Mike Brown looked composed at the postgame podium. He had just coached the second-largest fourth-quarter comeback in NBA playoff history, watching a 22-point deficit melt into a Game 1 overtime win against the one-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers. He spent the first minute praising his players. Then he started telling on himself.
"I've got to give my group credit," Brown said. "They've been resilient all year. And I don't know if I've seen that in a playoff game. I don't know if I've been a part of it. Maybe I have. But to be down 18, 19, 20, whatever we were down, and to find a way to come back and win — I take my hat off to my group."
The first tactical question put to him was about Landry Shamet, the role-player guard he plugged into the rotation with nine minutes left in the fourth quarter. Shamet hit two of the loudest threes of the comeback and provided the wing defence Cleveland could not solve down the stretch.
"We talked about it throughout the course of the game," Brown said. "We talked about it this morning as a staff, too. We feel like we can get some spray threes and Landry's been shooting the ball really well for us. You have Landry out there, you have OG out there, you have Mikal out there, and you have KAT or Mitch and Jaylen — and they have to guard traditional. If they want to put a big on Landry, great. Put a big on Landry. If you want to put a big on OG, great. Put a big on OG. But then when you close out, you're going to have to take away the three and the drive. Defensively, Landry is a big guard. He's physical, moves his feet great, and he can defend without foul."
The second question was about Jalen Brunson, who hunted James Harden in pick-and-roll over and over in the closing minutes. Brown was open about it. The Knicks had decided to attack the matchup as soon as they saw the Cavaliers attacking Brunson on the other end.
"Sometimes you got to do what the game dictates, and they were trying to do the same thing with Jaylen," Brown said. "So we said, okay, we feel like we could play that game. We try not to play that game much, but we feel like we have a guy that we can play that game with. Just like we have to try to figure out different ways to guard Harden and Mitchell, they got to figure out different ways to guard Jaylen — but there is no secret, we were attacking Harden."
The third question, about a third-quarter huddle in which Brunson appeared to challenge teammates on the bench, drew the most personal answer of the night.
"He's our guy," Brown said. "And he felt we need to play faster. He felt we needed to be better defensively. There were a couple of things that he felt, and he made sure that we knew, and our guys responded to him."
Brown also explained the moment when the season felt closest to over.
"It was still a lot of time, and if we opened the floor up a little bit and we hit a couple threes while getting some stops, our crowd is fantastic. It's the best in the league, and our guys felt their energy," Brown said. "As soon as we got a couple of stops, made a couple of shots, the crowd was right back in the game. When you've got nine minutes and something seconds left on the game clock, I've seen us defending in the fourth quarter out of this world. You open the floor up a little bit — that just takes the right guys shooting the basketball, knocking down some shots. When that happens with the crowd that we have — shout out Knicks fans, you guys were freaking awesome tonight — anything can happen."
The most revealing moment of the night came when Brown was asked whether fatigue from Cleveland's harder schedule could have helped New York late. The Cavs had been playing every other day to dispatch Detroit; the Knicks had more than a week between series. Brown picked his words carefully and then opened a window into his Golden State years.
"It is known that Cleveland's guards have played 50% more minutes than our guards," he said. "So you know, if you're playing every other day, could that take a toll? We told our guys it could take a toll. So stay with it no matter what the score is down the stretch. But you don't really know if it does or not. You hope telling your guys that gives you a little bit of a psychological advantage. Let me let out a secret. When I was with Golden State, we played Houston in the playoffs. We counted James Harden's dribbles. We told our guys, hey, he's dribbling close to a thousand times a game. He's not doing that anymore because they got Donovan Mitchell — but at the time we were like, he's dribbling almost a thousand times a game. And our high guys, KD, were at like 300 or right below 300. Keep picking him up full court."
The data point landed. So did the message. The Knicks took Game 1, stole home-court advantage and now hold the keys to a series that, three quarters into Monday night, the Cavaliers had been on the verge of stealing. Game 2 tips on Thursday.
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*Originally published on [NBA News Global](https://nbanews.global/article/mike-brown-knicks-comeback-landry-shamet-harden-dribbles-game-1-may-2026). Visit for full coverage.*
