Mike Brown wants the Knicks to enjoy ring night ‘but not fully’ before LeBron and the 76ers arrive

NEW YORK — The Knicks get their championship rings and raise their banner at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night, and then they have to play a basketball game about half an hour later. Mike Brown’s plan for handling both is simple to say and hard to do. “The challenge is trying to get them to enjoy the moment, but not fully, I guess, if that makes sense,” the Knicks coach said after Monday’s practice.

Brown has been through this before as an assistant on title teams, and he said the hard part is that players are human. “There’s a part of you that wants to keep celebrating, but you know, you got to turn it off,” he said. The goal is to hold some of the emotion back “before the ceremony, during the ceremony, so that you can quickly get your not just your body, but your mind and your emotions into the task in front of you.”

‘Everybody’s healthy’

The first question of the day was about Josh Hart, who sat out the preseason finale with an ankle injury and would not commit to playing in the opener when he spoke on Sunday. Brown answered for the whole roster instead. “Everybody’s healthy,” he said. “Nobody was held out of any portion of practice.” The Knicks then left every player off Monday night’s official injury report, so New York should have its full championship group available against Philadelphia.

That is a clear contrast with the visitors. Dean Wade, Dominick Barlow and Tacko Fall all missed the Sixers’ practice on Monday, Nick Nurse confirmed, and Barlow has since been ruled out for at least two weeks with a lumbar bone stress response. Anfernee Simons is listed as questionable with left hamstring tightness.

Brown on Pop’s rule: ‘Technically, we did it with two’

Brown was asked whether keeping last season’s core together gives New York an early edge while new-look rivals in the East are still learning each other. He turned the question around. Philadelphia added LeBron James and Jaylen Brown this summer, and Brown went back to something he heard as an assistant under Gregg Popovich in San Antonio.

“I remember Pop used to always say, ‘Hey, you need three perennial All-Stars to win a championship,’” Brown said. “And you know, technically, we did it with quote unquote two. … So some people might look at it as them having an advantage over us, you know, instead of the other way around.” He made the same point about Boston, which paired Jayson Tatum and Paul George and added Mitchell Robinson from New York’s own title team.

His conclusion was that none of it decides a game on its own. “At the end of the day, we have to go play the right way in order to get a win on both sides of the floor,” Brown said, “regardless if our core has been together for two years, five years, or 30 days.”

Team defense ‘on a string’ against James and Brown

Brown said the Sixers’ additions make one-on-one defense close to impossible, because players that talented “will know how to bait you into a foul or score a bucket.” His answer is five players moving together. “Our team defense against these guys in particular, but you know throughout the rest of the year, we got to be on a string,” he said. “When that ball moves, all five guys have to move because it starts with whoever’s on the ball. They’re the head of the snake defensively.”

The thing he cannot allow, he said, is for a team this talented to see open driving lanes. If New York is late, “they’ll score or hurt you every time, or they’ll make the right pass and that person’s going to hurt you every time.” He admitted the first game of the year is a hard time to be sharp at that end, but said it is “very, very important for us to be at a high level on that end of the floor as a five-man unit.”

Nurse weighs the Towns-Hart matchup

Nurse was asked about the matchup every Knicks opponent has to solve: whether to put his center on Karl-Anthony Towns or on Hart. He did not give away the game plan, but he laid out the trade-off. Putting the center on Hart “allows you to switch a little more in the screen and rolls,” Nurse said, and lets Philadelphia play “a couple more coverages.” The risk is what Towns can do against a smaller defender. “Can Towns pass over the four? Can he rebound over the four? Can he post up over the four? Can he shoot over the four?” Nurse said. “Can Hart, you know, become a perimeter crasher with the five trying to figure out where he is?”

He also put offensive rebounding at the top of his list. “They cannot just be collecting a ton of offensive rebounds, kicking them out, and hitting threes,” Nurse said, naming OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges and Jordan Clarkson along with Hart. On his own team, Nurse said Joel Embiid is “ready to go,” and that the preseason showed “some really high moments” and “some rough edges” for a roster with many new players.

Wiseman can grow ‘without much pressure’

Brown also spoke about James Wiseman, the former No. 2 overall pick who made New York’s roster after a camp battle for the last spots. Brown was on the Golden State staff when the Warriors drafted Wiseman in 2020, and he said the expectations that came with that pick were hard on a young player who “didn’t play any college basketball, really.” Wiseman played only three games at Memphis before turning pro.

This time, Brown said, there is no rush. “We’re not looking for him to come in and start or fight for a starting position. We’re not even looking necessarily for him right now to come in and be a backup,” he said. “He has the luxury of growing at his own pace, without much pressure.” The message to Wiseman is to “keep it real simple,” use his size and athletic tools, “and then we’ll work on expanding your game a little later.”

‘This is not last year’

Brown said even he has had to tune out the praise. “You have people patting you on your back, telling you how good you are,” he said, and part of you has to say, “don’t listen to that … don’t read this … don’t watch this.” His advice to players is to enjoy the title with family, “but try to come back to earth as soon as possible.” He said the group has mostly done that, and the staff will remind them when it does not. “This is not last year,” Brown said. “This is a new season, and we can’t just think we’re going to switch that light switch on.”

He expects the Garden to be “off the charts” on Tuesday, and said what stands out to him in New York is the energy outside the arena as much as inside it. The ring and banner ceremony starts at about 6:30 p.m. ET, and the 76ers and Knicks tip off at 7 p.m. ET, which is 2 a.m. Wednesday in Cairo.