NBA FINALS: KNICKS VS. SPURS

June 10, 2026

Mike Brown

New York Knicks

Game 4: Pregame

Q. What have you thought of OG's series? Seems like he's steadily getting better and better since coming back from the injury.

MIKE BROWN: He's gotten better as the series has gone along. He's had a great Playoffs so far.

I think he can even reach a higher plateau than where he is right now.

Q. What is your assessment of the offense and the offensive flow? Early in the season when you had ruts in the first round, you changed the offense. Is that something you would do in an NBA Finals series?

MIKE BROWN: Yeah, you always keep trying to find ways to make adjustments. Sometimes they're subtle, sometimes they're big. That's what our job is as a staff, is to keep trying to help our players as much as possible.

We'll do anything that we can to help those guys. Sometimes we guess right, sometimes we guess wrong. Hopefully we guess right more than we guess wrong [smiling].

Q. Mikal had a rough game the other night. He's had rough stretches throughout the course of the season. When a player is struggling like that, do you monitor him? Is he a little different than other guys you pay more attention to, or do you let a player work through those things?

MIKE BROWN: You try to let players work through those things because at the end of the day they're human. Nobody's going to be here all the time. I'm not even going to be here all the time.

You just keep trying to give them confidence as best you can, especially at this time of the year. You give them as much confidence as you can, try to uplift them, hope to get the best for them, knowing they need to know you're behind them.

Q. We talked a lot about this specific group battling through adversity. Can you recall an early instance of that, where you saw them come through and felt like these guys can stick together?

MIKE BROWN: Man, there are a lot of them. Early on I think we started out 2-3. Everybody thought the wheels were coming off the bus. It could have easily been that, but I thought our guys...

Not only that, one of our starters, Josh Hart, was still coming off the bench. We could have had guys go their separate ways at that time. There were many more after that.

The group showed their connectivity and they stayed together. We just kept taking it one day at a time, one practice at a time, one game at a time. We're sitting here now.

Q. Do you have any thoughts on what the decision was the league made with Wembanyama, the foul on Brunson? How do you feel you guys have attacked him when he's on the defensive end?

MIKE BROWN: Hey, the league's going to do what they're going to do. They ain't going to listen to me. They ain't going to listen to nobody else.

I said my piece on what I said after the game two days ago. You just hope at the end of the day everything is consistent on both ends throughout the whole game. That's it.

It is what it is.

Man, he's such a great defender. He's a great player. He's unique defensively. There's nobody else like him. Right now, for me putting a game plan together in terms of attacking him, I probably give myself a C minus, a D plus, a D plus as in dog. We can be better. You're not going to be great against him because of who he is, but I know I can help our guys better than what I've done.

By the way, C minus, even a D plus, it means I'm passing. I could easily be failing, though, [smiling]. It's like I'm passing at MIT or Harvard. I better say USD or they'll get mad at me.

Q. A lot has been said about that foul. It wasn't called a foul, but what Wemby did to Jalen. The potential for some escalating, you never know. Do you talk to the guys about the physicality of this series, keeping cool heads? You talked after Game 3 about the second half. What did you think about that play in particular?

MIKE BROWN: You always have to talk to your team about those situations. Not only do you talk to your team, which I did, but I talked to the officials, too. I said stuff like that can cause a fight. Obviously, they didn't see it. There were other things.

But those are things that I was talking about. At the end of the day, hopefully, like I said before, the officials will be consistent with what they see on both ends of the floor, not just with us but with them, too, and you get a good ballgame out of it.

Q. About that play in general, what did you see?

MIKE BROWN: That was part of it, what I was saying. If there's something we did, call it; something they did, call it.

The play is what is. Hopefully if it happens in the future, fingers crossed, the officials see it and call it.

Again, it's out of my control. The officials are human. They're going to miss stuff. You hope that they miss stuff for both teams. But they're going to miss stuff.

Like I say, at the end of the day the league is the league. You got to live with it. I am nothing, and my opinion is nothing when it comes to that type of stuff, in their eyes. That's how it should be.

Q. Give you a B plus in sidestepping that question.

MIKE BROWN: I'll take it [laughter].

Q. You introduced Clarkson into the series in Game 3. What do you think of his minutes and do you think he has a place in the series?

MIKE BROWN: His minutes were great. Every time we've thrown him out there, he's stepped up. He's a veteran. He's been in this position before. He's not afraid. There's nothing that can rattle him.

With the way that San Antonio is flying around, he can shoot the three, he can attack off the dribble, finish in the paint before getting all the way to Wemby. Defensively he's physical. He's not afraid when he's on that floor to guard anybody. He's rebounded well.

We're going to keep trying to give him opportunities as we go along, but I can't sit here and say he's going to play 15 minutes tonight or five minutes or 30 minutes. We just have to get a feel as the game goes along.

Q. Mitch’s minutes have been down a little bit in this series. Have they forced you to play him less with the fouling? Have you sensed any sort of fatigue with KAT, if you're playing him more minutes than you would want to?

MIKE BROWN: It's a good question. I don't remember how many minutes KAT played or KAT played in Game 3. KAT averaged I think 40 minutes a game, close to 40 minutes a game, last year. So if he plays 40, 41 minutes every once in a while, it's more than fine. He's more than capable of doing it.

We did limit Mitch, or I did limit Mitch, in Game 3 when we were in the bonus, which happens from time to time. I got to do a better job of trying to find ways to get him on the floor. It's not to give KAT 'a break'. I have to do better getting him more touches in the fourth.

In the same breath, he has to do better imposing his will on the game when we are playing summertime by ducking in, offensive rebounding, running the floor, posting up at the elbow. He's got the green light to do that anytime he wants when we're in summertime. We were in summertime quite a bit last game.

It's on all of us, but starting with me, to get him more touches. But I don't think his minutes impacted him, where he was tired in the fourth quarter of Game 3.