The Knicks’ Larry Brown Disaster, 20 Years Later

Coaching hires throughout professional sports typically get a couple of years to settle in, especially in the NBA. It takes a seriously awful season for a one-and-done coaching campaign, which is exactly what the New York Knicks got from Larry Brown in the 2005 season. Despite being one of the most highly sought-after coaches in the league at the time, Brown proved to be a complete disaster in the Big Apple, leading to an infamously bad year filled with drama, controversy, and ultimately, disappointment.

Despite his later failures, Brown was rightfully considered one of the best minds in the NBA before he made it to New York. The 2003-04 season saw Brown lead the Detroit Pistons to a 54-28 record and an NBA championship, successfully balancing big personalities like center Ben Wallace, forward Rasheed Wallace, and guard Chauncey Billups.

Brown's 2004-05 season was nearly as successful as his prior one, but his team fell one game short of putting together back-to-back titles. The Pistons won another 54 games and took the San Antonio Spurs to seven games in the NBA Finals, entrenching Brown as one of the best basketball minds in the league, even with a loss on the biggest stage in the sport.

While Brown was leading a couple of teams to the Finals, the Knicks were struggling to find their footing in the post-Patrick Ewing era. 2003-04 saw a losing effort under head coach Don Chaney, and the next year saw a couple of coaches, Lenny Wilkens and Herb Williams, combine for a 33-49 record. New York badly needed some stability and saw an opportunity to capture it in Brown's leadership.

Brown was hired to improve on New York's aforementioned losing record, and he was widely expected to do so with a roster highlighted by guards Stephon Marbury, Jalen Rose, and Jamal Crawford. Unfortunately, just about nothing went right. Rose only managed to play 26 games because of injury, and Brown struggled to find a single cohesive five-man rotation, consistently tweaking lineups and rotations without any success.

That approach rattled the entire team, with forward Channing Frye stating, "I have never been part of a team so dysfunctional... We had the most starting lineups in the history of the league. There were games where we didn't even know who was starting with 30 minutes left on the clock.” As Brown failed to provide the team with any sort of stability, tensions with players and the front office continually impacted the team.

Unsurprisingly, the contentious locker room and coaching style didn't lead to much winning. The Knicks finished the season as a bottom-eight team on both offense and defense, as Brown failed to maximize the offensive talent on the team, while the lack of defenders on the roster hampered the defense. New York would end up going 23-59, missing the postseason by a mile while also being one of the most disappointing teams in the NBA.

As with any new coach, Brown was tasked with coaching a roster of players that he had not had a say in acquiring. General manager Isiah Thomas had constructed a roster antithetical to Brown's usual coaching style, as the coach preferred a unit of hard-nosed defenders who were prepared to give maximum effort on every play. The Knicks were led by flashy guards in Marbury and Crawford and did not have any truly good defenders on the roster, forcing Brown to do something he was never especially proficient at: adapting.

To add fuel to the fire of dysfunction was the presence of a trio of talented rookies. Guard Nate Robinson and forwards David Lee and Channing Frye were certainly good enough to warrant extended playing time, but this was another area in which Brown and Thomas did not see eye to eye.

Brown preferred older, more reliable players, scarcely tolerating the rookie growing pains that would inevitably accompany any young player in the NBA. Brown was upset at the lack of playable veterans, and Thomas was upset that his talented rookies were spending much of their opening campaign on the bench, adding more acrimony to a relationship that had plenty already. 

Given the very public nature of the rift between Brown and just about everyone else in the Knicks' organization, it didn't come as much of a surprise when Thomas showed him the door at the end of the year. The move gave Thomas enormous power over both the roster and the on-court play of the Knicks, a move that would prove disastrous as New York plunged into basketball obscurity during his reign.

The Brown campaign (calling it an era would be an enormous stretch) was defined by inflexibility on both his and Thomas's side, inflexibility that would continue to haunt the Knicks long after his departure as Thomas continued to lead the team.