Knicks get their first win and look like the team of last spring, not the last week

NEW YORK (AP) — These looked the New York Knicks of last spring, not the last week.

Down by 13 points after one quarter, they outscored the Detroit Pistons 63-25 across the next two, putting the kind of crooked numbers on the scoreboard they did repeatedly during their march to the NBA championship.

They beat the previously undefeated Pistons 111-97 on Tuesday night for their first victory after starting the season with three straight losses.

“We had more good moments in this game in totality than we did the first three games and that’s why we got the win,” coach Mike Brown said.

The Knicks opened the season with as many losses in three games as they had in 19 games during the playoffs. They went 16-3 and set a record for the largest point differential by a team in a postseason.

They returned this season with losses to Philadelphia, Boston and Orlando, and with another loss Tuesday would have joined the 1969-70 Celtics as the only reigning champions to lose their first four games.

That came after Hall of Fame center Bill Russell retired after the Celtics' run of 11 titles in 13 years. These Knicks have their entire starting five back, led by NBA Finals MVP Jalen Brunson and fellow All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns, but hadn't been delivering.

The Pistons, who handled the Knicks easily in all three regular-season meetings in 2025-26, jumped out to a 38-25 lead before New York limited them to 12 points in the second quarter.

“I thought we did a great job, like I said, picking up the physicality, a lot of energy in the game, looking more like ourselves from last year,” Towns said. “But we still have a lot of growing to do and tomorrow’s another day for us to test ourselves and get better.”

Towns finished with 27 points and 20 rebounds, but the Knicks didn't truly find their rhythm until Brunson began to break out of his early-season slump. He came into the game shooting 39% from the field and then was just 1 for 9 in the first half, but made his first three shots in the third quarter to start an 11-0 run that turned a one-point halftime lead into a 62-50 advantage.

“I was just trying to do things to help my team and things will turn eventually,” Brunson said.

He still was only 5 for 18 but finished with 23 points and seven assists. Mikal Bridges, who averaged 3.3 points and missed all 10 3-pointers in the first three games, was 4 for 8 behind the arc and scored 12 points.

The Knicks entered the day last in the league with 101.7 points per game, but Brown was more concerned that they also ranked at the bottom in pace and needed to play faster. Defending better to create more opportunities in transition helped with that Tuesday.

New York goes to Chicago on Wednesday to complete a back-to-back. Brown cautioned that the Knicks will have hiccups throughout the long season as they aim to have their game peak in the playoffs like they did last season.

“So is it fixed? No, it ain’t fixed. Nothing’s really fixed,” Brown said. “What tonight shows us is we’re more than capable if we put our minds to it, and that’s what we’ve got to continue to try to build off.”

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