You might say that Mike Brown saw this coming.
After a summer spent enjoying the spoils of helming the first New York Knicks team to win an NBA championship since the Nixon administration, the first time Brown sat down at a podium to discuss what might lay ahead in the 2026-27 campaign, the Knicks head coach repeatedly emphasized the need for his team to adhere to its established competitive standard. For his players to avoid any slippage in their day-to-day habits. For every member of the roster and staff to remain laser-focused on, and energetic in pursuit of, the process of putting themselves in position to compete for another championship.
Because, the coach predicted, the hardest work was just starting.
“You know, a lot of people tend to shy away from adversity — especially early on, because, you know, you get scrutinized, and sometimes it can be tough dealing with that,” Brown said at the Knicks’ media day session in September. “I actually yearn for it. I yearn for it early. Because I want to make sure that not only myself, but we as a group can handle it.”
Well, Coach, I’ve got good news and bad news, and they’re both the same thing. That early adversity you ordered? It has officially arrived.
‘It’s the focus on the details’
After losing to the Philadelphia 76ers on opening night, falling to the Boston Celtics on Friday, and dropping a 111-102 home game to an Orlando Magic team missing injured All-Star forward Paolo Banchero on Sunday — a game they led by 10 with 9:20 remaining in the fourth quarter, before conceding a 30-9 run over the next eight-plus minutes — the Knicks sit at 0-3 on the young season, one of only seven winless teams in the Association. New York suffered just four losing streaks of three or more games all of last season. Less than a week into its title defense, that counter already sits at one.
The Knicks are just the third defending champion in NBA history to begin the ensuing season with three consecutive losses, joining the 1969-70 Celtics and 2011-12 Dallas Mavericks. Those Mavericks won their fourth game, eventually finished as the West’s No. 7 seed, and bowed out in the first round to the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Celtics, however, lost their fourth game, spent the entire season under .500, and missed the playoffs for the first time in 20 years.
What’s past isn’t necessarily prologue; the Knicks aren’t destined to follow in either the Mavs’ or C’s footsteps. Still, though: Kind of puts a little extra mustard on the outcome of New York’s Tuesday night tilt with the Detroit Pistons, doesn’t it?
Those Pistons — who finished with the No. 1 seed in the East last season, and who swept the Knicks by an average of 28 points per game during the regular season — improved to 3-0 on Sunday with a 106-93 road win over the Sixers. They figure to be champing at the bit for a shot at the champs … and, even without injured All-NBA center Jalen Duren, eminently capable of knocking the Knicks’ lights out if New York can’t find the 48 minutes’ worth of tighten-the-screws attention to detail, crispness and physicality that Brown acknowledges has thus far eluded his club.
“It’s the focus on the details,” Brown told reporters after Sunday’s loss. “You know, you go on a run, and then you come down and you throw the ball away. Like, probably three-fourths of our turnovers weren’t from [the Magic’s] pressure — and again, that’s nothing against them, they beat us, I give them a lot of credit — but we throw the ball [low], we throw the ball and it goes through our hands, we jump in the air … and those turnovers, they convert the other way.”
After averaging 13.6 turnovers per game during the 2025-26 regular season, and 13.5 cough-ups a contest in the playoffs, New York has given it up 16.3 times a night thus far. That increase in turnovers is the primary reason why the Knicks’ margin in the possession battle has dropped from +2.9 possessions per game last season, according to Jared Dubin’s analysis at Last Night in Basketball, to +1.9 through three games — still good, but not elite.
Combine that with Knicks opponents averaging 20.7 points per game off those turnovers — more than four points per game more than last season — and the margins that New York often mastered last season en route to 53 wins, a top-six point differential and eventually a title have grown considerably thinner.
“We do a pretty good job on some of the closeouts, and then other closeouts, we stop short, especially to a hot guy, and we let him shoot a comfortable shot,” Brown said. “We play great defense, make them take a tough shot, and then we don’t box out. Those are the little things that we’ve got to continue to embrace — especially when we’re not shooting the ball well.”
New York’s shooting woes
The Knicks are most certainly not shooting the ball well right now.
Their offensive process, by and large, hasn’t been bad. The Knicks are generating a higher share of their shots at the rim this year than last while also taking an above-league-average percentage of their attempts from 3-point range — including the NBA’s highest rate of corner 3s, which have accounted for 14% of New York’s total field goal attempts through three games, according to Cleaning the Glass.
Which is to say: The Knicks have broadly been creating a lot of the right kinds of looks, ranking in the top 10 in multiple shot quality and expected field goal percentage metrics. The issue is, they’re just not making many of them.
Through three games, the Knicks are shooting about 3% worse at the rim, 5% worse from 3-point land, and 16% worse on midrange tries than they did last season. Only one Knick, Karl-Anthony Towns, has made more than half of his shots; the other four members of New York’s vaunted starting five have all been slow to get their shots online coming out of the gate.
Jalen Brunson, who spent much of his summer rehabilitating after undergoing surgery on his shooting wrist, sits under 40% from the field. OG Anunoby and Josh Hart are just barely above that mark. Mikal Bridges, whose mid-postseason turnaround was so vital to the Knicks’ torrid run through the East during the springtime, has been positively frigid out of the gates: 5-for-23 from the field and 0-for-10 from 3-point range, for just 10 points in 90 minutes across three games.
All told, only the Chicago Bulls, Miami Heat and Toronto Raptors are underperforming their expected shot quality by more than the Knicks thus far, according to Synergy Sports Technology. That frozen start goes a long way toward explaining how a Knicks team that has ranked in the top seven in offensive efficiency in each of the last four seasons currently sits a dismal 29th in points scored per possession, and dead stinkin’ last in half-court scoring efficiency.
Brunson spoke Sunday about the Knicks’ need to tighten up their organization in the half-court — getting to the right spots, at the right pace, to execute properly and create the openings that can lead to cleaner looks and better scoring chances — which, ultimately, rests with their superstar point guard.
“Everything falls on my shoulders,” said Brunson, who scored a team-high 28 points on 28 shot attempts against Orlando, in the Knicks’ locker room after the loss. “I’ve just got to be a better leader when it comes to that, when it comes to making sure our guys are ready to go and in the right spots. There’s a lot of other little things, but that’s the main thing. It’s just organization on my part.”
That lack of organization and precision has been particularly notable in close-and-late situations, in which the Knicks — and Brunson, in particular — performed so brilliantly last season. New York has been outscored by a league-high 18 points in 10 minutes of “clutch” time thus far this season, according to NBA Advanced Stats, scoring well under one point per possession with more turnovers (four) than assists (two).
Brunson has missed five of his seven shots in those high-leverage moments — emblematic of the run of play for a Knicks squad that has thus far only intermittently resembled the team that locked into such an incredible offensive rhythm last postseason.
“We’re not going to be the same,” Brunson said. “We’re not going to be the way we were playing last year. That’s just human nature. But we have to accept this part of the journey, find a way to be better, and hopefully throughout a couple of games, we’ll be able to look back and say, ‘Hey, we grew from that.’”
Will the Knicks turn it around?
The schedule does afford some get-right opportunities. After Tuesday’s matchup with the undefeated Pistons, New York will play four of its next six games against the Chicago Bulls, Brooklyn Nets and Milwaukee Bucks — teams with a combined 1-8 record. Thaw out those jumpers a bit and get some regression to the mean in the overall shot-making, and New York could relocate its rhythm in a flash.
On the other hand, though, the Knicks feel a long way from prematurely marking those down as wins given the way they’re misfiring right now.
“Games like [Sunday’s loss to the Magic] will tell us that, you know, like I said before, our crap stinks,” Brown said. “It does. And we’re the only ones that can do something about it. There’s no light switch that we can just turn on and think that we’re going to go win ballgames. Nobody’s going to give us anything.”
No, the Knicks will have to take the wins they need to right the ship — and, as Brunson stressed, they’ll have to do it by sticking together.
“One thing I said throughout the entire training camp, and honestly to this day, is: we’re going to see who we are within the first couple of weeks of the season,” Brunson said Sunday. “We’re hitting adversity now. How are we going to respond?”
They need a collective response. Better shooting across the board. Better physicality at the point of attack from Bridges and Anunoby. Better foul avoidance from Towns, who’s averaging a career-high 4.6 personals per 36 minutes. Better play in the middle when Towns hits the bench, with Andre Drummond coming back down to Earth after his strong first half in the season opener against Philly and James Wiseman providing up-and-down minutes on Sunday against Orlando.
Better everything, really. Except, maybe, better treatment from the adoring masses who spent the summer throwing flowers at the Knicks’ feet.
“Everyone’s been telling us what a great job we did — how fun it was, what we did for the city, the constant praise,” Brunson said. “We need kind of, just … the opposite.”
Well, Cap, I’ve got good news and bad news, and they’re both the same thing. Keep playing like this, and the honeymoon period of that constant praise might be over a hell of a lot sooner than anybody anticipated.