Knicks Coach Mike Brown Admits His Brunson and Towns Lineup Is Toast, And He Called It ‘Crap’

New York Knicks head coach Mike Brown isn’t holding anything back after his team’s rough start to the season. After picking up their first win on Tuesday night, which only came after an 0-3 run to kick things off, Brown flat-out admitted that the big lineup experiment with Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns playing together has already failed.

Last Year’s Genius, This Year’s Headache

Last season, Brown was a mad scientist, using the entire regular season to tinker with lineups, figure out what worked, and save his starters’ legs for the grind ahead. SNY’s David Vertsberger noted that Brown was brought in specifically for this approach, an approach that ultimately led to a championship. He installed a new offensive system, cut down starter minutes, and constantly swapped out players and combinations. By the time the playoffs rolled around, Brown knew exactly which buttons to push, and it paid off big time.

But this season? It’s a different story. The same strategy is just not clicking early on. After that brutal 0-3 start, Brown didn’t pull any punches when talking about the team’s struggles. His exact words? “Our crap stinks. It does. And we’re the only ones that can do something about it.” Talk about a wake-up call!

Brunson, Towns, and the Bench

The big difference this year, and the core of Brown’s early “experiment,” was trying out Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns playing together in stretches. He didn’t do much of that last year, but this season, he wanted to give it a shot. And how did it go? Not as planned, apparently. Brown even had both Brunson and Towns off the floor at the same time during the middle of games, a move they “didn’t really do that last year.”

Brown watched it, and he just didn’t like what he saw. He told the media, “Watching it, I think we did it in the preseason some, but we didn’t play everybody all the time so it was a little harder, but watching it, I didn’t like it.” It’s pretty clear that option is off the table for the foreseeable future. Having both those stars on the bench together can totally disrupt the team’s offensive rhythm, and New York needs Brunson and Towns on the court as much as possible to get anything going.

So, Brown got some “valuable information” about what definitely *doesn’t* work. Now, he’s back to the drawing board, searching for other lineup combinations to give the Knicks a better chance moving forward.

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Originally reported by The Sporting News.