ORLANDO — “KAT right elbow! KAT right elbow!”
It’s the opening period of the Knicks’ eventual 113-111 nailbiter in Dallas, and for what feels like the first time all season, Mike Brown is barking instructions from the sideline. The raised right elbow, the tap with his off-hand, the repeated call — all of it a notable shift for a coach who has spent the first month telling his players to play, not memorize.
The change is intentional. Brown came into his first year in New York determined to teach his pace-and-space, read-and-react offense from the ground up. No scripted sets. No early bailout calls. Just principles: pace, spacing, movement, paint touches, sharing the ball. Plays would only come later — once the foundation held.
That moment has arrived. Or at least begun.
Brown flashes the elbow signal. His All-Star center responds.
Karl-Anthony Towns sprints to the elbow, takes a feed from Jalen Brunson, dribbles toward the corner and hands off while screening for Guerschon Yabusele. Yabu walks into an uncontested jumper.
Forty-one minutes later, the Knicks escape Dallas with a two-point win.
If the Knicks are going to keep squeezing out tight games — and there have been more than expected to start the year — Brown’s ability to layer play calls on top of his core system becomes essential. The mere fact he’s calling them now signals something important:
The Knicks have graduated from Level 1 of his offense. They’ve passed the first test.
“We have a couple in,” Brown said. “We’re not quite there where we can call them on the fly all the time, but yes. We have a few of them in that we lean on, try to lean on.”
Brown didn’t want to overload the group early. Mitchell Robinson said he’d “never seen anything like” Brown’s system in his life. Towns echoed that sentiment after Friday’s practice.
“It’s different. I haven’t seen it in my 11 years [in the league],” he said. “But I’m having fun with it.”
What Brown sees now is a roster starting to react within the principles instead of waiting for instruction. The confidence comes not from the elbow call in Dallas, but from a possession late in the fourth quarter — a sequence that tied the game at 106 with under four minutes left — and didn’t require a play at all.
Mikal Bridges cut from one corner to the other, then reversed direction back toward his original spot. Miles McBride recognized the read, screened Bridges’ man Naji Marshall, and in doing so also distracted his own man, Brandon Williams. Two defenders stuck to Deuce. Bridges popped free in front of the Mavericks bench.
“When [Deuce] pinned in, Mikal was wide open, and he hits a three. That’s not a play. That’s a concept,” Brown said. “If somebody is in the corner and a guy is coming to the corner, you can either cut hard to vacate it, because we only need one guy there for spacing purposes. … But it shouldn’t be a call. It’s just that natural concept or reaction based on how we want to space the floor.”
The action — CATT, not to be confused with KAT — is something Brown drills in the half court. He doesn’t teach it in transition. Yet his players have executed it in transition anyway throughout the course of the early season.
That, for Brown, is the breakthrough.
“Seeing stuff like that tells me, ‘OK, they’re starting to get it,’” Brown said. “We could still be better, but we’re starting to get it a little bit. Therefore we can start implementing a couple of calls.
“We started trying to figure out how to balance the floor, which is the big thing. In our league, teams are so good with everything, if your spacing is not right, the first thing is to play with pace but your spacing has to be right. So we started to get the spacing right, even though the initial action to start the dominos wasn’t quite right.
“We spaced it right and we fell into that.”
Level 1 is behind them. Brown’s system is opening up. And as the offense evolves, so do the challenges around it. Here’s what else is shaping the Knicks as they navigate their second road trip of the early season.
BROWN: MITCH HAS TO HIT FREE THROWS
Robinson’s late-game free throws nearly cost the Knicks in Dallas. He missed two critical attempts in crunch time, continuing a rough opening stretch at the line. Robinson has reworked his shooting form but is just 2-for-9 (22.2%) to start the season.
“Obviously, he’s got to make free throws. We have a rotation and most times in the rotation at the end of games Josh is going to be out there,” Brown said. “So he won’t be out there a ton, but if we need a rebound, he’s going to be out there.
“And he’s got to knock down the free throws. And he’s working at it, we’re working at it with him, and I truly believe he’s going to get better.”
Brown’s tone made one thing clear: the Knicks trust Robinson’s defense and rebounding late, but to stay on the floor, he has to convert at the stripe.
BRIDGES’ FOURTH-QUARTER SLUMPS
Bridges is averaging over 16 points per game under Brown — but just 2.8 of those are coming in fourth quarters. The drought has become a trend, though Bridges insists it’s not for lack of aggression.
“I just think just where the balls find me. In the Miami game I’m coming in, I got the ball a couple times and drove. And they helped, I think we got two good looks. Missed them both,” he said after practice on Friday. “But I think it’s just the opportunity that comes. It’s usually what it is — the ball finds me. I think if you watch, if it doesn’t find me, it’s just in the offense and trying to figure it out. And sometimes it happens like that. The game does that.”
The Knicks expect his late-game usage and scoring to rise as the team becomes more fluent in Brown’s system.
CARD COLLECTOR
Towns is a serious baseball card collector — serious enough to turn a rare pull into a major payday.
Towns unwrapped a limited Yoshinobu Yamamoto card, and instead of framing it or locking it away, he immediately flipped it.
“I got the card. I sold that s–t,” he said Friday.
The All-Star big man, who will make over $50 million this season, sold the card for $72,000. The reason? Loyalty — just not to the Dodgers star on the card.
“I’m a big Yankee fan. My collection has a lot of Yankees in it. So I think the world of him as a player. I love watching him pitch, one of the best in the game, especially as a pitcher growing up, it’s always great when you see the best go out there and play chess with some of the best hitters in the world,” Towns said. “I’m just a Yankee fan. That’s really it. Sometimes someone will appreciate the card more than I will, and I want to make sure that’s how the story went.”
As for the crown jewel of his collection? A Lou Gehrig card from the 1930s.
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