NEW YORK — For the first time since June 10, the Knicks fans occupying Madison Square Garden fell completely and utterly silent.
OG Anunoby’s missed three in the final seconds of New York’s 106–100 opening night loss to the 76ers on Tuesday sent a hush flowing over the crowd, suffocating the joy that had lingered in the arena since Game 4 of the NBA Finals (perhaps the greatest Knicks win of all time). Beneath the silence lay an undercurrent of shock. This was not how things were supposed to go on ring night. This was not how things had gone for the Knicks over 10 weeks of the 2026 postseason that culminated in a championship.
Tuesday night seemed set to follow a script very much in that vein. New York started slow and fell behind thanks to turnovers and lackadaisical transition defense. Then the starting five, defined by their refusal to fold against even the steepest odds, appeared to finally wake up in the fourth quarter. Jose Alvarado forced a turnover and drained a three in an electrifying sequence, furiously trying to live up to the energy of the MSG crowd. Karl-Anthony Towns recovered a loose ball following a slapstick sequence of bodies flying all over the place and laid it in with milliseconds to spare on the shot clock. Minutes later he drained a three from the Bronx at the top of the key to pull the Knicks within one.
Confidence reignited in the world’s most famous arena. The comeback kids were doing it again. No lead is safe, no comeback impossible when Jalen Brunson and Co. are piloting this plane.
And then … the magic dissipated. Just like that.
Brunson, who finished 6-for-19 on the night, missed a floater that would have given New York the lead with under four minutes to go. It was not the easiest look. But in that spot, in these circumstances, a Knicks fan who watched their 13-game playoff winning streak would bet their mortgage on it going through. It didn’t.
Then the same thing happened 30 seconds later. Brunson, the NBA’s most talented pound-for-pound shotmaker, got to his spot in the midrange. And bricked it.
It wasn’t the play that sealed New York’s fate on Tuesday, but the one most indicative of this loss. It’s no longer the 2026 playoffs, where the Knicks got every big shot to fall. It’s a new season with new bounces, and not even the euphoria of ring night could change that.
And it was, indeed, euphoric. The banner raising ceremony was every bit the opulent affair expected from a New York championship. The rings themselves sparkled from the 300-level and contained a recreation of Madison Square Garden itself. The steely-eyed Brunson marveled at the rock on his finger upon receiving it and once again showed his comedic side by dryly thanking Knicks fans for not leaving Game 4 early last June. The Knicks took the floor with gold lettering and a shiny patch on the back of their jerseys declaring them champions. Like the reputation of the city itself, everything down to the tiniest detail was draped in luxury.
“It was super dope,” Josh Hart said of the ceremony. “A moment you dream of. It was cool.”
“(It was) really special,” Brunson said. “It was a really cool thing.”
“To celebrate one last time with the fans, it means a lot,” Towns said. “It was really special to have that moment again here in New York after 53 years. To have a new banner up, it feels really cool to be that team that was able to do it.”
But it didn’t last past the opening whistle. New York found out the hard way.
“What an ugly game,” coach Mike Brown said the moment he took the podium afterwards. “All throughout the game, we looked like we were running in mud. Whether it was the front court or it was in transition, we were not good getting to our spots, putting pressure on Philadelphia the right way.”
Ugly is the right word, and the polar opposite of the eye candy that was the banner raising ceremony. Brunson, Anunoby and Mikal Bridges combined to shoot 11-for-39. The Knicks turned the ball over 15 times. Brown pointed to the third quarter as a turning point; in that frame New York missed 16 shots, scored 18 points and gave up two threes in the last 48 seconds. This team makes sweet music when everything is clicking but no championship team is immune from the consequences of sloppy basketball.
It makes for a harsh lesson this early in the season. A singular loss is never the end of the world in the NBA regular season (certainly not a six-point defeat). But ring night can often feel like a continuation of the celebration that began over the summer. It marks the start of a new campaign, yes, yet it also marks the start of an entire season where the burden of proof falls on everyone else to prove they are on par with the defending champions. On top of all that, we as a people tend to trust the last thing we saw with our own eyes. Particularly in sports. And the last thing we all saw was a New York team that would make every shot necessary to win—and usually not a single shot more.
Everybody, from the Knicks themselves to the fans in the stands to neutral observers tuning in to the start of a new season, came back down to Earth on Tuesday. Furious curses rippled through the MSG bleachers after Andre Drummond, a first half hero with a double-double in the opening 14 minutes, air-balled a floater from the paint in the final minutes of that dreadful third quarter. The collective groans of 20,000 New York faithful after KAT’s second foul in three minutes were nearly as loud as the raucous cheers that accompanied his trip to receive his hard-earned ring pregame. It was genuinely shocking when Anunoby’s last triple from the corner didn’t fall; it was not a shot that guaranteed a different outcome but was exactly the kind of shot New York cashed every time last postseason.
But that’s how things were. Not how things are. The Knicks are disappointed with a loss on ring night; every player who spoke to the media couched their admiration of the banner ceremony with an acknowledgement that they performed below standards afterwards. But they also know it’s only the beginning of a new chapter.
“It’s good for us to get knocked down off the mountain,” said Brunson. “Humble ourselves, put our egos in check and see what happens. I’ve told you guys since Day 1, whatever happens this first couple weeks of the season, that’s going to show us who we really are.”
The Knicks have to climb to the apex again. Tuesday served as a reminder of just how hard that will be.
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