The New York Knicks were suffering from a championship hangover. They looked nothing like the team that won last year's NBA title. Off-court drama combined with exhaustion from a short offseason were insurmountable obstacles. That was, of course, until the team's fourth game of the year.
The Knicks' matchup with a Detroit Pistons squad similar to last year's, which infamously gave them problems throughout the regular season, wound up being a get-right spot at Madison Square Garden. All it took was the team going down by at least 10 points — and remembering exactly who they were.
New York lost the first quarter of the game by 13 points, giving up 38 to a Detroit team that arguably has less scoring talent than last year's build around superstar Cade Cunningham. It was then that the Knicks had their opponent exactly where they wanted them. The home team took a one-point lead into halftime, when Mike Brown challenged Karl-Anthony Towns to take his matchup with Paul Reed more personally.
Then, on the second night of their back-to-back, the Knicks trailed the Chicago Bulls by as many as 19 points in the mid-third quarter before storming back to win on the road.
The group that trailed by at least 10 points in every game of their NBA Finals series against the San Antonio Spurs may not be all the way back in action, but they certainly got their start on Tuesday night. The 13 and 19-point comebacks were two big steps.
Knicks' unforgiving schedule will make it hard to shake hangover vibes
It's still quite early in the 2026-27 regular season. However, Group Play of the 2026 Emirates NBA Cup is already set to get started on October 30. The Knicks, who are the league's reigning champions of more than just the postseason, haven't exactly come out looking like an in-season repeat is in play.
That said, their first opponent in Group Play is the Philadelphia 76ers. They've seen them once already — when LeBron James and Jaylen Brown helped spoil their ring ceremony — and might be out looking for revenge. But especially for a team that just learned how trying a long playoff run can be, it's equally as tough to imagine them having the same hunger to win the NBA Cup that they did last season.
New York's schedule, as of now, also looks brutal in general throughout the month of November. They proved last season that, when they earn home-court advantage in the NBA Playoffs, they're capable of capitalizing on it. A combination of rest and travel advantages could very well have been key to their back-to-back sweeps of the Philadelphia 76ers and Cleveland Cavaliers. But to do that again in the 2027 postseason, they'll need home-court advantage again.
This group should know that, as well as what it's going to take to earn it.
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