Stan Van Gundy lauds Mike Brown for checking his ego after taking over Knicks from Tom Thibodeau

LAS VEGAS — Fresh off meeting with Mike Brown as part of the NBA Cup coverage, Stan Van Gundy applauded the new Knicks coach for checking his ego in the locker room and not reinventing what Tom Thibodeau set in motion. “I give Mike Brown a ton of credit because he knows that Tom is a helluva coach,” Van Gundy, the longtime coach and current analyst for Amazon Prime, said in an interview before Brown’s Knicks faced the Magic in Saturday’s NBA Cup semis.“He said that in our meeting today.

So he didn’t try to change everything.He tried to tinker a little.

And then he came back to a lot of the stuff (that Thibodeau did).“But he’s taking advantage of the continuity they have with their roster rather than throwing everything out, trying to do it differently.”Brown started his Knicks tenure pushing the importance of pace and depth, but recently the squad has adopted more similarities to last season.

Brown went back to the same starting lineup, with Josh Hart’s inclusion sending Mitchell Robinson to the reserves. The rotation had been cut so only two players were receiving significant minutes off the bench, which was also a product of injuries to Miles McBride and Landry Shamet. The team’s pace had fallen to 26th in the NBA before Saturday, the same ranking as last season. The offensive and defensive ratings have been better under Brown but in a similar range as Thibodeau’s last campaign, before he was shockingly canned following a conference finals elimination.Before Saturday’s game, the Knicks were second in offense (they finished fifth last season) and 10th in defense (they were 13th last season). “Tom Thibodeau is a great basketball coach.

I think everybody in this league recognizes it.Mike recognizes it,” Van Gundy said.

“And what I really give Mike credit for is to have your ego that much under control that you don’t feel the need to let everybody see how different you are and everything else. “They had a great run last...