Mike Brown always wanted to win big and his Knicks have a chance to do it

Josh Hart took a moment to digest the question — because Mike Brown had enormous shoes to fill replacing Tom Thibodeau as Knicks head coach. Let Hart tell it, Brown “is doing an amazing job.”

Especially given the circumstances.

The Knicks fired Thibodeau following the franchise’s most successful season in a quarter-century: 51 wins plus an Eastern Conference Finals appearance. They struck out on Jason Kidd, Billy Donovan, Quin Snyder and other gainfully employed head coaches as replacements before settling on Brown as the head coach of the future.

And not five months into the job, after a strong start culminated with an NBA Cup Final victory over the San Antonio Spurs in mid-December, owner James Dolan turned up the pressure.

Dolan went on WFAN radio in early January, as the Knicks began a skid of nine losses in 11 games, and reiterated the expectations for the year ahead.

“Getting to the NBA Finals we absolutely have to do,” he said. “Winning the Finals, we should do.”

The Knicks are on pace to accomplish Piece No. 1. With a little bit of luck, and a lot more of what they’ve shown, they can reach the Finals for the first time since 1999. The Knicks haven’t quite looked better — be it under Thibodeau or Brown — than their last handful of games: They outscored the Atlanta Hawks by 96 combined points over Games 4 through 6 before handing the Philadelphia 76ers a 39-point L to begin the second round on Monday.

Yet this is the vision Brown sold Dolan and president of basketball operations Leon Rose when he convinced Knicks leadership he was the man for the job during interviews in July. Brown believed the Knicks could play a faster, more selfless, more modern brand of basketball. He believed the team as previously constructed — with minor tweaks, not a major overhaul — could win the Eastern Conference. Maybe even an NBA title.

Winning a championship requires 16 victories. The Knicks already have five. And if the next three come as easily as the last four, there’s no reason this team can’t get at least 12. And with 12 wins, the Knicks will be playing with house money. The world is coming around to that idea, too.

But for Brown, it’s all been the same, all year long.

“People have talked about an [NBA Finals] mandate — like, I’m coaching to win. It doesn’t matter what others say,” said Brown. “I’m disappointed if we’re not in the Finals and having a chance to win it.”

A DIFFERENT STYLE

Collaboration and a willingness to work with others. It’s what the Knicks were most excited about when hiring Brown as Thibodeau’s replacement over the summer. Thibodeau was a basketball genius who was a drill sergeant in his approach as a coach. His style rebuilt the Knicks from the laughingstock of the Eastern Conference all the way up to perennial deep-playoff-run contention.

Yet Knicks brass wanted more, and a change in coaching philosophies, not just on the court but off of It, was the path forward.

Brown knew he wanted to bring what he learned from previous stops to the Knicks.

“I’m fortunate, blessed, lucky to be in six Finals with three different teams, and fortunate, blessed, lucky to have been a part of four championships,” Brown said. “It’s the best feeling in the world, and I know that’s what I do it for. The opportunity for this job came open, and I was just intrigued by the players.”

In New York, Brown saw one of the most talented starting fives in all of basketball. He saw a pair of All-Stars who’d been misutilitzed, who, with a tweak here and some accountability there, could reach their full potential. He saw a front office actively shoring the worst bench in basketball last season.

Brown saw what he said — an opportunity — a chance to take a team unhappy with a conference finals appearance to heights unseen this century. And in the mirror, he saw someone unequivocally ready for the challenge.

“I was intrigued by being in New York, calling Madison Square Garden my home court, being around the fans, hanging with Leon Rose who I’ve known for many years. He’s just a fantastic human being,” he said. “And being around the players on that roster, and that’s all I looked at it as. The mandate and all that other stuff, like that’s what I expect, that’s what I want to do, and hopefully it can happen, but who knows.”

And the players saw someone coached all-time greats: LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green are all on Brown’s resume. They saw someone who’d put the goal of winning a title above all else —including the egos of players who had grown accustomed to roles they held in the past.

They saw someone willing to work not just for them, but with them, towards the ultimate goal of hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy in the air at year’s end.

“I would say mainly what I’ve learned from Mike is just he’s willing to really push us and have us hold each other more accountable in a sense,” said Miles McBride. “I feel like he’s leaned a lot on his assistant coaching staff. We have a lot of coaches, a lot of guys helping us in different ways, so he’s done a great job, as well as the whole staff.”

ROUGH ROAD

Of course it wasn’t easy. Brown wouldn’t have had it any other way.

The Knicks were on Cloud Nine after winning the NBA Cup. They well back to Ground Zero almost immediately after, dropping nine games entering the New Year, just weeks ahead of the Feb. 5 NBA Trade Deadline.

Truth be told, Brown would be less comfortable today had the Knicks not seen any adversity during his first year as coach.

“I honestly hoped that the rockiness — as you called it — the adversity, was going to be big. I wanted to go through it,” he said. “I wanted to see what we would do as group during the regular season, how you respond to that. I don’t think there’s anybody out there, at least not that I know of — there probably is — but not that I know of, that didn’t face adversity or bumps in the road before accomplishing whatever goal they wanted to accomplish. Not just in basketball, but in life.

“Think about it, if you take getting knocked on your butt as a growing experience and you figure out — if you’re a group of people — how to come together, stay connected, no matter what field you’re in, you’re probably going to have success down the road because of what you’ve been through together at the most difficult time. I was more than OK with it, I’ll be more than OK with it in the future.”

The Knicks finished the regular season with 53 wins, two more than Thibodeau’s best season, and the Eastern Conference’s No. 3 seed. They eviscerated the Hawks in six first-round games before sticking it to the Sixers to begin the second round.

They have a chance to shred the Sixers, too, and if they do that, there’s a strong chance the Knicks will be favored to beat the Detroit Pistons or Cleveland Cavaliers in the conference next. It all sounds the same to Brown, the same as Dolan’s NBA Finals mandate. The same as the critics who said he was incapable or unqualified for the job.

It’s why Hart took a second to digest the question: Brown had humongous shoes to fill. What did the Knicks’ star learn about his coach with a season down and a title run to go?

“He doesn’t listen to the outside noise and doesn’t let that affect him. And he’s focused every day on how he can come in and make this team better,” said Hart. “He listens to his coaches and listen to us with our feedback and what we have to say and ask us questions and stuff like that. So I think it’s just a good line of communication with everyone within the organization, Obviously, him at the helm of how we can make this team be the best unit we can be. And he’s doing an amazing job with that outside noise.”