The New York Knicks were able to enjoy their championship rings for a few minutes opening night, then the 76ers ruined the party. If ever there were a time you figured a team could dismiss a loss, that would've been it. But for reasons that could come more starkly into focus after the teams meet again Friday, one more loss to the Sixers and the Knicks risk raising the difficulty level on repeating as champions too high to beat. A win and the picture brightens dramatically.

The Knicks need to keep the 76ers running a marathon

After Friday, these teams play twice more in February, just before and after the All-Star break, and that’s that. If the Knicks wake up this weekend winners, the season series is tied; if not, they can’t win it and the Sixers only need a split of the winter meetings to take the tiebreaker. Beating the 76ers Friday doesn’t just even the head-to-head wins, it kicks the can on when the decisive games will be played more than three months down the road. In which case, advantage Knicks.

No other contender is as reliant on a player as injury-plagued as Embiid as the Sixers. LeBron James turns 42; the last time he missed fewer than 10 games in a season he was leading the Lakers to the bubble championship. Perhaps now more than ever, every team is susceptible to sudden and season-altering injuries, but no team's health is more difficult to forecast than the Sixers. 

If the Knicks win Friday, the pressure’s on Philadelphia to have two of their stars available three months from now. If they lose, the pressure’s on New York to get ahead in the standings and stay there, in which case: advantage Sixers.

Recent tiebreakers show winning the higher seed pays off

Last year there were three ties between playoff teams. In all three, the team that earned the higher seed won more than the run-off.

The Raptors and Hawks both finished 46-36, with Toronto the fifth seed and Atlanta sixth. The Hawks won a few last-second games against the Knicks before getting their doors blown off, and return this year with pretty much the same vibe as last year: a nice team that isn’t beating anybody good.

The Raptors lucked into a better matchup for their style with the Cavaliers, taking them to seven games. Maybe Kawhi Leonard would have come to Toronto no matter how their year ended, especially given all his unfulfilled aspirations with the Clippers. It couldn’t have hurt their pitch to point to their playoff performance as proof positive they’re on the path to better days.

The Sixers and Magic both won 45 games, with Philadelphia getting the seventh seed and Orlando the eighth. The Magic gave the Pistons problems, but the top seed eventually came up with enough answers to triumph in seven games. The 76ers presented the Celtics with one very particular and 7-foot-2 inch problem in Joel Embiid, and Boston had no answer. 

Maybe LeBron James would have come to Philadelphia no matter how their year ended, given the relatively small set of suitors shopping for his services. It couldn’t have hurt their pitch to point to having beaten Boston, then acquiring Jaylen Brown afterward. 

The 2027 Knicks are trying to repeat as champions. They’re also competing now for players who might help them in 2028, 2030, 2032. A butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, weeks later a hurricane hits the Atlantic coast. The Knicks win their sixth game of the year, that leads to them winning a seeding tiebreaker come April, that helps them end up hoisting the Larry O’Brien come June, inspiring some current star no one expects to move to suddenly be MSG-bound, and you can trace it all back in part to a random road game played before Halloween.

The 2027 Knicks don't want to be the 2022 Bucks, the 2023 Bucks, the 2024 Bucks, etc.

The last defending champion with odds of repeating as low as New York’s were the 2022 Milwaukee Bucks, at +900. Those Bucks had won it all as a three-seed out of the East, same as the Knicks last year. Those Bucks lost their season-opener in Boston, by a point. The two teams met again twice many months later; the Celtics got a split, so they won the tiebreaker.

The teams met in the playoffs' second round, going the full seven games before the Celtics closed it out on their home floor. It was a turning point for both franchises and the conference power structure: the Celtics went on to reach the Finals, then win it all two years later. After losing that series, the Bucks haven’t won one since.

In the short-term, the Knicks are probably thinking more about building on their first winning streak of the season or paying the Sixers back for beating them than contemplating tiebreaker scenarios six months from now. But as the 2026 Raptors and 76ers and the 2022 Bucks learned, it really is never too early to start thinking about the endgame.