Eureka!
There were many moments throughout the New York Knicks’ 2025-26 season when it seemed as if Mike Brown had finally pushed the right button to unlock the best version of the squad.
Whether it was the early-season emphasis on ball movement and a high volume of threes, the decision to add Mohamed Diawara into the rotation, the benching of Jordan Clarkson, or the un-benching of Jordan Clarkson, there were countless “spark” moments for New York. Unfortunately, each flame died out quickly, requiring the Knicks to find another spark to get them back on the prosperous track.
New York never found the perfect formula to define its style of play on a game-in, game-out basis. Whether it was their rotations or their offensive and defensive philosophies, it felt as if the Knicks had a new identity each month.
In one way, it was a positive; New York showed they can win in a variety of ways. That’s a dangerous weapon to carry into the playoffs, where you need to take down four different opponents with four different identities to win a championship.
The downside, though, was inconsistency. The Knicks never found a bread-and-butter to lean on when the going got tough. Whenever the team fell into a slump, it was as if they needed another new idea to pull them out of it. Those new ideas often led to a red-hot surge, but those surges rarely lasted too long before another concerning slump arrived.
It’s why the Knicks ended up with “only” 53 wins and the East’s third seed, a somewhat disappointing result after securing 51 victories the season prior. They failed to match the consistency displayed by the NBA’s truest elites (of the regular season, that is). To win 60-plus games like the Pistons, Spurs, and Thunder, you have to know who you are.
Brown desperately tried to figure out who the Knicks are. From the moment he was hired to replace Tom Thibodeau, Brown’s mission was to bring more of an open mind to the table than the stuck-in-his-ways Thibs. New York hoped it would raise the team’s ceiling, while accepting that the floor might be lower, given that Thibodeau’s philosophies had been proven to deliver consistently “solid” results despite the firmly capped ceiling.
After a regular season defined by experimentation, the Knicks still didn’t have answers once the playoffs arrived. Through three games, New York shuffled through a plethora of lineups and strategies, culminating in a 1-2 series deficit at the hands of a less talented Atlanta Hawks team.
Calls for Brown’s head ran rampant around the New York metropolitan area. Those calls weren’t out of line, either. The Knicks were one loss away from being on the verge of their most inexcusable playoff defeat of the 21st century. It would mark Brown as an indisputable downgrade compared to the coach New York fired after bringing the team to its first Eastern Conference Finals since 2000.
Things were bleak.
Are two games enough to flip the entire situation on its head?
After going down in the series, the Knicks have responded valiantly. They beat the doors off Atlanta in back-to-back games, outscoring them by a combined 45 points across two stress-free victories.
It wasn’t just because of the players’ effort or execution, either. Brown made strategic changes that have the Knicks looking like the best version of themselves.
Karl-Anthony Towns has been featured as a passing hub in each of the last two games. After seldom being used as a passer over the first three games, Towns has delivered back-to-back games with at least five assists, a magic number that led New York to tremendous success in the regular season.
Jalen Brunson is no longer being asked to run a one-man show; Brown is featuring him off the ball, having him set back-door screens, and encouraging him to push the ball in transition for easy buckets. The results were remarkable in Game 5; Brunson shot 65.2% from the field in his 39-point outburst, his second-best career field goal percentage in a playoff game.
Yes, Brunson was cooking, but he wouldn’t hit that type of efficiency without the space created for him by Brown’s altered scheme, particularly the concerted effort to run the offense around Towns. Brunson got easy looks within the offensive structure that weren’t there early in the series.
Additionally, it seems that Brown has finally settled on a rotation that makes sense. Over the last two games, the Knicks have managed to go nearly the entire way with at least one of Brunson and Towns on the floor; they have mostly avoided the dreaded Brunson/Towns-less minutes that cost them Games 2 and 3.
Landry Shamet is out of the rotation, and Brown has settled on a nine-man lineup featuring Miles McBride, Mitchell Robinson, Jordan Clarkson, and Jose Alvarado off the bench. He rolled with this in back-to-back games after struggling to find continuity over the first three games, and in turn, the bench lineups have consistently won their minutes.
Is this the bona fide eureka moment that Knicks fans have been waiting for?
Only time will tell. Surely, the Knicks will lose another playoff game at some point. When that happens, adjustments will have to be made. It’s silly to suggest that the Knicks should use the same rotation every game or approach every game with the same offensive strategy. This is especially true if they are lucky enough to advance to further rounds, where each opponent will demand a different strategy.
With that being said, it’s crucial for championship-hopeful teams to have a strong understanding of their core identity. When we fall into a slog, what is our most reliable lineup? What is our most reliable offensive set? What is our most dependable defensive strategy?
These are questions the Knicks could not find answers to after 82 games of experimentation. Even after three games of playoff experimentation, they still seemed lost.
But there were fleeting moments throughout the season where it seemed as if a simple tweak was enough to turn the Knicks from a good team to a juggernaut. Over the last two games, they’ve had another one of those fleeting moments.
The key now is to turn this hot stretch into something sustainable. It all starts on Thursday, when New York needs to close out the Hawks with a third straight victory, preferably with another blowout.
From there, the Knicks need to continue staying true to the strategies that have worked best throughout the season. They must lean on their 88-plus games of data and trust the trends.
Using Towns as a hub works. Getting Brunson off the ball works. Staggering Brunson and Towns’ minutes to avoid lineups without one of them on the court works. Double-big lineups with Towns and Robinson, especially without Josh Hart, work.
As Knicks fans know all too well, this is only the latest moment in which it felt like Brown had cracked the code. Every time it happened in the regular season, he couldn’t sustain it. Doing so in the playoffs will be even more challenging.
Don’t forget the silver lining of the Knicks’ regular season roller-coaster, though: They learned to win in a plethora of ways.
Early in the season, the Knicks won by hitting a boatload of threes. When they turned things around in late January, they became a defensive juggernaut. Down the stretch, they were a more balanced team.
Compare this to a team like the Detroit Pistons, for example. Detroit went 82 games out-hustling teams to the finish line. Nobody could match their physicality or intensity over the grind of a regular season schedule, and it allowed the Pistons to come out on top in nearly three-quarters of their games.
But come playoff time, the Pistons have met one of the only NBA teams that play with a similar style, the Orlando Magic. While Orlando was maddeningly inconsistent in the regular season, playoff intensity has brought out the best in them, putting Detroit on a level playing field with a rare opponent who can match them in the grit department.
Lacking the versatility to counter Orlando and beat them in a different way, the Pistons have crumbled thus far, falling into a 3-1 deficit. The series is far from over, so time will tell if the Pistons have a trump card waiting in their back pocket, but it would be surprising.
Detroit went the whole regular season relying on their defense and physicality to win games. They were so dominant in this style that they never had to find other ways to win. Now that they’re losing at their own game, their lack of experience winning games on the basis of shooting and pace is being exposed.
This is where the regular season stylistic volatility of Brown and the Knicks can come in handy. Whatever it takes to win a game, New York has pulled it off at some point.
That will save the Knicks in some dire situations. But to establish the necessary consistency to win four straight seven-game series, the Knicks still have to know what the best version of themselves looks like—the rotation, the offensive strategy, the defensive strategy, the general aesthetic, all of it.
We saw that version of the Knicks over the last two games. It’s up to Brown to make sure every controllable, strategic aspect of these last two games is sustained moving forward. From there, when things get tough, the Knicks can count on their malleability to adjust and save the day.
But trusting their core identity is the anchor that will allow them to control games night to night, ideally eliminating the snowballing collapses we saw in Games 2-3.
