Mike Brown continues to hold players accountable, even while winning

Get greedy.

When Mike Brown dropped this phrase a few weeks back, it may have been overlooked. He didn’t want his team to celebrate their meteoric rise. He wanted them to embrace who they could be and push for more.

For a group of players that haven’t been in this position before, it could have come across as just another motivational tool Brown was using to prod his team forward. Instead, his team took the message to heart and have now won seven of eight coming out of the All-Star break.

This is Brown’s challenge. How do you take a franchise that hasn’t had success and make them believe? How do you continue to adapt the belief system as the team defies the odds? How do you stay on message and demand even more when the results exceed any reasonable expectation?

Brown answered a lot of these questions during Thursday night’s post game press conference. Despite a 122-117 victory over the New York Knicks, Brown stepped in front of cameras and lambasted his team.

His approach was a surprise. Sure, his team moved 13 games over .500 for the first time in almost two decades. They kept pace with the Memphis Grizzlies for the second best record in the Western Conference. But the way they accomplished this was just flat out unsustainable.

New York battered the Kings on the offensive glass, coming away with 23 offensive boards. Despite one of their better defensive efforts, the Kings allowed the Knicks to take 17 more field goals, which on most nights would have spelled disaster.

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