Teams rarely fire head coaches immediately following a trip to the conference finals. The New York Knicks did so with Tom Thibodeau because, despite that success, they felt there was untapped potential within the group. The team, in the front office's eyes, had gotten stale. The offense was bland and one-dimensional. The bench was often unused. The Knicks had seemingly hit a ceiling, and as the Indiana Pacers showed them in the Eastern Conference finals, that ceiling was below any realistic championship-level.

Mike Brown was hired to fix these things. We're still very early in the season, but the returns thus far have been promising. Through three games, 11 different Knicks had played at least 28 total minutes. They improved from 26th to 20th in pace, 18th to fifth in passes per game,

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