The Philadelphia 76ers handed the New York Knicks their fourth loss of the season, 98-93, on Friday night, and the reigning champions looked like a team still searching for its footing. Philadelphia moved the ball freely around its NBA Cup-adorned court while New York scrambled to keep up. Tyrese Maxey drove the lane for an easy dunk, and the Knicks never got the 3-pointers from Josh Hart, Miles McBride or Jalen Brunson that have fueled their runs.
Sixers fans chanted “MVP” for Maxey instead of being drowned out by visiting fans who made the trip down I-95. LeBron James, who scored on a tip-in that sealed the game, soaked in the reception as the newest addition to the rivalry. After the final buzzer, Hart walked off with a bloody bruise atop his freshly braided head.
If “easy” described the Knicks’ spring, they have not known much ease since. Off the court, the team has dealt with headlines about contract extension talks being paused for its stars until season’s end and a championship ring controversy. On the court, New York has posted a 3-4 record, ranks 22nd in offense and is shooting 35.7% from 3-point range, slightly above the league average.
Early returns show a Knicks team that often looks like two different teams within the same night, sometimes within the same quarter. In the past, when New York went on one of its devastating runs of ball-popping offense and suffocating defense, opponents would cower. Momentum would build, and it felt almost inevitable that everything would eventually go the Knicks’ way. That feeling was a massive factor in their 14.9-point differential in the playoffs.
Now, opponents simply wait out the Knicks, knowing an opening is coming.
“One thing I see, when we get those runs, we start to look like the team we’ve been in the past. [Then] we get a little comfortable,” Brunson said after the Knicks’ 111-102 loss to the Orlando Magic on Oct. 25. “We’ve got to continue to put our foot on the gas and execute like we did last year.”
Coach Mike Brown did not deny that his team has gotten off to a lethargic start. His task of getting this group to repeat as champions is steep. The parity era has produced eight champions in the past eight years, the longest such stretch in NBA history. Only last season’s Thunder even made it out of the second round while defending their title.
The competition may be catching up to the Knicks, or the uncertainty surrounding player contracts may be taking a very human toll. Brown, to his credit, is focused on the long game rather than the panic that can set in after a rough start.
“This is a new season. It’s a new team, and we’re going to have challenges in front of us,” Brown said. “It’s like climbing a mountain. You know, sometimes you go 100 yards, but you might get knocked back 5 yards.
“You regroup as a team, and you figure out how to keep going forward the right way by making sure we embrace the process.”
Hart Is the Emotional Center
It is not unusual to see Hart stewing after a bad game or a bad stretch. More than his buddy-cop partnership with Brunson, he is the emotional center of the Knicks, a role he has held since arriving at the 2023 trade deadline.
When New York lost three straight games late last season, culminating in a 17-point road loss to the Rockets in Houston, Hart called it out. He declared that the next night in Memphis was a must-win game.
“We’re not going in the right direction,” he said that evening.
The Knicks responded by winning their next five games before resting their regulars in the season finale, paving the way for their dominant playoff run.
Hart does not shy away from saying the uncomfortable thing. But with his contract status up in the air, will he hesitate if an issue arises?
“I guarantee you, I’m going to be sitting here rock bottom,” Hart said. “I don’t think I’m ever going to be on my high horse, either.
“We’re in New York. Everything rides on the next game. We go on a 10-game winning streak and the next game we lose, they’re ready to burn the place down. We know what it is. It’s the tough part of being in New York.”
Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla, whose team handed the Knicks their second loss of the season, understands how hard it is to move past a defeat.
“I don’t think the psychological wars ever end after a game, I think it goes on for you as long as you’re in it,” Mazzulla said. “Every team brings in scars from the past.”
Brown has pointed to on-ball defense, indecision on offense and players standing around when plays break down as the culprits behind the slow start. According to NBA.com, the Knicks trail only the Houston Rockets and Charlotte Hornets in how often they shoot late in the shot clock, with four seconds or less remaining. Their 28.8% shooting in those situations ranks behind only the Portland Trail Blazers, the most efficient team in that category last season.
Typically, that is when Brunson takes over, as he did so often in the playoffs. The magic has not been there to start this season.
The Knicks also have not come back from big deficits the way they did last season, when they rallied from double-digit deficits in six playoff games. The biggest was a 29-point comeback against the San Antonio Spurs to win Game 4 of the Finals.
Have those improbable comebacks lulled them into a false sense of security? Will they dig a hole too deep to climb out of, and what does it cost to play that way consistently?
“I’ve said in the past it’s important to learn from wins; obviously, you learn from losses as well,” Brunson said Friday in Philadelphia. “There’s been plenty of times we learned from being down what we can do. And in that same game, made adjustments to where we weren’t down anymore. We have to put a full 48 minutes together.”
The 76ers, a team still building chemistry after acquiring James and Jaylen Brown in the offseason, exposed what appears to be the Knicks’ kryptonite: speed.
“Sometimes it takes us a little longer to get into the game. Whether that’s the flow, whether that’s fatigue,” Hart said. “Not relying on these comebacks because it’s taxing.
“We all feel the fatigue. We’ve got to fight through it. It’s six games in, we’ve got to find a way to get our bodies ready to play. Mentally we’re there; we’ve got to find it physically.”
When Brunson was asked about Hart’s comments, he dismissed them with a laugh: “Josh said he feels the fatigue? Josh is old as s—.”
Brunson is not the only one carrying scars. Swingman Mikal Bridges needed four games to connect on a 3-pointer and seven games before he even attempted a free throw. Brunson, the Finals MVP, is shooting at career-low marks from the field and from 3-point range.
Center Rotation Searching for Answers
Brown is also toggling between Andre Drummond and James Wiseman as backup centers while trying to replace Mitchell Robinson. Robinson signed a free-agent deal with the Celtics when the cost-conscious Knicks did not re-sign him. New York has felt his absence most in efficiency. Robinson shot 72% from the field in 2025-26, while Drummond hit 47% last season and is shooting just 46% so far this season. Wiseman is 0-for-5 from the field.
McBride said the responsibility to speak up does not fall only on Brunson and Hart. He believes this team is self-aware and mature enough to have hard conversations.
“It’s open,” McBride said. “Anybody can step up, whether it’s the [bench] guys or starters. That’s the thing about this team, our chemistry is so good and we have a lot of trust because we see each other putting forth a lot of work.”
Brown is not afraid to speak up, either. When the Knicks’ season reached a breaking point last spring, trailing the Atlanta Hawks 2-1 in the first round, Brown challenged Karl-Anthony Towns to get the ball more and be aggressive with it. That turned around the team’s fortunes and led to their record playoff winning streak.
“I’m going to keep it real,” Brown said in early October. “If there’s something in front of us, I’m not a fan of having an elephant in the room. I’ll address it. I don’t care if it’s Jalen or KAT or OG [Anunoby].”
The Knicks will not catch anyone off guard this time around. Their 3-4 record has them ranked No. 8 in the East.
Brown said he evaluates the season in five-game increments. Brunson believes the first month or so of games will be revealing.
“I think everyone in the East knows each other,” Towns said. “This is our third year now with each other, so you know, it’s rare. That’s one of our advantages.”
He compared the Knicks’ position to LeBron James joining the Miami Heat in the summer of 2010 and how that move changed the tone of the East for the entire decade.
“At the end of the day, people knew, when LeBron and the big three were there, you had to go out there and beat them,” Towns said. “Everyone brings their best against the New York Knicks. You’ve got to protect the jersey, the city at all costs.”
The Ring Controversy
Brown kept a steely face, giving nothing away when asked whether he had received his championship ring. The question was the latest in a string of unflattering headlines since the team’s title in June.
More than a week had passed since news broke that New York assistant coaches did not receive their championship rings on opening night. Some employees who had yet to receive their rings were sent a phishing email from Madison Square Garden security stating that their “Employee Championship Ring is here.”
“I’m not going to talk about that ring stuff, as you can imagine,” Brown said, despite speculation that the ring box he was handed was either empty or contained someone else’s ring. “I’m not going to get into any of that.”
That is true to Brown’s character. In his first year as Knicks coach, his gift was his ability to avoid making waves, and he led the team to its first championship in 53 years.
Brown knows the path to another ring will be even harder. He saw it firsthand as an assistant coach with the Golden State Warriors, who added Kevin Durant to a team that had won 73 regular-season games the season before. The Warriors cruised through the 2017 playoffs, winning their first 15 games, but the next season they were nearly knocked out of the conference finals by the Rockets.
The NBA’s rules have since made it even harder for teams to establish and maintain dominance. Even more telling, the teams that have repeated since the turn of the millennium were headlined by James, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and Stephen Curry, players on the short list of all-time greats.
Mazzulla understands the road Brown is traveling. After a 64-win season that ended with a 16-3 run through the playoffs and the 2024 title, his Celtics followed with 61 wins in 2025 and entered the playoffs as defending champions many believed had a great chance to repeat.
Instead, they ran into the Knicks in the Eastern Conference semifinals, and the strain of the previous few seasons began to show. Jayson Tatum was the biggest casualty, tearing his right Achilles in Game 4 in New York as he desperately tried to pull Boston back into a series it had fallen behind in.
“That’s the competitive realm you’re in. Once you’re there, you have to trick yourself as if you’ve never been there,” Mazzulla said. “But at the same time, two years away from that, every loss is more painful than it was three years ago. You have to treat yourself as if you’re more desperate than everybody else.”
The added games are piling up, along with the breakneck pace of today’s NBA. That may have played a part in the fate of the 2025 champion Thunder, who have four rotation players dealing with major injuries that could derail their season. Like Mazzulla’s Celtics, who reached the Finals in 2022 before their breakthrough title in 2024, the Thunder stacked multiple deep playoff runs. This Knicks team faces the same problem.
Brunson has played 61 playoff games since coming to New York, 37 of them in the past two seasons. Hart’s numbers are similar. Anunoby joined the Knicks three years ago and has played 44 postseason games with the franchise and 71 overall, dating back to his days in Toronto. Towns reached the conference finals with Minnesota the season before he was traded to New York, giving him 53 games over the past three postseasons.
The bill for all that could come due sooner than anyone expected.
The Knicks are in contract limbo with three key players after tabling all extension talks on Oct. 9. Owner James Dolan said this summer that New York would not dip into the punitive second apron to keep the team together.
Hart has a team option and said on media day that there had not been any discussions about a new deal. Towns is eligible for a four-year, $276 million extension. Before talks were halted, the Knicks’ offer stood at $200 million, which would represent a pay cut from his current salary of four years and $220.4 million.
Towns hoped for a contract extension at the start of last season and did not get one. The disappointment was quiet, and he played through an up-and-down regular season as he and Brown struggled to get on the same page. Then it clicked in the postseason.
“I mean, we did it all last year,” Towns said. “You’re in New York, you’ve got to play through distractions; that’s what comes with playing here. There’s a lot of pressure, a lot of noise.
“But as long as this locker room, which has shown it can do, stays together and continues to just believe and fall into each other when things get tough, we can do something special.”
Towns pointed to the Knicks’ struggles after they won the NBA Cup last season, including an ugly 2-9 stretch from Dec. 31 to Jan. 19, as proof they are built to handle adversity.
“We didn’t look our best version, and we heard about it,” Towns said. “This team continued to fall into each other instead of splitting away and … separating. We got closer and closer.”
In Philadelphia, Towns said: “We have to find a way to be that magical team we were last year. You don’t want to wait to find that magic. Lightning don’t strike twice.”