Knicks in Five
On uniting a city and delivering a title to a long-suffering fanbase.
Some of them became New York Knicks fans when Walt Bellamy was in the post. Some became fans a week ago. It doesn’t matter. Not really.
Some of them carry scars, so many scars, from the last days of Patrick Ewing and the reign of Michael Ray Richardson and the Isiah Thomas years and the Donnie Walsh years and the Phil Jackson experiment and the countless times that James Dolan made them embarrassed to wear blue and orange.
Some of them are still learning how to pronounce Jalen Brunson’s name.
It doesn’t matter. Not really.
Some of them are ultra famous, the ones they show on television all the time, the front row seat fillers, Spike and Timmy and Jerry and Larry and Tracy and Mac. Some are less famous but still known, recognizable, and they sit farther back. Most are not famous at all, and they can’t afford to get into the world’s most famous arena, but they take it in however they can. Our Uber driver has it playing on his phone. The woman at the bakery has it playing in her earbuds as she grabs your black-and-white cookie with wax paper. Cars honk their horns in unison with Brunson's three-pointers.
Every few minutes, the park — every park, Central Park, Bryant Park, Riverside Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Morningside Park, the High Line — erupts in happy sound.
A friend once told me that when it comes to sports, New York City is Tuscaloosa with a skyline. I’ve thought about that a lot. I think it’s right. Every town feels the same when its team is winning. Chicago is Baton Rouge with deep dish. Philadelphia is College Station with cheese steak. Los Angeles is Tallahassee with movie studios. Boston is Lawrence with the Freedom Trail.
They’ll tell you again and again — so many times that it becomes inescapable — how different we are, how divided we are, how we just don’t see the world the same way and don’t feel the same things.
Then a second-generation Knick named Jalen Brunson scores 45 to lift a lovable bunch to the NBA title, and all around him is mayhem, and the reporter asks him how he feels and he can’t say anything because there are no words, but he also doesn’t have to say anything because his face is covered in tears and you KNOW how he feels, it doesn’t matter where you live, it doesn’t matter what team you cheer, it doesn’t matter.
You know because you know.
You know because you were on the North Side of Chicago in 2016 or in Natick in 2004 or in Parma in 2016 or in Lee’s Summit in 2015 or in Bloomington, Indiana, a few months ago.
You know because you know.
Now it’s New York, the biggest city, Broadway, Wall Street, Queens, the Bronx, Lady Liberty, Times Square, Brooklyn, Katz’s Delicatessen, Mean Streets, Hell’s Kitchen, Sak’s Fifth Avenue, the Village, Gatsby, all of it, but none of that matters when your team shoots past your imagination and outshines your dreams.
A scrappy collection of basketball players who could never quite put it all together during the regular season put it all together at playoff time. Jalen Brunson led the way. OG Anunoby found his inner superhero. Karl-Anthony Towns pounded the glass. Mikal Bridges hit the big threes. On and on. For a month, they played some of the best basketball any team has ever played.
And as the Knicks took the city higher and higher, the longest-suffering fans felt healed, and more recent fans felt seen, and the newest fans felt something they probably didn’t expect:
They felt a bigger part of New York City.
“People can see how I feel,” Jalen Brunson said. And we could. All of us.
I started watching the Knick when I was 8 years old when it was a team of Max Zaslofsy, aSweerwater Clifton, Ernie (Kiki’s father) Vanderweghe (who missed road games and arrived at halftimes for home games because the Knicks were a side-gig while he was in medical school, Harry “the Horse” Gallitan, Al and Dick McGuire and Vince “Boryla Bombs!” Boryla, one the last 2-handed set shot shooters.
In the early 1950s we lost in the Finals to Rochester Royals and twice to George Miken’s Minneapolis Lakers. Then the awful years in the late 50s to the mid-60s. We thought we’d never make it to the nevermind win a World Championship.
Then Willis got drafted and clyde and the trade for Dave Debussgere was the capstone to the 1970 World Chanpionship Knicks. And, again in 1973. It all seemed so simple and we waited 53 more years until last night.
Somehow, that endless wait from the early 1950s until 1970 seemed centuries longer than the past 53 years. Time sure flies more quickly as you get older.
I'm a native New Yorker in my 40s and I've never seen anything like it. On the Mets game today, they talked about how the Knicks unite the city in a way the other major sports don't with all the multiple teams. (Yes, the Nets exist, but really no one in this city cares.) And the five plus decades of missing out certainly added to it. Everyone has been so positive and excited for the past month and a half with orange and blue everywhere you go and games projected outside delis and people dancing in the streets and it's been so magnificent. Even people like me who haven't watched a game since Ewing and Starks were on the team were glued to every game. That parade on Thursday is going to be something.