I have been wondering if the Knicks would have won the title if Thibs was still the coach. Was Mike Brown's takeover as coach the decisive factor in the Knicks surging to win the championship? Did the change in coaches from Mark Jackson to Steve Kerr in the case of the Warriors, and from Ime to Mazulla with the Celtics, make their respective teams jump from good to great and become champions? Your thoughts.
I think Mike Brown learned some offense from Kerr when he was assistant for number of years and that played a role in them being just good enough to beat Spurs.
No they wouldnt have won the title with Thibs. Its pretty clear Mike Brown is an upgrade not just due to having better offense but also more importantly tactical adjustments. You can see here Mike Brown talking specifically about their tactics and strats, starting from Sacramento when he got mad at Fox and then got fired cuz of him(or maybe not cuz Fox dont give AF and they are still buddy buddies): OTH, Thibs talks a lot like Udoka just more try hard go hard more effort more energy etc. Very generic crap you can tell both these guys arent very detail oriented. The other thing is Mike Brown adjusts his players to fit his system, whereas both Thibs and Udoka have their set system and try to box in players to fit that system. When Thibs was coaching everybody kept saying Brunson too small and Kat a bad defender and these two just dont mesh. OTH Brown quickly found out KaT has very good passing skills and put him in a playmaking role. That was key since Kat become more engaged and his playmaking helped out Brunson. In short yes coaching matters a lot when you are talking playoffs and Brown is so much better than Thibs.
At this point, I still push back on the Thibs/Udoka comparisons. Thibs failed with a championship roster of Brunson, KAT, Bridges, and Hart. I still think Udoka is limited by the roster he has to coach. I compare Udoka to Mike Brown. Brown was unjustly let go in Sacramento in part because of tension with De'Aaron Fox, and got vindicated as a coach by winning a championship against a team limited by Fox's performance. I still believe that if Udoka had more shooters to work with the offense would look a lot better.
Wasn't Brown like "choice #12" (lol) for the Knicks? I seem to recall everybody mocking them because they supposedly fired Thibs with no plan and started going after other teams' coaches like Ime, Kidd, Snyder, Finch, Donovan, etc. but nobody would give them a pass to talk to them. So then, Mike Brown was more like a "well, here's the leftovers - guess we'll have to hire Mike Brown".
