The Knicks open their NBA Cup title defense tonight in a rematch against the one team that’s already beaten them this season, and if the 76ers win it again, nobody gets to call this a defense of anything.
Back in June, the Knicks became the first team in NBA history to win the NBA Cup and the full NBA championship in the same season, their first title since 1973, built on the biggest comeback in Finals history in Game 4 and Jalen Brunson matching Michael Jordan’s Finals-record 45 points to close it out in Game 5. They hung both banners at the Garden ten days ago, on October 20. Walt Frazier handed out the rings. And in the same building, in the same two hours, during the night Philly crashed New York’s championship celebration, the 76ers walked out with a 106-100 win.
On their own ring night.
Brunson’s line that night was a full meltdown: he shot 6-for-19, went 1-for-5 in the final five minutes, and airballed a potential game-tying three with 10 seconds on the clock. The internet noticed immediately.
https://twitter.com/RealSkipBayless/status/2112726042704314581
Getting dunked on by Skip Bayless on the same night you’re supposed to be collecting a championship ring is not how the first repeat-title storyline in franchise history was supposed to start.
And Philadelphia isn’t some one-off problem New York can game-plan away. LeBron James signed a two-year, $8 million deal with Philadelphia over the summer, slotting into a LeBron-Maxey pairing that’s already scared the Knicks once. Tyrese Maxey just became the NBA’s first Eastern Conference Player of the Week of the season, averaging 28.8 points as the Sixers raced to a 3-1 start. Jaylen Brown is questionable tonight with knee soreness, but Joel Embiid and LeBron have no such out.
That’s who the Knicks have to go beat, at Xfinity Mobile Arena, to actually defend anything. Vegas has New York as 1.5-point favorites with the total sitting around 227, a cute number for a team Philadelphia has already beaten once this season. The Knicks enter at 2-3, having scraped past Detroit and Chicago, against a 76ers team that’s 4-1 and playing like it knows exactly who it is.
One thing complicates the pile-on: Brunson already answered the ring-night disaster. Two nights ago against the Bulls he dropped 38 points on 13-of-25 shooting, including six threes, and dragged New York back from 19 down to win. He had one bad night in a packed building, and then went out against Chicago and reminded everyone why he was holding Finals MVP interviews this past June.
But a bounce-back game against the Bulls doesn’t erase ring night. Only beating this specific Sixers team does, and until the Knicks actually do that, the banners at the Garden are real, the trophies are real, and the “title defense” everyone’s talking about tonight is still sitting at 0-1.
