Knicks’ Mike Brown goes deep on building winning culture through sacrifice

NEW YORK – Mike Brown has been hired as the head coach of an NBA team five different times. He’s never won a championship in that role, but he has been integral to four title-winning coaching staffs between the San Antonio Spurs and Golden State Warriors.

The New York Knicks’ final regular-season game is Brown’s 840th regular-season game as an NBA head coach. The contest, while relatively unimportant, divides the team’s regular season from the real thing: the playoff run they’re expected to make at least to the NBA Finals.

Sacrifice has been a recurring theme of Knicks press availabilities throughout both this and last season. Whether it’s Josh Hart sacrificing his spot in the starting lineup for Mitchell Robinson’s rim protection or Mikal Bridges sacrificing his spot in the closing lineup for a veteran with a hotter hand, several of the team’s top players have, in some way, lost individual opportunity for the potential betterment of their team.

Ahead of the Knicks’ win over the Boston Celtics on Thursday, ClutchPoints asked Brown about getting a veteran cast of players to make sacrifices. The coach, after crediting team president Leon Rose for filling his locker room with “a group of good guys with “competitive spirit,” pulled back the curtain on coaching athletes through sacrifice in an era of player empowerment.

“It’s a two way street. In today’s world, it’s hard to force anybody to do anything. If you have a good enough relationship with people, you can look them in the eye. And you can tell them when they need to sacrifice a little bit more, if they’re not doing it. Not only that, their teammates can tell them. That peer pressure, when you’re on this level, is huge,” Brown explained.

Brown says sacrifice can start with opening doors for players, literally

After crediting the veterans in his locker room for setting the tone, the 55-year-old coach even revealed ways in which he personally leads his group by example on a day-to-day basis. Brown alluded to opening doors for players, but not just metaphorically regarding any new opportunities.

He meant it in a literal sense.

“If a player is coming, this is a players’ league, even though I’m a head coach. Shoot, I’m gonna open the door, move out the way and let him go first. So trying to find ways to show examples, trying to establish a good enough relationship where you can look them in eye and tell them when they’re not holding up their end of the bargain, in that area. And then having peer pressure and then having your leadership, or your main guys, showing sacrifice. So there’s other examples that guys can see, too,” Brown said.

It’s clear that the coach sees the establishment of a culture of sacrifice as a prerequisite for a culture of winning. With no regular season opportunities to iron things out remaining, the Knicks seem to be figuring out what exactly those sacrifices entail at the perfect time.

If they continue to trust each other to make big plays when they’re needed, and come through for each other in those moments, it might be hard to dispatch them from the Eastern Conference Playoffs.

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