When the New York Knicks fired Tom Thibodeau, it was because they wanted to be more than a team that was excited about the Conference Finals. So, they hired Mike Brown, a coach who has made it to the NBA Finals on the staff of three different teams (winning the championship twice).

However, the Knicks are only three games into their 2026 postseason journey, and they are already just two bad games away from being sent home by the Atlanta Hawks. The poor start has many people wondering: Is Brown destined to follow in Thibodeau’s footsteps?

How Brown And Thibodeau Are Alike

No one would ever confuse Brown’s methods with those of the idiosyncratic Thibodeau. However, after one season of seeing Brown at the helm, it seems like both coaches seem to be dealing with the same core conundrum: weak defense from their two best players, which makes it difficult to navigate through the postseason.

Even when they are fully engaged, Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns have physical limitations that make them targets for playoff-level offenses. And like Thibodeau, Brown seems hesitant to take the measures necessary to mitigate the consequences of this.

For instance, Brown, like Thibodeau, has been hesitant to insert Mitchell Robinson into the starting lineup (who gives New York a strong rim protector that can clean up some of the duo’s mistakes), despite the proven success he and Towns have when they share the floor together. Last postseason, when Robinson and Towns were on the floor together (165 minutes), New York had a net rating of +8.3. Compare this with all other lineup permutations featuring those two, and you see a stark difference in success:

So far, this year, the tandem has only shared the floor for six minutes.

Thibodeau waited too long to fully commit to the double big model, not switching Josh Hart for Robinson in the starting lineup until Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals (when they were already down 0-2 to the Indiana Pacers), and it seems that Brown is following in his footsteps.

Weirdly enough, Brown is even more dead set on making sure Brunson and Towns are on the floor together as much as possible. Doing this means that there are more minutes where New York has to play without either of them on the floor. Through three games, the Knicks are averaging 7.2 minutes per game without Brunson or Towns on the floor (they have been awful in these minutes, by the way). Juxtapose this with the last postseason, where that number was just 2.7 MPG.

Again, this is the wrong way to go about the situation. Since Brunson and Towns are such a bad fit on defense (and a less-than-perfect fit on offense), you want to stagger them as much as realistically possible. So, if both of them are playing 35 MPG, there should be 26 minutes in each game where only one of them is on the floor.

The numbers agree with this assessment. In the regular season, the Knicks had a +7.7 net rating when Brunson is on the floor without Towns (1,157 minutes), and a +10.6 when Towns is the lone star (889 minutes). Meanwhile, when they were on the floor together (1,432 minutes), the Knicks’ net rating was just a +4.8. Brown needs to make this adjustment. And hopefully, when he does, it isn’t too late.

What Brown Is Doing Differently From Thibodeau

Brown has done a great job of diversifying the Knicks’ offensive attack. They are shooting more threes, making more passes each possession, and playing at a faster pace than they did under Thibodeau. On the defensive end of the floor, the Knicks have gone from an average unit (14th in defensive rating) to one of the best in the league (7th). A big reason for this is how well they are defending at the point-of-attack (as evidenced by their opponent’s effective field goal) and how well they are concluding possessions with defensive rebounds (part of this has to do with Robinson being healthier this year, though).

I also appreciate that Brown isn’t beholden to his high-priced players. There were numerous times during the regular season when Towns would not close games, as Brown felt he was not getting enough from him. In Game 3 against the Hawks, Mikal Bridges was limited to five minutes in the second half after an uninspired first-half performance (he also did not close the game down the stretch).

Of course, if shooting more threes is all you needed to do to improve team performance, then every coach would do it. Shooting a high volume of threes comes with a tradeoff. The more threes you take, the more you miss. And the more threes you miss, the more long rebounds that the opposing team can leverage to kickstart their fastbreak offense. After being one of the best in the association at defending transition possessions under Thibodeau, New York is now one of the worst with Brown as their coach.

This goes back to the issues with playing Brunson and Towns together. The two of them need a lot of protection on defense, and when you are surrendering all these long misses, you often put them in crossmatches (since you can’t always get back to your assigned matchup) that they are just not equipped to handle. This has put them in some bad spots against the Hawks, who were first in the NBA in transition frequency during the regular season.

There also seems to be a lack of attention to detail with this current group. Ben Taylor, the founder of the popular Thinking Basketball channel, made a YouTube video after the Knicks’ Game 2 loss to the Hawks that highlighted a number of mental errors made by Knicks players. At the end of the video, Taylor summarized the loss by saying this:

“I thought this was one where the Knicks just had one too many issues in their attention to detail…and as always, really fun stuff from Quin Snyder and the Hawks.”

He didn’t outright say it, but Taylor is basically implying in the most indirect way possible that Snyder has done a better job coaching his team than Brown has with the Knicks. Does this mean that Thibodeau would have done a better job? Who is to say? Last season, he made a video crediting the Knicks for their defensive scheme and execution against the Boston Celtics.

The Bottom Line of the situation

Brown has done some stuff better than Thibodeau, but his predecessor also had a few good areas that he helped the team in. At the end of the day, both of them are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole with this Knicks group. Brunson and Towns are not an optimal duo because they are both below-average defenders for their respective positions. And guys like Bridges, who are supposed to be filling those gaps, are not doing enough to warrant the large salary slots they are taking up.

Regardless of whether or not they escape this series against Atlanta (I personally think they will), this Knicks team does not have the lineup balance you need to truly contend for an NBA title, no matter who it is leading them on the sidelines.