Mike Brown fails first major test as Knicks coach with Game 2 collapse vs. Hawks

The Knicks blew a 12-point lead in the fourth quarter on Monday night, and their head coach made a few puzzling choices

Sam Quinn

Apr 21, 2026

1:52 am ET

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9 min read

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Mike Brown arrived in New York with a laundry list of fan complaints to address from the tenure of his predecessor, Tom Thibodeau. In his first regular season on the job, he plucked basically all of that low-hanging fruit.

Shot-selection? The Knicks jumped from 28th to 12th in 3-point attempt rate. Lack of ball- and player-movement on offense? NBA.com tracking data shows the Knicks moved from 18th to 14th in passes per game and 21st to 10th in average distance traveled per game offensively.

Lineups featuring both Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns didn't defend well enough? Those lineups rated in the 41st percentile in terms of defensive efficiency last season, but the 52nd this season, according to Cleaning the Glass. Over-reliance on the starters? Last year, New York's starting five played 940 regular-season minutes, 226 more than any other five-man unit. This year, it played 541, making it not even the most-used lineup in basketball. The Knicks are so deep that deadline acquisition Jose Alvarado didn't even play in Game 1 against the Hawks. There are even rumors about standout rookie Mo Diawara being hidden ahead of his offseason restricted free agency. The Knicks suddenly have more depth than they know what to do with.

On paper, Brown's first regular season should be viewed as an enormous success. It hasn't felt that way mostly because, frankly, the regular season is no longer a meaningful barometer for this team's performance. The Knicks have averaged around 50 wins over the past four seasons. They've won at least one playoff series three years in a row. When your owner goes on the radio and shares Finals expectations, the message is clear: all of those regular-season improvements are nice, but it means nothing if it doesn't translate to the playoffs. Beating Washington and Brooklyn in March is nice. This year's Eastern Conference runs through Detroit, Boston and Cleveland, three teams Tom Thibodeau beat in recent postseasons. They're the measuring stick.

It turns out, Brown's first major test as New York's coach didn't come against one of those teams. It came in the first round against a team the Knicks should have handled relatively comfortably. The Knicks held double-digit leads in both halves of Game 2 against the Atlanta Hawks, including a 12-point advantage at the start of the fourth quarter. New York hadn't blown a lead that big with so little time left in a home playoff game since 1994 against the Pacers. They did so on Monday, and it was an almost entirely self-inflicted wound. If this was Brown's first real test as New York's head coach, he failed.

Missing KAT

The most visible manner in which he did so came during that late-game collapse. With 4:24 remaining on the clock, Karl-Anthony Towns attempted and missed a 3-pointer. It was the last time he would touch the ball in the game. His involvement in the offense, to this point, was reduced to two screens: a "screen the screener" action to set Josh Hart up to screen for Jalen Brunson with a bit less than four minutes left and then a single ball-screen for Brunson with around 50 seconds remaining. Otherwise, he was essentially a spacer.

And hey, Towns is certainly capable of serving as a floor-spacer. In certain matchups, you're probably fine with him doing that while Brunson cooks. In this, particular matchup, Towns had just scored 14 points on 6-of-7 shooting in the third quarter and was being defended by Jonathan Kuminga. Opponents have vexed New York's offense for two years by putting a wing on Towns and a center on the weaker shooting Hart, and that was indeed the case down the stretch with Onyeka Okongwu taking the Hart matchup. Brown's failure to solve that problem -- one well-known a year ago -- hardly bodes well for the later rounds.

It's not as though Okongwu was lurking near the basket down the stretch, either. Hart was Brunson's primary screener, so Okongwu was getting switched onto the ball far behind the arc. New York couldn't take advantage largely because too much of their late-game offense revolved around players, usually Brunson, occasionally others, dribbling the air out of the ball and running out the clock. They've earned the right to do so. Brunson's playoff heroics are well-chronicled, and New York had the NBA's No. 3 clutch offense this season.

It just begs the question, if you're not going to try to involve Towns in the offense, should he really be on the floor? You're still getting some value out of having Towns on the floor as a spacer, but size is New York's big advantage in this series. If you're not actively taking advantage of the mismatches he gets, you might as well close with Mitchell Robinson and emphasize defense to ho