Knicks Face Crucial Crossroads: Will They Rise to the Challenge or Resist the Change?

[Karl-Anthony Towns disputes report he underwent knee procedure during offseason]

“You know, me, personally, I hate playing with anything on my hands,” Hart said. “I feel like I don’t have a good feel for it. It might take a little getting used to.”

There’s plenty for Brown and his new charges to get used to — and just as important as the “who to play” component of that exploration is the “how to play.”

During his tenure in Sacramento, Brown preached the gospel of pace — of sprinting the floor off misses and makes alike, of getting into the frontcourt earlier into the shot clock, of sprinting into actions rather than going through the motions — and, in the process, produced one of the NBA’s most efficient offenses. (“I played against those Sacramento teams when he was there,” Bridges said. “You know, it was not fun guarding those guys.”) In the Thibodeau/Brunson era, though, New York more frequently operated at a glacial pace, finishing in the bottom five in possessions per 48 minutes in each of the last five seasons.