The New York Knicks will raise their championship banner before tipoff Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden, marking their season opener as NBA champions before a 7 p.m. start. It is the first time in 53 years the team will walk into a season carrying a title into the rafters.
That is why the opener has turned into a hard-to-get ticket. As of Tuesday morning, seats were averaging more than $1,000, a price that matches the weight of a night built around celebration and expectation. Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby are back to try to turn last season’s chemistry into something repeatable, and the banner will go up before the game asks whether they can do it again.
The Knicks earned that stage in June, when they swept the Philadelphia 76ers out of the playoffs, then finished the job in Game 5 of the finals against the San Antonio Spurs to win their first championship in 53 years. The summer gave them plenty of time to celebrate, and Tuesday night is meant to turn that into a formal moment in front of their own crowd before the work starts over.
Hart sounded ready for both parts of it. He said he figured the opener would land that way, and called getting the ring and hanging the banner “dope,” while also saying he was excited to move on from it. That matters because the Knicks are not stepping into a blank night. They already took a preseason loss to the 76ers by 23 points, 120 to 97, a reminder that the title banner will rise before a fresh test begins.
So the picture is clear: the Knicks get their championship night, then immediately have to protect it. The banner is the easy part. The harder question begins at tipoff, when the defending champions have to show that last season was not a one-off.
