Mike Brown stood in front of his team after an 0-3 start and told them, in so many words, that they stank. Then his team beat a previously unbeaten Pistons squad that was missing its starting center and a rotation guard, turned the ball over seven times through its own franchise big man alone, and still couldn't make a three to save its life. That's a team that smells slightly better in one room on one night.
The Knicks were staring down the kind of ignominy that gets cited next to the 1969-70 Celtics, a team that fell apart after Bill Russell walked away. Losing to a 4-0 Detroit team would have made New York just the second defending champion in league history to open 0-4. They avoided that, and that's genuinely good, because the alternative was a crisis that doesn't wait around for November to sort itself out. Avoiding infamy doesn't fix what caused it in the first place.
Karl-Anthony Towns was the best player on the floor by a wide margin. Twenty-seven points and twenty rebounds against a Detroit frontcourt playing a man down is exactly what an All-Star-caliber center should do, and his teammates and coach have been saying for weeks that New York doesn't look like itself when he isn't anchoring both ends. Credit him for it. But Towns also turned the ball over seven times in the same game, a number his own coach flagged afterward as a new high, and that detail matters more than the highlight reel: it's the same undisciplined, careless version of this team that showed up in the first three losses. A turnover count at a new high sitting next to a huge stat line shows a talented player playing through the exact same mess.
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RatingAnd the shooting. Brunson, Towns and OG Anunoby combined to go 2 for 16 from three in the win. It's the same shooting slump that's been strangling this offense since opening night, and it showed up in the game that was supposed to prove things had changed. Brunson himself is talking about the season in terms of hitting singles and getting back to rhythm, the language of a player still grinding out of a hole. New York's bench rotation at center was an open question before this game, and it didn't get answered during it.
Detroit came into Madison Square Garden undefeated, but it came in without Jalen Duren and without Isaiah Joe, worth remembering for anyone ready to call this the night the Knicks turned a corner. Cade Cunningham nearly posted a triple-double anyway, and Paul Reed dropped 22 and 9 off the bench. This was a shorthanded Pistons team that still shot itself in the foot from deep. New York's defense suffocated Detroit for two full quarters after a rough start, and that's the one piece of this game worth believing in going forward: it was earned with effort against a shorthanded opponent.
RTGMike Brown knows better than to let his team believe this fixed anything, and he said as much, warning that hiccups are coming across a long season. He's right to be that blunt. A team that turns the ball over at a season-high rate from its best player, and can't make an open three with its two All-Stars, didn't turn a corner by beating a shorthanded opponent. It postponed the reckoning by one night.
