The Knicks keep building big leads. They also keep coughing them up.

It’s become the defining — and increasingly troubling — pattern for a team that beat the Charlotte Hornets, 119-104, on the second night of a back-to-back on Wednesday.

New York has now won five of its last six, the lone loss coming in Boston on Tuesday.

They’ve also blown double-digit leads in five of those six games.

Up 45–33 on the lowly Nets before letting it shrink to a one-possession game by halftime.
Up 101–88 on Milwaukee with 10:18 to play before the Bucks erased nearly all of it in five minutes.
Up 41–22 on Toronto after one quarter before the Raptors carved it down to three in the third.
Up 37–23 on Boston before Jaylen Brown detonated for 33 across the second and third, flipping the game entirely.

And then came Wednesday — a fresh opportunity to respond — against a Hornets team so dysfunctional they’ve practically reserved their annual draft lottery seating.

New York raced ahead by 20 midway through the second quarter. And then? The same script.

They exhaled. Charlotte didn’t. The Hornets ripped off a 25–11 spurt, and it took a Jalen Brunson bailout three at the buzzer just to crawl into halftime up six.

“Teams aren’t just going to lay down. We build a lead, you’ve got to anticipate they’re going to fight back, they’re not just going to give up,” Brunson said after the victory. “We’ve got to do a better job of slowing down their runs and limiting them. But we can’t let them get all the way back like we’ve been doing.”

It was exactly the lack of urgency that burned them 24 hours earlier — and it’s the kind of slippage that keeps elite teams out of the elite tier.

Because the best of the best don’t play with their food. They finish their meal and order dessert.

“Yeah, I just think we have to make sure we,” Josh Hart said before a brief pause. “I don’t wanna say put teams away, because obviously it’s early, it’s so early in the game — but we’ve gotta continue doing what we’re doing. So we’re learning, we’re growing.”

The Knicks didn’t. Not yet. They rebuilt a 22-point cushion early in the fourth only to watch LaMelo Ball torch the game back open. Ball either scored or assisted on 23 straight Charlotte points in the fourth, slicing the lead from the mid-20s to eight in minutes.

He finished with 34 points, nine assists and a flurry of backbreaking shot-making that forced the Knicks to sweat out a game that should’ve been over long before.

“It’s a game of runs. That’s why I’m not necessarily afraid to start a rookie at times, if I think the matchup is right or whatever, because I don’t think you’ll ever lose or win a game at the start,” said head coach Mike Brown. “The NBA is a long game and the opponent is gonna eventually make a run. There’s times when we stretched [the lead] and held on to it, that’s unusual for the NBA.”

Fortunately for New York, the Hornets aren’t the Celtics. Boston completes comebacks; Charlotte crosses its fingers.

For every ugly Knicks possession, the Hornets had four worse ones. But this isn’t the competition New York is measuring itself against.

The Knicks want to be up there with Oklahoma City — the reigning champs now 21–1 and steamrolling the league. If New York plans to hang in that weight class, they need consistency. They need the ability to hold leads, to extend them, not casually hand them back.

“I think first and foremost, how we respond to that is how we get better as a team,” said Brunson. “As long as we’re making strides in that direction we’re improving.”

Karl-Anthony Towns, meanwhile, ate well for his late Thanksgiving.

Facing a Hornets roster with no real center to challenge him, Towns bulldozed his way to 35 points and 18 rebounds on 13-of-23 shooting — a follow-up to the 29 he dropped in Boston. He capped the night with a statement two-handed reverse cradle dunk in transition.

THAT WAS FILTHY KARL 😳 pic.twitter.com/YsTCGDY1V7

— NEW YORK KNICKS (@nyknicks) December 4, 2025

Brunson added 26 on 9-of-16, and all five starters scored in double figures, with Mikal Bridges, Miles McBride and Hart combining for 46.

Next up: the Utah Jazz on Friday, followed by the Orlando Magic — one of the few teams this season the Knicks haven’t built a big enough lead on to blow.

“Today was a tough one, a back-to-back with a team that runs and it was a tough one,” said Hart. “But a win’s a win, and we’ve gotta make sure we learn from it.”