Save your own life and get caught up with the Knicks today

In an incredible triumph over the defending NBA champions and every ESPN basketball expert at the sports shout factory, the New York damn Knicks have made it to the Eastern Conference Finals by dispatching the Boston Celtics straight to Hell. Given that the Knicks haven’t made the conference finals for 25 years, this is the most exciting thing that has happened in many Knicks fans’ lives, outshining individual achievements, marriages or births of children. 

I mean personally I haven’t done any of those things but I can say with confidence that this ECF appearance is more meaningful to Knicks fans. After all, you celebrate a child or a marriage every year, while for an entire quarter century, Knicks fans have not had the opportunity to enjoy basketball past the middle of May. And to be more accurate, most of the last 25 years has meant the basketball enjoyment has ceased sometime in November.

If you haven’t had a Knicks fan explain to you just what the deal is with the ‘Bockers and their hated rivals, the vile Indiana Pacers, I am here to do that so you too can enjoy the ride the Knicks are on. Perhaps you are thinking you’d like to opt out of the ride? Well you can’t, there will be no escaping the flames if the Knicks win a championship or even make the NBA Finals. The Knicks/Pacers rivalry spans decades and has involved blood and fists, and this latest chapter now has Knicks players themselves sharing videos comparing themselves to the Fremen from Dune. Nothing about what’s coming will be normal.

Your life may depend on your ability to answer the question “What did Mikal Bridges shoot from the field tonight?” The city’s most fervent fan base, beaten down for years, finds itself four wins from the NBA Finals and is now primed to explode all over some fools. Every Knicks victory from here on out threatens to snarl traffic for 10 blocks surrounding Madison Square Garden. Every Knicks loss threatens to do the same for 20 blocks. The mayoral race may turn on Andrew Cuomo being ambushed by an influencer and being unable to name a single Knicks starter (do not show him my explanation of who they are). Mayor Adams himself has co-named 15 streets for all 15 members of the Knicks roster. If you are not yet a Knicks fan this is your last chance to save yourself.

Why are Timothée Chalamet and Zellnor Myrie and Zohran Mamdani and Dave Colon so excited about the Knicks?
I’ll spare you two decades of basketball trauma to cut right to the point: after years of being one of the most toxic waste dumps in the NBA, the Knicks have made the playoffs in four out of the last five years, and are on the cusp of the NBA Finals for the first time since the year 2000. It’s an unbelievable moment for a franchise that for years was synonymous with “ass,” “joke,” “putrid,” “broken,” “incompetent,” 

Okay fine I get it. Who are the Guys who brought them here?
The Knicks recent run of success starts with Jalen Brunson, their point guard who’s generously listed at 6 '2". Despite his small stature (for basketball, Bruson is taller than me), Brunson has an incredible ability to get himself near the basket, dribble, contort his body and get the ball in the basket over the outstretched arms of guys who are 7, 8, 9 inches taller than him. He also has an iron will and a penchant for the dramatic and as such he was named the NBA’s Clutch Player of the Year (brought to you by Kia).

Joining Brunson as starters are two of his former college teammates from Villanova. Josh Hart is a high-energy guy who’s one of the best undersized rebounders in basketball and kept playing in a game last series after his face exploded into a geyser of blood. Fellow Villanovaa alum Mikal Bridges was a Brooklyn Net last year, until the Knicks traded five future draft picks for him during the offseason. Knicks fans were a little grumpy about that one until Bridges ended the first two games against the Celtics with dramatic last-second defensive highlights, the kinds of plays worth at least five draft picks. 

Then there’s O.G. Anunoby, owner of the richest free agency contract the Knicks have ever given out, who does a little bit of everything on the court and is especially counted on to defend the other team’s best offensive player. 

And rounding out the starters is Karl-Anthony Towns, a New Jersey-born former first overall draft pick who the Knicks made a shocking trade for just before the season started. KAT is seven feet tall and can bang around near the basket, but handles the ball with the grace of a much smaller guy, and can shoot three-pointers on top of that. He does have a habit of committing very stupid fouls and disappearing for stretches or entire games, and is the guy you are most likely to hear Knicks fans complaining about.

You’re really only gonna see two guys come off the bench for the Knicks with any regularity: Mitchell Robinson and Miles “Deuce” McBride. Robinson is an oft-injured backup center who vacuums up rebounds and plays terrifying defense thanks to his extremely long arms and great instincts. McBride is a guard who’s established himself as an excellent three-point shooter with a gorgeous high-arcing shot. When he takes an open three, everyone at the bar around you will probably yell “DEUUUUCE” as he does so.

How about the vile Indiana Pacers, they’ve got some Guys yeah?
They do but I will admit that I didn’t really pay much attention to Indiana this year. In some ways the Pacers are like a photo negative of the Knicks, or even a Bizarro Knicks They have their own point guard through which all things flow in Tyrese Halliburton, but he puts pressure on the defense by screaming up the court at top speed instead of expertly dribbling bigger defenders into confusion. The Pacers have a center who can shoot three-pointers in Myles Turner, though he doesn’t bang for rebounds like KAT. Forward Pascal Siakam plays a similar game to OG Anunoby and both of them were traded to their current teams last year by the same team, the Toronto Raptors. The Pacers even have a former Knick, in the person of Obi Toppin, a former first-round draft pick who never really broke through in New York but has made himself a career in Indiana.

But I think instead of considering the Pacers as a collection of guys, you should think of the franchise as a malevolent cosmic entity that exists in opposition to the Knicks and possibly even to New York City itself. The Knicks and Pacers had an intense, physical rivalry in the ’90s, facing off in six playoff series between 1993 and 2000 in battles that involved headbutts, fights and much taunting of Spike Lee. The Pacers actually beat the Knicks the last time the team made the conference finals in 2000, setting in motion the Knicks’ journey into the toilet that’s encompassed most of the 21st century. 

Once the Knicks climbed out of the pit that they found themselves in, the Pacers were waiting for them and eliminated the delightful 2012-13 squad with Carmelo Anthony and a bunch of guys in their mid-30s, which kicked off another near-decade of futility for the Knicks. And THEN, just last year, the Pacers beat a Knicks team that was really promising and fun right up until the moment guys just kept getting hurt and they basically ended the season looking like this. The Pacers are not a basketball franchise, they are a vehicle for generational trauma.

Generational trauma, be serious man
Okay fine, but it’s been such a long time since the Knicks were on the precipice of making the NBA Finals. Twenty-five years is not 100 years, and it’s not like the last time the Knicks were good TV broadcasts were in black and white. But the TVs were all much larger and clunkier and the hottest version of one you could find had a VCR attached to it. I mean look at what life was like back … in the year 2000:

• The median rent in New York City was $630 per month which is less for a full apartment than I paid for a single room in the McKibbin Lofts. Now the median rent is $3,397 per month.
• The subway cost $1.50, and you could still pay for it using tokens. That was also the price of a slice of pizza, which you had to pay money for.
• Face value for a Knicks playoff ticket in the second round of the playoffs, featuring this sleek basketball robot for some reason, was $100. The cheapest ticket for the first round of this year’s playoffs was $289. Don’t think you’re spared from this if you prefer song and dance to dribbling and shooting: An average Broadway ticket cost $56 last time the Knicks were in the conference finals and it’s $134,96 today.
• There were two free citywide weekly alternative press newspapers, the New York Press and the Village Voice, where people could actually make a living in the journalism industry. 
• Farther away from home, there were 5.98 million square kilometers of Arctic sea ice in 2000, which is less than the 7.5 million square kilometers in 1980 but more than the 4.28 million square kilometers in 2024.

It was a different, unrecognizable world the last time the Knicks were truly competing for an NBA championship, and their inability to make a conference championship has made them strangers in their own city, somehow more incompetent than even the local teams pitied and scorned as history’s greatest losers. The Mets have made it to two World Series and two more National League Championship games since 2000. The Jets, a franchise whose logo should be the “This is not a place of honor” nuclear waste warning, made consecutive AFC Championship games in 2009 and 2010. 

To some degree this explains why celebrating Knicks fans threw garbage bags at a guy in a Pacers jersey last week. The other degree which explains that is, well, professional sports fans are not very nice. But at MSG, fans have been driven insane by years of longing. You know about longing, don’t you? Deep, soulful yearning, the hope that just one good thing will actually happen in your life. 

So even if you’re not ready to toss a welcome garbage can at the first person you see stepping off a flight landing from Indianapolis International Airport, you have to be ready for spiritual battle with the horrible Midwest and everything they stand for. It’s been 25 years since we were here and there’s no guarantee it won’t be another 25 years.

So … Knicks in six?
Sure yes let’s go with that.