The Athletic: Mike Brown used to babysit J.B. Bickerstaff. Now the coaches are atop the East

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DETROIT — Before standing next to Jalen Brunson, before he was a fun-loving assistant coach to Stephen Curry, before being tapped to lead the last years of Kobe Bryant’s prime, and before coaching LeBron James to his first NBA Finals, Mike Brown was a babysitter.

Brown was J.B. Bickerstaff’s babysitter.

“He was strict,” the Detroit Pistons head coach told The Athletic. “He had a great way of making things fun but always organized and detailed. There weren’t going to be things that were missed, and he was scared to death of my dad. He wasn’t going to let anything happen to me.”

The NBA coaches will face off against each other for the first time this season Monday, when Bickerstaff’s Pistons host Brown’s New York Knicks in a showdown between the top two teams in the Eastern Conference. The babysitting eventually matured into a mentor-mentee relationship, and more than 30 years later, the two are still close friends who share a passion for basketball and coaching.

And country artist Jelly Roll.

“We were supposed to connect this summer because I like country music,” Brown told The Athletic. “He’s not a fan of it, and I’ve tried to explain it to him. I went to see Jelly Roll one time and sent him some pictures. He asked me one time, ‘Mike, have you heard this song by Jelly Roll?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, J.B., that’s my dude!’”

“I like Jelly Roll’s music, but the rest of country music I can’t do,” Bickerstaff added. “Jelly Roll at least raps over country, so I can get into that. Mike sent me a photo of Jelly Roll and him wearing some cowboy boots.”

The relationship between the two began in Denver in the early 1990s, when Bickerstaff’s father, Bernie, was the general manager of the Nuggets and Brown secured his first NBA job as an entry-level video assistant. Part of Brown’s responsibilities, aside from the work in the video room, was to watch over the younger Bickerstaff, who was around 13 years old at the time. When Bernie was out of town, Brown, who was in his early 20s, would do things like take the youngster to the zoo. They’d play one-on-one basketball. Brown would attend Bickerstaff’s basketball games at East High School in Denver. Even at 14, many saw Bickerstaff as the next big basketball star to come out of Denver.

Because of how good Bickerstaff was as a prep player, Brown never really envisioned Bickerstaff becoming a coach. Not in those early years.

“He was a really good player,” Brown said. “I didn’t know where his playing would take him. There are some guys, like, if it were me, they’d be like, ‘He’s not playing. He’s got a chance to coach.’ He was first-team All-State and had big colleges recruiting him.”

Assistant Bernie Bickerstaff, left, talks with head coach Mike Brown when the pair were coaching the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2014.

When Bickerstaff was a freshman in high school, he interned for Brown inside the Nuggets’ video room. It was there when Brown and Bickerstaff put together clips of college prospects ahead of the NBA Draft for Denver’s coaches and front office to evaluate.

“This was old school when you had to go deck to deck (with two VCRs) to cut film,” said Bickerstaff. “He taught me how to do it.”

Those early days had a lasting impact on Bickerstaff. It wasn’t just that Brown took him under his wing — even if he might have been forced to, as Bickerstaff tells it, by his father — but he did it while never making it feel like a burden.

“I respected him, even at that age, because he treated me with grace and with kindness in a way that a lot of older people – and at the time I thought he was old – don’t typically treat kids,” Bickerstaff said. “For a 20-year-old or whatever to carry around a 12- or 13-year-old, it wasn’t common, either. He was willing to spend the time. We’d work on the court. We’d play one-on-one. He just made me feel comfortable, and knew you could trust him.”

Bickerstaff has an NBA coaching career that has seen him turn programs around. He morphed the Cleveland Cavaliers into a respectable organization once again after James left. Cleveland won 44, 51 and 48 games, respectively, in Bickerstaff’s final three seasons before he was let go. The Cavaliers, despite a 64-win season last year, didn’t go any further in the postseason under new head coach Kenny Atkinson than they did with Bickerstaff at the helm.

Now in Detroit, Bickerstaff has returned one of the NBA’s most decorated franchises to relevance after spending most of the last 15 years in the league’s basement. Before Bickerstaff arrived, the Pistons had gone 17 years without a playoff win. They had only made the playoffs three times since 2010.

The year before Bickerstaff took over, the Pistons made Monty Williams the highest-paid coach in NBA history at the time, only for the franchise to win 14 games in his lone season. Last season, in Bickerstaff’s first year, Detroit had a winning regular-season record for just the second time since 2009. The Pistons ended their playoff-victory drought in a six-game series loss to the New York Knicks, but five of the six games were decided by six points or less.

Detroit has built on last season’s success and has been the No. 1 team in the East for most of the season, despite not making any big-name trades or free-agent signings in several years. The Pistons have thrived as their high draft picks have matured and general manager Trajan Langdon has filled out the roster around them with capable, role-playing veterans.

“I believe, right now, he’s one of the frontrunners for Coach of the Year,” Brown said of Bickerstaff. “The first people who come to mind are him and (Celtics head coach) Joe Mazzulla. Those two have done something with teams people thought didn’t have a chance, and they’re right there despite missing pieces.

“It doesn’t surprise me about what he’s doing in Detroit, because I know how passionate he is, how hard he works, and he’s extremely intelligent.”

Brown was hired this summer to take over the Knicks after the team surprisingly fired Tom Thibodeau following the franchise’s first Eastern Conference finals appearance in 25 years. The franchise thought a new voice on the sideline was needed to reach the goal of winning championships. Brown’s background as a coach at various levels, his experience with star players and his willingness to collaborate all stood out to New York’s decision-makers during the hiring process. One of the NBA’s most prideful and dedicated fan bases is hopeful that a 53-year championship drought ends in Brown’s first season as coach.

J.B. Bickerstaff on the Kings firing Mike Brown:

“The way that it was handled was classless. When Mike pours himself into his job like he does, he deserves better than that. … I thought it was shitty, to be honest with you, the way it was handled.” pic.twitter.com/4ubS2gSK0n

— Hunter Patterson (@HunterPatterson) December 29, 2024

The 55-year-old has been hired many times in his career to take teams to the mountaintop. His first head coaching job was in Cleveland with James. His next job was in Los Angeles with Bryant. And after a brief stop in Sacramento, where Brown turned an organization that is often the butt of jokes into a respectable competitor, he’s now with the Knicks during their most critical year(s) in almost 30 seasons.

“It goes without saying that he’s good, but he knows how to put a plan in place and has the ability to execute that plan,” Bickerstaff said of Brown when asked why win-now organizations gravitate to the veteran coach. “He’s got the confidence without the ego to be able to coach elite-level talent and get the most out of those players.

“A lot of times, people won’t put the time into stars or good teams, but Mike isn’t afraid of that challenge. He’s got a history of it.”

When the schedule permits, both Brown and Bickerstaff talk during the season. The latter said Brown is one of the first people he calls to bounce ideas off. They hang out together in the summer. And the two do plan on going to a Jelly Roll concert together at some point in the near future.

As of now, though, they’re fighting for the top spot in the Eastern Conference. It’s a far cry from where the teenager and his babysitter were 30-plus years ago.

“I always tried to help him anyway I could because his dad gave me my first opportunity,” Brown said. “That’s my young fella.”

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