Knicks coach Mike Brown preparing his players for the mental, physical challenges of defending an NBA title

Maybe it was the wild celebration that followed the 53-year wait for a championship. Perhaps it was the parade that filled the streets of Manhattan. Or maybe it was when a car followed his Harley-Davidson all the way to his home to thank him for bringing the NBA title to New York.

Just like Jalen Brunson and the rest of the players, Mike Brown celebrated through the summer, finding it hard to pay for a meal anywhere near New York City. But maybe more than the players, he is tasked with making sure the team and the city don’t forget what happened a few short months ago, then turn the page and understand that it all begins again.

So through training camp, Brown has alternated.

One day it is the kind of old-school approach that Tom Thibodeau preached for five years as he brought the Knicks to the verge of what they became before he was replaced by Brown. He halts practice to rip into the team. He reminds the players that aside from the few stars, nothing is guaranteed. Not minutes. Not roles.

And for all of them, not wins.

He also echoes Phil Jackson’s Zen Master approach, bringing mindfulness as the lesson of the day. He urges the players to avoid all of the distractions that come from being more than just the player you see on the court, but humans with real worries and needs.

“It was really cool to have Coach talk to us about being human, about the struggles in life,” Karl-Anthony Towns said. “Us being together and us understanding where everyone is in life and the situations they deal with will allow us to be even more connected and allow us to be an even better team.”

Almost from the day Brown arrived, he spoke of the ups and downs of a season, pointing his arm at a 45-degree angle upward as he detailed the path he wanted the team to take while acknowledging that it would be hit with adversity that knocked it backward at times.

It was a calm that helped the Knicks stay even-keeled through the 2-9 stretch in the middle of last season. It helped when they were down two games to one in Atlanta in the opening round of the playoffs and there were calls for desperate lineup changes. It even contributed to their comebacks from huge deficits.

This preseason has been a different challenge. Contract extension talks for Towns, Josh Hart and Deuce McBride distracted from the task at hand, and somehow summoning the same hunger that had been building for 53 years is no small task.

“I’m going to keep it real,” Brown said.

“If there’s something in front of us, I’m not a fan of having an elephant in a room. I’ll address it. And I don’t care if it’s Jalen or KAT or OG [Anunoby] or Mo [Diawara] or [Pacome Dadiet] or Tyler [Kolek] or Jose [Alvarado]. So making sure that we’re all keeping it real with one another, it’s going to be huge for us.

“But the biggest thing is it’s about the process. It’s not about the end result. We can’t think about the end result right now because we have a ways to go. This is a new season. It’s a new team, and we’re going to have challenges in front of us.

“So again, I use this analogy. It’s like climbing a mountain. You know, sometimes you go 100 yards, but you might get knocked back five yards. Hopefully it’s not 50 yards, but it might get back five yards or 10 yards, and you regroup as a team. And you figure out how to keep going forward the right way, but making sure we embrace the process without slippage.

“In that, it’s going to be huge, and if I see us slipping up, it’s my job to let us know as a team that we’re off track. We need to get back on, hopefully sooner than later.”

When things go awry might be when Brown is at his best. He has been in New York for only one season but has spent a lifetime in the game, learning from some of the most accomplished coaches in NBA history — all of whom called him in the wake of the title to congratulate him.

Still, it is a universal truth. Players get credit. Coaches get fired. So the pressure is on not only the players but also the coach. Maybe even more so.

But Brown has managed to keep a calm and a focus that the players feel, a shared sense of collaboration that helped capture the title and has sharpened the focus now.

“I think that’s what makes Coach a great coach [is] just holding us accountable,” Mikal Bridges said.

“It can be human nature to relax a little bit — on both sides. Anybody that works in the building, as a player, as a coach, as a fan, you can relax after having a lot of success. It’s difficult to do something great and continue to try and get better. And that’s our goal.

“We did something great last year. It was last year, and I think the biggest thing coming into this year is that we know what it takes.

“We know what it takes, and it’s going to be more. It’s just great that Coach did that, holding us accountable, because we want to be the best team we can be . . . We can’t be the same exact team that we were last year. It’s a different team. We got to be even better.”

On Tuesday night, the spotlight will be lit again. The banner will be raised to the rafters and rings will be handed out to celebrate one more time what the Knicks accomplished. The fans will be screaming one more time for what came before.

And Brown knows the job is just beginning.

“We have a standard that we value at an extremely high level,” he said. “We put more pressure on ourselves than the outside world. So first and foremost, we have to be able to look in the mirror and make sure that we’re doing what we should be doing for everybody in the locker room . . . If we do that, the Knicks’ faithful will be taken care of as long as we take care of ourselves first.”

Wiseman in, Brown out. The Knicks waived guard Bruce Brown and center James Wiseman earned the final roster spot.

By Steve Popper

steve.popper@newsday.com@StevePopper

Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.