Today’s a tough day to be a Knicks fan. Despair is probably the best way to describe the past few years. But this year something worse happened. In all the despair, and what was notably our worst year, there was a glimmer of hope. And there can be no true despair without hope:
A few weeks ago, Knicks fans were confident they were going to get Zion, KD, and Kyrie. Instead we got none of them. Why is this?
This New York brand of confidence is not unfounded. Back in the day, MSG was the Mecca. It held weight. Star players would go out of their way to play at the garden. Now, not only does it seem to not matter, players are openly spitting in the Knicks face by still coming to New York but going to Brooklyn. Fucking Brooklyn!? I don’t even like taking the L train to Brooklyn. Not to mention, the Brooklyn Nets were the unfathomably bad New Jersey Nets not just a few short years ago. That’s who these superstars chose to play with over the most historic franchise in sports.
As for Zion, the old NBA would rig drafts to get players like that into the biggest market in the world. Now he can go to the New Orleans Pelicans and it doesn’t affect how many shoes he’ll sell one bit.
I still think the garden is special. It always will be special to me. But maybe Knicks fans like me officially need to stop believing that players care as much about the garden as we do. It’ll help to diminish our yearly bout of hope followed by our yearly helping of despair.
