The Knicks Will Send Me to an Early Grave

Almost certainly the team or teams you root for routinely lose and probably let you down in the process. It’s the nature of sports; only one club gets to hold a trophy at the end of the season. But if you’ve gotten a chance to see your guys holding that trophy – and perhaps passing it around while being doused with champagne – consider yourself very lucky, because some of us – many of us, in fact – have not been that fortunate.

And while some teams have never won a championship, others won so long ago that they might as well never have. If fans want to relive (or just live, depending on their age) the glory days, they are relegated to watching grainy footage of games probably being played by guys with odd facial hair or uncomfortably short uniforms.

This brings me to the team I’ve been a (mostly) hopeless follower of for the last three-plus decades: the New York Knicks. Sure, they just had a very good season and there was reason to believe that next year could be even better. It didn’t take long, however, for those rosy feelings to turn into the doom and gloom most fans are quite familiar with. But before we get into that, let’s go back a little.

About nine years ago, I wrote an open letter to the Knicks in which I chronicled how I first became a fan and the emotional toil fandom has taken on me. The team had just come off a losing season – its third in a row – and wouldn’t get over .500 for another five years. The crux of the article was that the Knicks didn’t make me mad or upset – they made me stop caring.

Over the previous 20 years or so, although there were a handful of playoff appearances, the team was by and large terrible. In fact, only the Washington Wizards have more losses this century. The folks running things didn’t seem to have any type of plan in place, as they routinely made questionable or downright asinine personnel decisions, such as drafting good players but very quickly trading them or letting them go in free agency so they could add aging or injured “stars” who they were sure were going to turn things around.

Every season, seemingly, somebody new was brought in to be the savior: Stephen Marbury, Andrea Bargnani, Carmelo Anthony, Lenny Wilkens, Phil Jackson. One year, the Knicks even gave a roster spot to a 35-year-old point guard from Italy who had a career average of about six points per game. Nothing worked, or if it did, it was fleeting. A once proud franchise that was regularly in the mix during the 80s and 90s, the Knicks weren’t just bad, they were irrelevant.

But then something strange happened. About five years ago, the team started looking competent. Thin-skinned owner James Dolan – perhaps most infamous for feuding with beloved former player Charles Oakley – seemed to get out of the way and let smart basketball people make decisions. The turnaround was stark – the Knicks won 20 more games in the 2020-21 season compared to the one before. Suddenly there was hope in the Big Apple, and the team was actually worth caring about again.

The person seemingly most responsible for this reversal was Tom Thibodeau, who in just five seasons became the fourth winningest coach in the team’s history. And after their best stretch in years, after their first trip to the Eastern Conference Finals in a quarter of a century, after stability was finally restored, naturally the Knicks decided to fire him.

For many fans – me included – the news of Thibodeau’s firing was first met with incredulity, but quickly turned into concession. Of course the Knicks would do this; this is what they do. Just when you think sanity has come back into the building, it quickly gets escorted out the back door. This is further emphasized by the fact that instead of looking at available coaches with good track records, at first the team was primarily focused on guys under contract that they would need to trade for.

(And while the rumored interest in Kevin Durant didn’t materialize, just the fact that they really seemed to be targeting him – and potentially willing to part with any number of good, young players – shows that they haven’t learned a whole lot over the last three decades.)

Sure – despite the evidence – there’s a chance that the Knicks know what they’re doing and that they do in fact have a plan and aren’t just flailing around. There’s also the chance that they decide to bring back somebody like Isiah Thomas and the team once again sinks into oblivion for another decade. Right not I’m not sure which one I’d bet on. At this point I’m just hoping my kids get to see the Knicks with that trophy, because I’m not sure I’ll ever get to.