into a Historic Run
Shamet is the best example, a veteran guard who barely played in the first round against Atlanta before turning into the hottest shooter left in the playoffs on the way to a first Finals trip in 27 years.
Game 1 against Cleveland is the one nobody in New York will forget, with the Knicks down 22 in the fourth quarter and Brown pulling Hart to put five shooters around Jalen Brunson.
Shamet hit a bouncing game-tying three in the final minute to force overtime, and his shooting only got better from there.
He went 11 of 12 from deep across the four-game sweep, the best three-point shooting anyone has ever had in a conference finals series.
Why Hart Has Been Too Valuable
Hart's sacrifice is harder to see in a box score, since his scoring and his outside shot both dropped during the run to the Finals, even though he kept showing up on the plays that won games.
He watched most of the fourth quarter and overtime of that comeback from the bench, finished a team-worst minus-23, and said later that he has no ego about it and that sitting gave New York a better chance.
Brown likes to compare him to Andre Iguodala, a winner he coached in Golden State whose value never showed up in the stats.
The rebounding, passing and defense Hart brings have held the starting group of Brunson, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby and Karl-Anthony Towns together, and he had already given his starting spot to Mitchell Robinson earlier in the year before taking fewer minutes once Shamet got hot.
The Standard
The sacrifices go beyond those two, with Bridges giving up closing minutes on nights his shot was not falling and Robinson getting ready to play through a broken right pinkie that needed surgery, the center expected back for the series.
New York now waits on Saturday's Game 7 between the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs, with the Finals starting June 3.
The Knicks went 12-2 this postseason and closed out all three series on the road, and Brown will tell anyone who asks that it happened because no single player ever had to carry the night.
