Knicks Star Shares Details of Mike Brown Dinner

The New York Knicks took a big risk when they fired Tom Thibodeau. After five years of leading a resurgent Knicks team, the front office parted ways with one of the longer-tenured coaches in the league without a clear backup plan in place.

They ended up salvaging what once looked like one of the sloppier coaching searches we've seen, finally landing on another multiple-time Coach of the Year winner in Mike Brown as the next man for the job. He looked the part of a Knicks coach with his vast web of connections and track record as a successful player-manager, and fits the front office's vision as an offensively-inclined strategist.

Despite getting the gig just over a month ago, he'd yet to catch up with every major player on the contending team he's set to take over. Karl-Anthony Towns, one of the team's two All-Stars, had yet to actually connect with Brown, but the two finally set aside a time to meet in early August.

"I just came from having a two hour dinner with Mike Brown," Towns said in an interview with Carmelo Anthony's podcast, 7PM in Brooklyn. "This was the first time we actually met, we actually got to speak, talk about the team, get to actually know each other. We have a chance to win a championship, and that's only gonna happen if everyone's connected, and everyone has to be fully invested into each other, and to our goal."

Towns had never suited up in a Brown-led operation. The No. 1 overall pick in the 2015 Draft spent the first nine years of his career with the Minnesota Timberwolves before his suddenly getting traded to New York last summer, getting his one season in with the similarly-tough Thibodeau before his firing.

On what he was able to ascertain about the bombastic coach, Towns said, "kind of just really getting to know him, the way he likes to play basketball, the way he wants to coach, the way he wants to operate practices," to which Anthony knowingly chimed in, "Oh, he practices."