With their 111-102 loss to Orlando over the weekend, the New York Knicks surpassed the 2011-12 Dallas Mavericks as the most recent time a defending champion started 0-3. This is the first time the team has lost the first three since 2019-20, when when they finished the season 21-45 under David Fizdale's watch.
"Our crap stinks. It does," coach Mike Brown told reporters after his team gave up 41-fourth fourth quarter points. "And we're the only ones that can do something about it."
These are pretty much the same exact Knicks that lost three games during the entirety of the playoffs, so it's hard to get overly worked up about a couple of October losses. But they are not playing like a good basketball outfit, let alone near the well oiled machine they were for six weeks from late April into June, and it's time to start turning things around.
The good news is it’s a marathon, not a sprint
They also don't quite have history on their side when it comes to empty starts. Only one NBA team has ever started 0-3 and gone on to win the NBA championship: the 1990-91 Chicago Bulls, who won 61 games and beat the Lakers in the Finals. There's been six MLB teams, one NHL team and zero NFL teams to ever accomplish that same feat.
The NFL season brings interesting context to this conversation. With the Knicks being roughly 3% of their season, that's the equivalent of being at halftime of Week 1 of an NFL season (hat tip to Andrew Claudio of The Knicks Film School for that nugget).
It’s fitting that New York’s first crack at figuring their regular season out starts against a team that was a perfect example for how useless the the 82-game gauntlet is in the grand scheme of things. The Pistons won 60 regular season games and were the one seed. Yet, they barely squeaked through their first-round series with Orlando and proceeded to get bounced by a fraudulent Cleveland team.
Detroit beat the Knicks by a combined 84 points—28 points per game—last season, which included 38 and 31-point beatdowns. The Knicks started 2-3 last season and went through swaths of malaises during the first year with Brown at the helm. It’s literally the same group with just Andre Drummond in place of Mitchell Robinson and the stamp of championship approval.
It's mostly the same group that had been pushing the boulder up the championship hill further and further every spring. Over the past four postseasons, the Knicks have ten eight postseason series wins—the most among all teams—and 61 total playoff battles. That's a lot of extra basketball.
The regular season and avoiding the play-in very much matters. Seeding also is relevant as only two non top three-seeds have ever won it all: the 1969 fourth place Celtics and 1994 sixth-seed Rockets. The 77 other champions have been 1, 2 or 3 seeds.
The regular season matters, even to a defending champ
For Brown, these months are about tinkering and not chasing every regular season game like it’s a deathmatch and Tom Thibodeau ethos. He purposely held things back last year into the postseason and was literally still experimenting against Atlanta in the first round.
The Knicks have looked sluggish since ring night and to take it a step further, throughout the preseason, too. I don't know how many times I can keep seeing people say "We just won a championship" while excusing this type of play.
Every player from Jalen Brunson down to Jeremy Sochan basked in the championship glow all summer. From SNL to Jimmy Fallon, commercials, praise and meals on the house for all. They had fun, no doubt, but they didn't forget how to win basketball games.
History tells us this group will figure things out. But it also says it's just about time to get the train moving. 79 to go.
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