It’s not that I didn’t want them to win. I was maybe just not ready. Clearly. Not since 1999 have the Knicks closed out a play-off series at home. That was the year and the series of the Knickest moment ever: Game three of the Eastern Conference Finals at the Garden when Larry Johnson hit the four-point-play against the Indiana Pacers. The Knicks went on to win the series in six and the cover of the Times the following day had Latrell Sprewell floating like a pterodactyl around the perimeter of the court to a rapturous crowd (to say the very bare minimum, as it was the happiest group of people ever assembled, like a mid-show Bruce Springsteen crowd doused in the greatest speed-forward ecstasy of all time) with the headline that read: DANCING FROM THE RAFTERS AT THE GARDEN. I sloppily cut the picture and the headline from the paper and framed it for my Old Man for his birthday that July 4th. It’s at the top of the stairs.
So last night, with one minute left in the first close-out game at the Garden since I was sixteen, Jalen Brunson stepped back and hit (another) jumper to put the Knicks up by five. As I clenched my fist in the desperate hope, the probability of winning - of joy – roiling in my improbable guts…a voice swung from my gallows and it thought “I don’t want them to win.” And right now, as Ms. Rachel dithers on and teaches my daughter shit that I have the time to teach her but lack the dexterity or patience, a tear fell onto my laptop. The control key. Why, when all I want in this life is for the Knicks to win, would I want the Knicks to not win?
I did not want them to lose, let me be clear. I didn’t even want them to not win. What I think – and this is just a guess from a guy who’s never quite been able to understand himself – is that I don’t know who I would be if the Knicks won an NBA Championship. Meaning I would know even less about myself, thus I would perhaps cease to exist. Or get immediate onset dementia and Jess doesn’t deserve that.
Losing isn’t fun, but it’s something to cling to; a place upon which to piss your hat. And being a Knick fan, something to rely on. If last night they had taken the series in five, there would have been a confidence the likes of which I have never felt. Of which I am clearly wary. They win last night and they, we, collectively lick our chops awaiting a spiritually confused and physically banged-up Bucks team or green-in-the-gills Pacers unit. And from there the Celtics. Of Boston.
But the Knicks, they heard the whispers from my foul parts and lost. Up by six with twenty-eight seconds left. We can go down the laundry list of actual reasons, the how’s and why’s they lost but it was mostly me. Brunson took too many shots in overtime instead of looking to be a fucking point guard; Josh Hart just hit that one fucking free-throw!; And c’mon, Mitch. C’mon. The fuck. I even tried to blame my brother for last week saying he liked Tyrese Maxey (he doesn’t read this, so he won’t get mad but it is true, it was said). I also blamed a friend of mine who the day prior told me he hadn’t had a drink in two months. Finally I tried to blame the Ryan Adams tee I was wearing for reasons too stupid to get into here, as nap-time’s closing is nigh and Game 6 is tomorrow. But it was all because of my rotten thoughts.
In the DANCING FROM THE RAFTERS AT THE GARDEN photo, if you look close and take stock of the crowd, there is one Man who has his arms raised to the sky, screaming, thanking. He’s alone. You have to really look, as the crowd is deep in the background and it’s like a blurry Where’s Waldo, but he looks like Mark Few, the head coach of the Gonzaga Bulldogs and the most forgettable looking middle aged white guy I could think of. You can’t see it but he’s wearing khakis. He has to be. And right then, right there when that shutter clacks, he’s the happiest he’s ever been. I love that Man and I always thought of him as old; a forgotten middle-aged Man whom the Knicks blessed that day, set free if only for a few blissful postgame hours on that evening of June 12th, Nineteen and Ninety-Nine.
See: The Knicks win and I am him. That is what I am afraid of. After that photo was taken, the Knicks went on to lose to the Spurs in the finals and that was to be expected. Tim Duncan was too good, so boring. But whenever I go home to the house I grew up in, I go to the top of the stairs - sometimes stumble – and I look at that Man. The older I get the closer I am to his age. Hell, I’m probably there. And now the Knicks are really good and I am really scared. Yes, they need Julius Randle. Sure, the low-rent Knick fans who have been chanting “Fuck Embiid” didn’t deserve a close-out win at home. Bogdonovich going down sucks. But that’s sports; guys get injured and other guys need to step. This loss, last night: it’s on me. I love the New York Knicks. I love them so much. And tomorrow night they will go down I-95 and take care of business because I’m ready to be That Man. The man in the Times. I will put on my khakis and drink a Smithicks or two and they will win and move on to the conference semis and from there I don’t know. I don’t know. They could lose to the Magic in the Conference finals for fuckssake or the Pacers in the semis. But they will win it all in the near future because I will do my part and stop fighting age, pining for relevance, dreaming of accolades and I will disappear into that picture and become the Man all alone, amidst everyone, screaming thanks and praise to the rafters because that’s what this team needs from me. That’s what this City needs. A Hero. Me. The Forgettable Man.
🙏🏻🏀
I bet he reads it.