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Sometimes I fail to take notes on the basketball games I'm about to discuss, especially when my favorite team, the New York Knicks, is in the game. It feels like a failure. But on Wednesday night, feeling positive about the final quarter of a game we thought we were going to win, I jotted down this excited nonsense in an unoccupied Google Doc:
That KAT block, Siakam goes down, Knicks steal, OG layup! That's what I mean (7 minutes left)
If you're reading this, you already know. This play — great defense that led to a big, dramatic, joyful play on the other side that gave the Knicks a sixteen-point (eventually seventeen-point) lead — wasn't actually “the shit” I was “talking about,” because the Knicks somehow blew that big lead and lost to the Indiana Pacers 135-138.
Now I regret the exclamation point. And my eccentric tone. And most of all — and oh my God, I berate myself, crying mea maxima culpa and tearfully repenting — my eagerness to document an event that hasn’t yet ended. I wish I could spend my first beach day of the year Frisbee-rolling my abandoned, grief-inducing laptop from the Jersey Shore into the ocean. This is what it’s like to root for the Knicks.
It was Game 1 of the Knicks-Pacers Eastern Conference Finals. It had been a quarter century since the Knicks had reached this point in the playoffs—if they won this series, they would advance to the NBA Finals, just four wins away from the trophy—and the whole city seemed anxious, unpredictable, excited, cautiously joyful. You spot a guy on the sidewalk wearing a Knicks cap and, putting aside your usually reserved manner, yell, “Go Knicks!” and he yells back, “Go Knicks!” A good team brings a sweet, hopeful tension to New York.
Both teams were sharp in the first half. The Knicks’ offense consisted of a flurry of spins and step-backs from heroic point guard Jalen Brunson; contested but deadly three-pointers from Karl-Anthony Towns—KAT, who joined the Knicks just this season via a trade from the Minnesota Timberwolves; and fast, angular, barely controlled drives to the rim, fueled by the skittish, amphetamine-fueled energy of tireless rebounder Josh Hart. The Pacers—athletic, young, smart, cocky, like the little brother of a rich suburban family—responded with dogged defense and an approach to the game that felt more like a toddler sprint race. All these guys do is run. Both teams had scored nearly seventy points by halftime, racing through the game with a bird-like heartbeat that I didn’t like at all.
The Knicks usually play a little more methodically than they do this time, but by defending smartly, rebounding well, and shooting even better, they built a sizable lead after halftime. When I wrote this stupid post with seven minutes left, they were up by 16. When OG Anunoby hit that layup after some impressive defense from Towns—who is usually not known for his reliability in that part of the floor—I punched the air hard, making it whistle, and screamed, trying not to wake my sleeping baby. I allowed myself, for the first time all night, to imagine that we were going to win the game, maybe the series, hell, maybe everything.
But I should have known better! After all, these tough, often inspiring, sometimes infuriating, always confusing, imperfect Knicks weren’t exactly fun to watch. They were pushed to the brink of collapse in the first round of the playoffs by the up-and-coming Detroit Pistons, led by a big, fluid, democratic passer named Cade Cunningham. The Pistons didn’t have as many high-end players as the Knicks, but each of their players understood their roles better than the Knicks ensemble usually does—a dynamic that could now threaten to repeat itself against the Pacers.
In the second round of the playoffs against the defending champion Boston Celtics, the tables were turned: The Knicks trailed by huge margins in the first two games, but stormed back to win both games to build a 2–0 lead. It was made even more impressive when, near the end of Game 4 — another one the Knicks seemed poised to win — Celtics star Jayson Tatum suffered a gut-wrenching Achilles injury and collapsed to the floor howling in pain.
Nothing is going the way it should for these Knicks, captained by coach Tom Thibodeau, whose only sense of “identity” when it comes to a basketball team is a stubborn
Sourse: newyorker.com
