The Philadelphia 76ers beat the New York Knicks 98-93 on Friday night, handing the reigning champions their fourth loss of the season. Tyrese Maxey drove the lane for easy baskets while Philadelphia moved the ball freely around its NBA Cup-adorned court, and the Knicks struggled to keep pace. It was a sharp contrast to the way New York ran teams out of the building during its run to 15 wins in its final 16 games of last season’s playoffs, including 13 straight.
This time, the Knicks did not take over Xfinity Mobile Arena. Josh Hart, Miles McBride and Jalen Brunson did not hit the 3-pointers that usually follow good ball movement. Instead, Sixers fans chanted “MVP” for Maxey, and LeBron James celebrated a tip-in that sealed the game, enjoying the reception as the newest addition to the rivalry. Hart left with a bloody bruise above his freshly braided hair.
If “easy” described the Knicks’ spring, they have not found much ease since. Off the court, the team has been dogged by reports that contract extension talks for its stars have been paused until the end of the season, along with a championship ring controversy. On it, the Knicks have posted a 3-4 record, ranked 22nd in offence and shooting 35.7% from three-point range, slightly above league average.
The Knicks often look like two different teams within the same night, sometimes within the same quarter. In the past, when they launched one of their devastating runs of relentless offence and suffocating defence, opponents would cower. You could feel the momentum building, and it felt almost inevitable that things would eventually go New York’s way. That feeling was a massive factor in their playoff run, when they outscored opponents by a record 14.9 points per game.
Now, teams simply wait out the Knicks, knowing an opening will come.
“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 following 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.”
Searching for answers
Coach Mike Brown did not deny that his team has made a lethargic start. His task of guiding this group to a repeat title is a tough one. 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 in their pursuit of a title defence.
The slow start could be down to the competition catching up with the Knicks, or to the uncertainty over player contracts having a very human effect. Brown, to his credit, is focusing 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.”
It is not uncommon to see Hart stewing after a bad game or a bad stretch. More than his buddy-cop relationship with Brunson, Hart is the emotional centre of the Knicks, a role he has filled since arriving at the 2023 trade deadline.
When the Knicks lost three straight games late last season, culminating in a 17-point road loss to the Houston Rockets, Hart called it out. He claimed the next night’s game in Memphis was a must-win.
“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. With his contract status up in the air, though, will he hesitate should an issue arise?
“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 defence, indecision on offence 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 them behind only the Portland Trail Blazers, who were the league’s most efficient team in that spot last season.
Usually, that is Brunson time, as it was so often in the playoffs. The magic has not been there to start this season.
The Knicks have also 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 they lulled themselves into a false sense of security with all those improbable comebacks? Will they dig a hole too deep to climb out of, and what is the cost of playing 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 on 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 its 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 it, he dismissed the point with a joke: “Josh said he feels the fatigue? Josh is old as s—.”
Scars from the past
Brunson and Hart are not the only ones carrying those scars. Swingman Mikal Bridges took four games to connect on a three-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 three.
Brown is also toggling between Andre Drummond and James Wiseman as his backup centres, trying to replace Mitchell Robinson. Robinson signed a free-agent deal with the Celtics after the cost-conscious Knicks did not retain him. New York has felt the loss, particularly 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 rest only with 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, for his part, is not afraid to speak up either. When the Knicks’ season reached a breaking point last spring, down 2-1 to the Atlanta Hawks in the first round, Brown challenged Karl-Anthony Towns to get the ball more and be aggressive with it. That turned the series around and helped spark 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. Their 3-4 record has them ranked No. 8 in the East.
Brown says 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 it to LeBron James joining the Miami Heat in the summer of 2010, and how that 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.”
Ring controversy and contract limbo
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 less-than-flattering headlines since the team’s title in June.
It had been over a week since news broke that New York assistant coaches did not receive their rings on opening night. Some employees who had yet to receive theirs were also 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.”
It is true to Brown’s character. In his first year as Knicks coach, his gift was his ability to avoid making waves, and to lead 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 following season they were nearly knocked out of the conference finals by the Rockets.
That was before the NBA’s rules made it harder for teams to establish and maintain dominance. Even more telling is that the teams that have repeated since the millennium have been led 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 travelling. After a 64-win season that ended in a 16-3 run through the playoffs and the 2024 title, Mazzulla’s Celtics followed up with 61 wins in 2025. They entered the playoffs as defending champions that many believed had a great chance at repeating.
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 the Celtics back into a series they 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 additional games add 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 win in 2024, the Thunder have stacked multiple deep playoff runs. This Knicks team faces the same problem.
Brunson has played 61 playoff games since arriving in 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 in Minnesota the season before being 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 contract 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 been no discussions about a new deal. Towns is eligible for a four-year, $276 million deal. Before talks were halted, the Knicks’ offer stood at $200 million, which would be 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, 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.”