The Knicks Are Champions of Yesterday. But Who Are They Today?

NEW YORK — The New York Knicks have discovered something more difficult than winning an NBA championship. It's defending one while apparently forgetting how to play basketball.

Three games into the new season, the defending champions are 0-3. They have more championship rings than victories. Their title banner is barely settled in the rafters of Madison Square Garden, and already the basketball team playing beneath it looks like it arrived at the wrong address.

Sunday night, the Orlando Magic came to town without Paolo Banchero, their leading scorer, and departed with a 111-102 victory. The Knicks, meanwhile, departed with their third consecutive defeat and a collection of questions that would make a congressional investigating committee blush.

Orlando didn't so much steal this game as wait patiently for New York to gift-wrap it.

The Knicks led by 10 points with a little more than nine minutes remaining. This should have been the moment when the defending champions reminded everyone why they were champions. Instead, they reminded everyone why the NBA plays 48 minutes.

Orlando outscored New York 35-16 the rest of the way. The Knicks' offense disappeared faster than a politician's campaign promises after Election Day.

Franz Wagner, who had spent the first three quarters shooting as though the basket were located in another ZIP code, suddenly became Michael Jordan. He scored 21 of his 23 points in the fourth quarter. Twenty-one! The Knicks had spent three quarters containing him, then apparently decided he deserved a little encouragement.

Wagner didn't just take over the game. He repossessed it.

Jalen Brunson scored 28 points. Karl-Anthony Towns contributed 22 points and 14 rebounds. OG Anunoby added 22. Three men produced 72 points, and New York still couldn't defeat a team missing its best offensive player.

It's a little like assembling three of the finest firefighters in the country and watching the firehouse burn down.

The Knicks shot eight for 34 from three-point range. That's 23.5 percent, a figure that would be unacceptable for a professional dart player wearing a blindfold. Orlando made 18 three-pointers. New York made eight. You needn't have attended MIT to understand the arithmetic.

And when the game was there to be won, the Knicks committed eight turnovers in the fourth quarter. They handled the basketball as though it contained a live rattlesnake.

Coach Mike Brown, who inherited a championship team, now finds himself operating what looks suspiciously like a basketball rehabilitation center. He has the talent. He has the pedigree. He has the defending NBA champions.

What he doesn't have is a victory.

There was a time when the Knicks imposed their will upon opponents. They made teams uncomfortable. They forced mistakes. They treated Madison Square Garden as private property and opposing teams as trespassers.

Now the Garden resembles a charitable institution. Visiting teams arrive with problems and leave feeling much better about themselves.

The Boston Celtics came away with a victory Friday. Orlando followed Sunday. The Knicks have become the kind of opponent that restores confidence to struggling basketball teams.

It is an extraordinary transformation.

And this isn't just any 0-3 start. The Knicks are the first defending NBA champions to lose their opening three games since the 2011-12 Dallas Mavericks. That's the sort of historical distinction normally reserved for teams commemorated on plaques outside abandoned buildings.

Of course, three games don't make a season. The NBA plays 82 of them, presumably to give teams ample opportunity to recover from embarrassing themselves.

But three games can reveal something about a basketball team's character.

The Knicks seem to have lost their offensive rhythm, their late-game composure, and perhaps their understanding that a championship is not a lifetime appointment.

Brunson remains capable of carrying the offense, but basketball is not a one-man furniture-moving business. Somebody else must occasionally lift the piano. Towns can score. Anunoby can defend. Josh Hart can supply energy. There is enough talent on this roster to frighten most of the Eastern Conference.

Yet talent without execution is merely an expensive collection of uniforms.

Perhaps the most revealing statistic from Sunday was not the shooting percentage or the final score. It was that Orlando scored 40 points in the fourth quarter against the reigning champions.

Forty.

That's not closing out a basketball game. That's leaving the front door unlocked, the windows open, and a note on the refrigerator explaining where the valuables are kept.

And so we arrive at the uncomfortable question hovering over Madison Square Garden like a storm cloud over a picnic.

Is this who the Knicks are now?

Are they a championship team experiencing a temporary hangover, or a team whose greatest accomplishment is already behind it?

The distinction is important.

Championship teams don't receive victories through inheritance. They don't get favorable calls because of last June's accomplishments. The championship trophy cannot defend a pick-and-roll. A banner cannot box out. A ring has never made a three-pointer.

The Knicks have spent three games looking like men who believe their reputation should do some of the heavy lifting.

Unfortunately, reputation doesn't appear on the scoreboard.

There is time to correct this. Seventy-nine games remain. Brunson is still Brunson. Towns hasn't forgotten how to shoot. Brown hasn't forgotten how to coach.

But urgency is something champions are supposed to possess before the building catches fire.

Tuesday night, Detroit comes to Madison Square Garden. The Pistons will not be arriving to admire the championship banner. They'll be arriving to play basketball, which is considerably more than the Knicks have managed for four complete quarters lately.

New York doesn't need another celebration. It doesn't need another ceremony. It doesn't need a documentary about its championship season.

It needs a win.

Because the 2026 championship belongs to history now. It is safely recorded in the books, where nobody can take it away.

The 2026-27 season, however, is being written in real time.

And so far, the Knicks are producing a sequel nobody asked to see.

The defending champions have become the defending defendants.

And the evidence is beginning to pile up.

KNICKS' TITLE DEFENSE HAS A SECURITY BREACH. BOSTON HAS THE PASSWORD.

  

BOSTON — The New York Knicks have discovered that defending an NBA championship is considerably more difficult than winning one.

For one thing, everybody keeps trying to take it away from you.

For another, you have to show up and play basketball.

The defending world champions arrived in Boston Friday night looking for their first victory of the season. They departed with their second defeat, a 107-103 lesson administered by the Celtics and a gentleman named Jayson Tatum, who apparently missed the memo that New York was supposed to be building a dynasty.

The Knicks are now 0-2.

Starting a season with two consecutive losses is not the recommended procedure for winning back-to-back championships. It's rather like beginning your honeymoon with divorce proceedings.

Perhaps the Knicks were exhausted from Thursday's cybersecurity training classes.

It would explain a great deal.

They certainly had trouble protecting the basketball. They committed 16 turnovers, six more than Boston. Their defense had several security breaches, and when the Celtics launched their final attack, New York's firewall collapsed altogether.

Someone should have reminded the Knicks that the first rule of cybersecurity is never give the opposition unrestricted access.

Tatum apparently had administrator privileges.

He scored 36 points, 25 in the second half, and seven of Boston's final eight. He also collected nine rebounds and seven assists, turning TD Garden into his private computer network.

The Knicks tried everything to stop him except changing the password.

With the game hanging in the balance, Tatum scored three consecutive baskets, including a three-pointer that effectively settled the evening. He operated with the confidence of a man who had read the Knicks' defensive playbook and found it contained mostly blank pages.

The Celtics had led by as many as 12 points in the fourth quarter, but New York staged a spirited comeback.

That was encouraging.

Unfortunately, basketball games are not graded on effort.

Karl-Anthony Towns scored 22 points and grabbed 10 rebounds. OG Anunoby contributed 20 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists. Miles McBride supplied another 20, hitting six of eight three-point attempts.

McBride was shooting like a man trying to put out a forest fire with a garden hose.

Jalen Brunson scored 19, but the Knicks' usually dependable floor general still hasn't quite found the championship rhythm that made him the toast of Manhattan last spring.

And then there was Mikal Bridges.

Bridges scored exactly zero points.

Not one.

He missed all eight of his field-goal attempts, including five from beyond the arc. In two games this season, Bridges has made just two of 16 shots.

This is an alarming development for a fellow whose principal responsibility includes putting the basketball through the hoop.

A zero in the scoring column is acceptable if you're an accountant reconciling a bank statement. It's less desirable when you're a starting forward for the defending NBA champions.

Bridges wasn't having an off night. He was having an out-of-office reply.

Boston, meanwhile, got contributions from Paul George and Neemias Queta, who scored 15 points apiece.

And then there was Mitchell Robinson.

The former Knick, who helped New York win its championship last season, now wears Boston green. He contributed only four points and four rebounds, but those numbers don't adequately describe the indignity of watching him block a Towns layup and subsequently finish an alley-oop at the other end.

Robinson spent eight seasons in New York protecting the basket.

Friday night, he was protecting it from the Knicks.

There ought to be a law against that sort of thing.

The game itself was close enough to make the defeat particularly irritating. There were 12 lead changes and four ties. Boston held a slender 50-49 advantage at halftime before outscoring New York 33-24 in the third quarter.

That was where the Knicks lost control of the evening.

The Celtics built a double-digit lead, and New York spent most of the fourth quarter trying to recover its misplaced dignity.

The Knicks eventually pulled within a single point at 99-98 on a Brunson floater.

For a fleeting moment, it appeared the defending champions might escape Boston with something besides another entry in the loss column.

Tatum promptly hit a jumper.

Then another.

Then a three-pointer.

That was the end of the comeback, the evening and, presumably, any lingering optimism that the Knicks could survive indefinitely on the momentum of last June.

The most disturbing thing about New York's 0-2 start isn't the record.

It's the familiarity of the defeats.

Against Philadelphia on opening night, the Knicks led at halftime and collapsed in the third quarter.

Against Boston, the Knicks trailed by one at halftime and collapsed in the third quarter.

Two games. Two Eastern Conference rivals. Two third-quarter failures.

One begins to detect a pattern.

Coach Mike Brown has 80 games remaining to make the necessary adjustments. There is no reason to declare the championship defense dead after two contests. NBA seasons are marathons, not sprints.

But even marathon runners are expected to leave the starting line.

The Knicks are the first defending NBA champions to begin a season 0-2 since the Dallas Mavericks in 2011.

That particular Dallas team did not repeat.

New York would be well advised not to follow the entire script.

The Knicks return to Madison Square Garden on Sunday to face Orlando, where they will attempt to accomplish something that has so far eluded the reigning champions of professional basketball.

Win a game.

Perhaps their cybersecurity training will finally pay dividends.

They might start by installing a stronger defense, restricting unauthorized access to the paint and recovering the basketball before somebody steals it.

And if Mikal Bridges can remember his shooting credentials, that would help considerably.

The championship banner hanging in Madison Square Garden is proof that these Knicks know how to win.

Their first two games are proof that knowing how and actually doing it are entirely different occupations.

The Knicks spent 53 years trying to win another championship.

They've spent four days making the next one look considerably farther away.

And unless somebody gets this operation secured, the only thing New York may successfully defend this season is its reputation for disappointment.