Mike Brown is no fortune teller, nor does he fancy himself one. But maybe tossing enough strategies into the abyss will assure that some of them work.

In early December, the head coach of the New York Knicks had paired team captain Jalen Brunson with Tyler Kolek, another small point guard, only for disaster to ensue. The night’s opponent, the Boston Celtics, ran wild against those two to close the third quarter, connecting on bucket after bucket, a violent enough spanking to carry the team in green to victory. The unconventional Brunson-Kolek duo drowned, just as many might have anticipated.

Then came redemption.

A couple of weeks later, the Knicks needed an extra ball handler down the stretch of the NBA Cup final. The match didn’t count toward the regular-season standings, but half a million dollars per player was at stake. And with the San Antonio Spurs pressuring Brunson, the man to lean on was Kolek. So, once again, Brown tried Brunson and Kolek together.

This time, it worked.

Brown went back to the two a couple of nights later against the Indiana Pacers. Smooth, again.

“At the beginning of the year, we thought, ‘Ehhh, I don’t know if we’re gonna do that,’” Brown said.

But now, the Knicks have. Brunson and Kolek are a regular twosome, at least for now. And it’s helped Kolek — a second-year former second-round pick, someone who barely played during his rookie season, when he wasn’t yet ready to contribute, especially on the defensive end — emerge as one of the Knicks’ feel-good stories.

But Kolek isn’t the only Kolek anymore.

After the 24-year-old’s breakout, which has turned him into a mainstay in New York’s rotation, it seems like a new Kolek emerges each game. For two weeks, there has been no more common phrase amongst casual fans than, “Wait, who the heck is that guy?!”

First, it was Kolek, who has averaged 10 points, four boards and six assists since that Spurs game. On Friday, it was Kevin McCullar Jr., a second-year forward on a two-way contract who had played 36 career minutes before a bombardment of the Atlanta Hawks. McCullar beat slower players to loose balls, including on one play when he sprawled out of bounds to save one of his four offensive rebounds. He dropped 13 points in Atlanta. On Sunday, it was rookie Frenchman Mohamed Diawara, another former second-rounder, who drained four 3-pointers in the first half of a narrow win over the New Orleans Pelicans. Trey Jemison, another two-way-contracted player, has filled in as a defensive sparkplug.

This seems to be the new way of the Knicks, a Ratatouille-esque belief that anyone can cook, even that unrefined, inexperienced and once-forgotten second-rounder.

“Knowing that you’re flowing, playing, now it gives you even more energy, because now you’re like, you feel like you contribute, whatever, knowing you might get called,” Mikal Bridges told reporters Monday, as relayed by The Athletic’s James Edwards. “So, it’s just a different energy for the bench and especially when we make runs and stuff, if there’s 10 guys that play, nine guys that play, everybody is so juiced up. … If (you) played three minutes, if (you) played four minutes just as that low man to help blitz — you did something.”