07/07/2026
Mike Brown, reflecting on a lesson from Gregg Popovich, said the trust of a team begins with its best player. “Your best player doesn’t allow you to coach him, you have no shot at coaching anybody else on the team.”
Brown recalled Popovich telling him in San Antonio. For Popovich, that player was Tim Duncan. For Brown in New York, the message was about Jalen Brunson, whose willingness to be coached helped set the standard for the Knicks’ locker room.
“I learned this from my time in San Antonio. I’ll never forget, at the end of my first year, we were having a staff meeting, and Pop was mumbling under his breath, ‘I’ve got to thank Tim Duncan.’ I was thinking, ‘You’ve got to thank Tim Duncan? Why are you saying that?’ And he said, ‘Mikey, if your best player doesn’t allow you to coach him, you have no shot at coaching anybody else on the team. And Tim allows me to do it.’"
Source: The Roommates Show
