Two games don’t tell much in an 82-game season, but you can’t overlook what has happened with the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs, since seeing both drop the first two games of the season cannot be described as anything less than historic.
After fueling excitement in the previous campaign and reaching the Finals — with the Knicks’ victory coming 53 years later — both teams are finding it hard to start this new chapter; so much so that they have agreed to match a statistic not seen in more than four decades.
Knicks and Spurs, each with an 0-2 record at this point, become the third duo of finalists to begin the next season with such marks, something that had previously only occurred in the 1979-80 season with the Seattle SuperSonics and the Washington Bullets, and earlier in 1969-70 with the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics.
For this anomaly to occur, the Big Apple crew fell to the Celtics 107-103, while the Texas squad could not prevail at home against the Houston Rockets.
As we already noted, this should not go beyond an anecdote, since both teams have enough potential to again deliver a strong season. In fact, it is almost natural for this to happen to them. For the Knicks, switching into peak-performance mode may be tougher this time around. For the Spurs, they might still be dwelling on the opportunity they missed in June.
