Knicks Open 0-3 as Mikal Bridges Scores Three a Night — What Now?
New York joins the 1969 Celtics and 2011 Mavs as the only defending champs to start 0-3. Bridges is 5-for-23 and the offense ranks 29th.
Name value still high, but 3.3 PPG on 5-of-23 is a fire sale waiting to happen.
- Knicks are 3rd defending champ ever to open 0-3
- Bridges: 3.3 PPG on 5-of-23, 0-of-10 from deep
- NY net rating is -26.1 with Bridges on floor
- Team shooting 40.8% overall, 32.4% from three
- New York owns the league's 2nd-worst offensive rating
The defending champs are 0-3, and history doesn't have much company for them. The Knicks join only the 1969 Celtics and 2011 Mavericks as title holders who opened their defense with three straight losses, dropping games to the Sixers, Celtics and a winless Magic team that didn't even have Paolo Banchero. For a group that bullied its way through last spring, this is a jarring reset.
The headline problem has a name: Mikal Bridges. He's averaging 3.3 points on 5-for-23 shooting, hasn't made a single jumper outside the paint, and is 0-for-10 from three with a couple of airballs mixed in. New York is posting a minus-26.1 net rating in his 183 possessions on the floor — and a plus-26.6 in the 109 possessions he sits. That's not a slump, that's an alarm.
It's Not a Hangover
The easy narrative is championship fatigue, but the numbers torch it. Defending champs this century are a combined 366-154 through 20 games of the following season — a 70% clip. Only the 2006-07 Heat won fewer than 51 games the year after a title. So the Knicks' cold open isn't some cosmic payback. It's bad shooting, full stop.
And it is genuinely bad. New York has the league's lowest true-shooting mark, a 40.8% field-goal rate that only Charlotte undercuts, and a 32.4% three-point number. Last year's team led the entire playoff field in both field-goal and three-point percentage. The looks are similar; the makes aren't there. Josh Hart is the canary — defenses are ignoring him beyond the arc, and he's chucking a career-high 7.0 threes a game, double last year's 3.7.
The Fantasy Read
Karl-Anthony Towns is the lone bright spot and the lone safe fantasy hold here — he's putting up 37.2 fantasy points per game this season (2026-27, actual) and is trending up with +3.2 over his last five. He's a top-30 overall asset (#5 at center) and you start him every night regardless of the team's record. Jalen Brunson (30 fantasy PPG, 2026-27 actual) is shooting 39% but his volume keeps him a locked-in start; his cold stretch is a buy signal if anything.
Bridges is the one to move. His name still carries playoff-hero equity from last spring, which is exactly why you shop him now before the box scores torpedo his trade value entirely. If you can flip him for a steadier mid-tier contributor while the market still remembers June, do it. Hold Towns and Brunson, monitor Hart as the defense keeps daring him to shoot, and treat Bridges as a sell-high that's quickly curdling into a sell-at-all.
