The Champions Are 0-3 in the Preseason — and Their Coach Says the Struggle Is Part of the Test

By Marcus Delaney, Previously

October 13, 2026

Anthony Edwards scored 26 and Jaden McDaniels 22 as Minnesota converted better than 50 percent from the floor and from deep. New York's starters lost their minutes again — and Mike Brown says that's partly by design.

The defending champions are winless in the preseason, and the scoreboard at Madison Square Garden on Monday night explained why in one line: Minnesota Timberwolves 122, New York Knicks 104. The New York Post reported it as the Knicks' third straight preseason loss, all three with the same shape — the starters playing roughly half the game, losing their minutes, and the offense looking like a team running practice drills in public. Anthony Edwards scored 26 points in 25 minutes for Minnesota and Jaden McDaniels added 22, while Jalen Brunson led New York with a team-high 20.

Edwards and McDaniels Ran the Game

Minnesota's two young stars were the best players on the floor by a distance. Edwards went 5-for-8 from three-point range on his way to 26 points, and McDaniels scored 22 on 8-of-12 shooting, including 4-of-5 from deep; between them they hit nine three-pointers. As a team, the Timberwolves shot better than 50 percent from both the field and three-point range, according to the game's published takeaways, and they outrebounded New York 39-28 despite no Minnesota player grabbing more than five boards — a team-wide gang-rebounding effort that underlined how flat the Knicks looked on the glass.

New York's only lead of the night came on Josh Hart's lone made basket in the first quarter. After that, Minnesota controlled the game in stretches that kept stretching, and every Knick who played finished with a negative plus-minus — the statistical signature of a night when there was no unit, starter or bench, that won its time on the floor.

The Starters' Short, Winless Night

The Knicks shot 45.5 percent from the field and just 25 percent from three, numbers that Posting and Toasting's takeaways flagged as a continuation of a preseason-long offensive search. Brunson's 20 came on 6-of-13 shooting with only 1-of-4 from three, in about 22 minutes — the whole starting five was capped around the same workload. OG Anunoby added 15 points, Karl-Anthony Towns scored 11 and Mikal Bridges 9, with Towns and Bridges combining for 20 on 6-of-12 shooting. Hart finished with two points, three rebounds and three assists.

That is not a rotation in crisis so much as a rotation on a leash. Head coach Mike Brown kept his starters on a strict minutes plan for the third straight game, and the Post reported the Knicks have now been outscored by 43 points across their preseason. In October, that number is a conversation piece. By November, if the shooting and the rebounding look the same, it becomes something else.

Brown Says the Struggle Is Partly the Point

Afterward, Brown told reporters the simplicity is intentional. "I'm kind of hamstringing our guys offensively," he said, per the Post — explaining that he is deliberately keeping the offense real generic because he wants to see whether his players can execute when a defense knows what is coming and starts denying and pressuring. The test, as he framed it, is process over result: can the Knicks get to their spots and run their counters at speed, and are they playing defense with what he called next-play speed?

It is a coherent philosophy — preseason as a stress test, not a dress rehearsal — and the Knicks' front office clearly bought a coach entitled to run it. But it asks the Garden crowd to watch the defending champions lose by 18 at home in the name of information gathering, and Brown acknowledged the execution breakdowns that still need cleaning up on film. Both things can be true: the plan is sound, and Monday's tape will not be pleasant.

The Auditions at the End of the Bench

If there was a useful Knicks subplot, it played out at the end of the bench. Tony Bradley, entering for the final seven minutes, went a perfect 5-for-5 for 10 points. Pacôme Dadiet, the young wing fighting for a real role, scored seven points in 14 minutes and went 2-for-3 from three. And Andre Drummond — the first substitute for Towns at center, in a backup-center audition created by the loss of Mitchell Robinson — contributed three blocks and four rebounds. On a night the rotation spots below the starters are the only ones truly being contested, those were the auditions that helped themselves.

The result itself will be forgotten by opening night; every preseason result is. What lingers is the checklist: three-point shooting at 25 percent, a 39-28 rebounding deficit, and a starting five that has yet to win its minutes together. The Knicks do not need to win a preseason game. They do need the next one to look less like Monday. The rest of the league's Monday slate is in our full NBA preseason wrap-up, and the morning's other big final is the Bills-Rams overtime account on the sports front.