Knicks' Recent Coaching Staff Win Is Flying Under the Radar

This huge positive on the coaching side isn't getting enough attention.

Mike Brown's Knicks coaching staff is looking strong for next season. | REUTERS

Losing Mitchell Robinson and Ariel Hukporti may not feel great for a Knicks team whose center room is still incomplete. But otherwise, the offseason has been a pretty strong one for a New York team that is still just a month removed from winning a championship.

They brought back Landry Shamet, Jose Alvarado, Jordan Clarkson and even Mohamed Diawara, whom the Knicks view as a very crucial part of their future. The biggest offseason win for Leon Rose may not even be a player, though.

Not losing associate head coach Chris Jent might be as big as retaining all of the aforementioned players.

Why Chris Jent's return matters a ton for the Knicks

During the Finals, head coach Mike Brown went on to the podium and spoke incredibly highly of Jent, saying, "Jent, my associate head coach, I’m surprised he hasn’t gotten an interview. He’s our offensive coordinator. He’s been around for a long time. Somebody needs to give him an interview because he’ll help your team win at the highest level.”

But much to the dismay of a lot of Knicks fans who have gotten to know Jent and his talent, the Trail Blazers listened to Brown and gave him an interview for their then vacant head coaching position.

Luckily for Brown and the Knicks, he was not a finalist and will be returning back to New York, where he'll once again play a large role in getting the Knicks back to the Finals.

The one thing more difficult than winning one championship, is doing it all over again. The Knicks will undoubtedly have a proverbial target on their backs all season long, as all defending champions do. If the Knicks want to climb back to the basketball mountain top, Jent must continue squeezing out every possible ounce of potential out of this talented group.

As the main offensive coordinator, it starts with finding a way to build off of last season's dominant postseason run. The team spent much of the regular season see-sawing between forcing Karl-Anthony Towns into a box he so clearly wasn't comfortable fitting into, and reverting to a heliocentric offense over reliant on Jalen Brunson isolations.

In the postseason, though, they found the remedy. And it came in the form of an offense that was more versatile and in sync that it ever had been before.

They simplified things for Towns to allow him to be the best version of himself. He was now as efficient as ever, while also unlocking a level of passing consistency the league had never seen from him.

It then had a trickle-down effect which finally allowed both OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges to flourish simultaneously. And when the going got tough, they still had the ultimate safety net in Jalen Brunson.

While the entire coaching staff will have a hand in it, it will be imperative for Jent to not just replicate said offense, but to continue building off of it.

Get Towns to buy into being the newfound version of himself for an 82-game stretch. Find a way to keep Bridges as confident and engaged offensively more consistently like he was in the postseason.

And it's not just the starters. Integrating Deuce McBride and Mohamed Diawara into the offense in different ways could improve that unit's upside. Having a full season of Jose Alvarado to experiment will only help a title defense. These are things Jent can do to improve on the magical season that the 2026 Finals run was.