Mike Brown Pushes the Knicks Past the Thibs Ceiling

Evan & Tiki

Audacy

Sports

4.2 • 988 Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2026

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

Evan Roberts and Tiki Barber revisit one of the Knicks’ biggest offseason questions: whether moving on from Tom Thibodeau was the right call. With Mike Brown leading the team to the NBA Finals, Evan argues the Knicks’ process has been validated, while Tiki pushes back that the full story is not finished yet. The debate gets heated as they compare coaching impact in basketball and baseball, question how much credit the Knicks deserve for landing on Brown, and discuss whether postseason adjustments proved to be the difference. The conversation closes with a shift to New York baseball, including a historic Yankees blowout and renewed pressure on Carlos Mendoza after another rough Mets loss.

Transcript

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0:00.0	There are many people who didn't trust what the Knicks were doing. I am not a Nick fan. I've made that very clear. I don't like the Knicks. I try my hardest to be fair. And I thought some of the things that were said about the New York Knicks during the off season were completely unfair. And I could choose anybody to do this too. I could play clips of Boomer. I could play clips of Geo. I could play clips of Big Mac. I can't play clips of Craig because he
0:22.4	wasn't here. But I'm not going to play those clips. I'm going to play your clip because when
0:28.4	the New York Knicks decided to fire Tom Thibodeau, I understood why they did it. I thought it made a
0:32.7	lot of sense. They realized they couldn't climb those steps with Tom Thibito as the head coach.
0:38.3	And then the process they went through was widely criticized.
0:42.3	And you can tell by this argument, Tiki didn't argue with me.
0:46.2	Tiki was mad at me.
0:48.1	So ladies and gentlemen, I take you back to late June of a year ago.
0:52.3	Tiki Barber versus me in a Knicks coaching search debate
0:56.7	is this Elworthy? Why are people so confused because you didn't get what you wanted immediately?
1:02.7	It's less about who you wanted to get immediately. It's more of this is who was perfect to
1:08.0	coach this team. And it's, I don't know. That's what the Knicks are trying to do. They're searching for a coach. Yes, but you fired your coach without knowing who that person is. Most times when you fire a coach take, you don't know who the replacement is. You go through a search. No, because most teams that make it to the Eastern Conference fricking finals don't fire their coach, Evan.
1:29.3	That's the point.
1:31.3	How many times do the players basically tell in exit meetings?
1:34.3	How often does that happen?
1:36.3	I don't know.
1:37.3	So then how is it such an outlier?
1:39.3	The last time we saw this, the last time we saw this, the Toronto Raptors fired their head coach. And he was amazing.
1:47.8	Yes. They knew exactly who they were hiring. Okay. They promoted someone on their staff.
1:53.0	Exactly. They knew exactly who they were hiring. A team that gets this far, if they're going to
1:59.7	fire their coach, Evan, they have to know exactly who they're hiring.
2:06.0	Tiki Barber, I saw, you can hear it, by the way, freaking Evan. Tiki was not happy with me.
	...

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