Knicks' early championship hangover continues with loss to Magic

The New York Knicks seem to be conducting an early-season experiment to see how much grace a championship-winning basketball team in New York City will get from the fans.

Given how long Knicks fans waited to see their team win a championship, it will probably be a lot of grace, but this probably isn't the start anybody expected.

There also has to be at least a little bit of frustration. 

With their 111-102 loss to the Orlando Magic on Sunday night, the Knicks have lost each of their first three games of the season. While it is probably too early to be overly concerned if you are a Knicks fan, this is still relatively uncharted territory for a defending champion.

Knicks join rare club with three consecutive losses to open season

With Sunday's loss, the Knicks are just the third defending NBA champion to open a season with three consecutive losses, joining the 2011-12 Dallas Mavericks and the 1969-70 Boston Celtics. 

The Celtics ended up losing the first four games of that season before finally getting a win,

If there is a silver lining in this for the Knicks, it's that they had a pretty tough stretch to open the season with games against three consecutive playoff teams from a year ago (Orlando, Boston and Philadelphia 76ers), while all three games have been mostly close. It's not like they are losing badly, or losing to bottom-tier teams. It's been a tough stretch, and it's come against some really good teams. 

The biggest issue for the Knicks on Sunday was the fact they simply did not shoot the basketball well, and were especially off from 3-point range. They shot just 9-of-38 from 3-point range and were only 17-of-24 from the foul line. A lot of that will turn around.

The bad news for the Knicks is that the tough early-season schedule is not getting much easier on Tuesday night when they host the Detroit Pistons.