They Didn’t Quit So We Didn’t Either

The thing about “Losing My Edge” is that it only started as a joke. The song to anyone who heard it within two or so years of its release — basically any point before the first LCD Soundsystem album came out, by which time the project was already a known name in certain circles — would’ve come across as a very obvious prod at contemporary hipster culture by a guy who was 32 and just about to hit that age when you actually do give up on new music. But a funny accident happened once James Murphy broke containment: People unfamiliar with those underside-of-the-iceberg depths of indie music culture used it as an abacus, an education. It went from a joke to something serious.

The arc of time has horseshoed back on “Losing My Edge” eventually, of course, much like the project itself. From a one-man studio lark to a self-titled full-length to Murphy’s ballooning band of friends to “All My Friends” karaoke and shows, concerts, stadiums, the seriousness of Madison Square Garden, the DVD and the interviews and the finality of a band that went further than expected, schooled a generation of adolescents eager for culture and ended on its own terms … it then turned back on itself to Murphy’s wine bar experiment, the (good, actually) Christmas song returning their toes to the water, a new single, new album, reunion shows, reunion tours, the joke resurfacing. Wanna know what it’s like hearing a 56-year-old lament art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered ‘80s? Well, I can tell you firsthand: It’s not that the kids in his audiences these days don’t remember the ‘80s, it’s that their parents don’t.

We laughed in the beginning, we took it seriously for what was probably too long a stretch, and finally, we did better than merely smile — we laughed again. We’re laughing the whole way out from here.

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If the 2025-26 New York Knicks aren’t one of the most analyzed basketball teams in history — and here I’d put them up against the ‘92 Dream Team, the ‘95-’96 Bulls, maybe the ‘11-’12 Heat or the ‘15-’16 Cavs — it’s not just because anyone with a platform and an opinion to air it on can. New York is the biggest media market in the country. You’ve seen the X’s and O’s, the arrows detailing the routes, the wide-open corner threes, the physical dunks, The Tip-In, flung balls, the Good Morning America and Seth Myers interviews, Elmo’s redemption arc, the parade, Mikal’s dog, Mitch’s truck, Mamdani leading off the slew of never weres with University of South Carolina graduate Renaldo Balkman. I’m not gonna bore you rehashing any of that, and anyway, you’re zero degrees removed from someone who was, as they say, there.

Instead, I want to run back once more the contours of this title run from the outside, how it felt away from being locked in at a Malaysian restaurant in the East Village, away from New York City and the pandemonium and the devoted seasonal grind of being an avid basketball fan finally paying off. And there’s really no better place to start than with the end, a 4-1 drubbing the other way at the hands of the streaking Indiana Pacers, roughly this time last year. We smiled then because what else could you do but appreciate the tenacity of both the Knicks and the Pacers, either of whom would’ve put a scare into the Oklahoma City Thunder in large part because both teams were of a mindset that refused to know when it was beaten. It was good basketball, really, better basketball than the outcome suggested and the Eastern Conference had been given credit for. And though the ultimate result felt inevitable in retrospect, it’s worth pausing here to wonder how inevitable Game 7’s result would have felt had Tyrese Halliburton stayed healthy. Alas, we’ll never know.

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In the modern NBA, health is a perpetual talking point. So when we previewed the 2025-26 season right where you’re reading and this site’s purveyor put a name to the champion asking a question echoed in former eras by Russell Westbrook and Steve Spurrier to name but two, I had to laugh. The Thunder were basically unchanged. Victor Wembanyama was a year older. Luka, LeBron and the Lakers had had time to adjust to one another. Jokic and the Nuggets were at a crossroads, for better or worse. Anthony Edwards and the Timberwolves looked formidable. And that was just the West — on the other side of the bracket were the congealing Pistons, the playoff-tested Cavaliers, the Celtics, the Sixers. Even with the Pacers out of the way given Halliburton’s long recovery, could the Knicks cut through all of that over the course of a season? It was funny to think so. Still, I knew what I saw in 2024-25. So I steeled myself ahead of the season, renewed my belief, took it from the top, slate cleaned, believed Rory. Sure man, why not?

Then came the games. It won’t surprise you to learn that unless you know your bartender and the place is dead, local TVs in Chicago during the NBA season are locked on either the Bulls or the Blackhawks regardless of how they’re doing. Lately, neither has been especially noteworthy, a few seasons of Josh Giddey and Connor Bedard notwithstanding. The Bulls might’ve started hot at 5-0, but the ground truth was that this bunch was always going to crash back to Earth; sure enough, a seven-game losing streak in late November coupled with an 11-game losing streak in February (a new one-month losing record, surpassing a 10-game streak from 1976) put any notion of pleasant surprise to bed. Nevertheless, the TVs stayed on until the late games started showing and last calls were announced.

A passing word on the Bears here. NFL games don’t typically interfere with Bulls broadcasts, but even if they had, it was clear in most places I went which game would take priority. As someone who almost never watches sports from home because I believe in the power of communal experience coupled with a little lighthearted tribalism, bearing (ahem) witness to the 2025-26 Bears was an unusually fun run. The first time I felt how infectious the joy of this team could be was the comeback against Joe Flacco and the Bengals; I couldn’t remember a bar erupting like that previously. With limited investment in the outcome, it was pure entertainment to see such a last-gasp exchange. But the real litmus tests were the last two matchups against the hated Packers, each game of which I made a point of being out to see. The memory that sticks out most in my mind is being seated at an absolutely packed bar alongside a longtime Bears fan to my left late in the fourth quarter of the Week 16 matchup when the Packers were up 10 with about five minutes to play. Green Bay had just scored a field goal and the two Packers fans in the bar were noisily effusive; my guy closed his tab and turned to me to say, “This one’s finished, I can’t watch this again.” (The Packers had beaten the Bears 28-21 just two weeks before.) I sent him off saying safe home and returned to the game. What the hell, I thought, I have nowhere else to be and there’s still time on the clock. Plus, I’d seen stranger things happen.

What ensued was the first of two Bears comebacks against the Packers over the next month. Caleb Williams’ videogame lobs falling into just the right hands at just the right time are why we watch anything like this. The bar went bananas, strangers exchanged high fives, tabs stayed open. You had to laugh. This is what it’s all about, right? Believing even when it feels stupid and you think you’ve been here before? That old Chris Berman truism holds: That’s why they play the game.

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You may be wondering where the Knicks are in all of this. That’s kind of the point: They were grinding, sure, but not on any TV set I could see beyond a late SportsCenter highlight reel, yet that never-say-die mentality of the Brunson era bled into other sports viewing. I could tell because it was what kept me in my seat watching the Bears over and over. It’s what had me turning my head to the Dodgers-Blue Jays World Series finale at just the right time. It’s what kept me around for anonymous midseason OT Blue Jackets games or stirring WTA comebacks or Rory McIlroy’s Masters win. I didn’t even see a minute of the NBA Cup and honestly kind of forgot about it; call me old-fashioned, but in my opinion, no one deserves a Halfway There Trophy. I’d check in occasionally during the cold months to see how the team was holding up, but unless you’re a true hoops nerd, the season doesn’t really start to take a direction until after the Super Bowl has been played. Anything could happen. It’s not worth agonizing over.

And yet, and yet. As we passed the harshest cold of the year, there they were hovering toward the top of the Eastern Conference — outpaced by Detroit and Boston, never mind OKC and San Antonio, but still in the conversation. Winter turned to spring, snow melted, grass grew, flowers bloomed, squirrels emerged hungry. I’d never doubted the Knicks could be good, and they were certainly a playoff-caliber team, but whether or not they could be good enough beyond that was another question that would have to wait for Atlanta.

I can tell you the moment my investment in this team leveled up beyond ambient background noise. It’s a text on my phone from 7:25pm the night of April 30 from a friend of the program that says, simply,

“I, uh, just saw the Knicks score. What?”

Given three comfortable victories and two excruciating losses, this could have meant anything. But when I checked the score — 72-22 at its most egregious, in case anyone needs reminding — I realized this series was over, that the Knicks had not folded despite being down 2-1 in the series, that we had something worthy of appointment viewing here. I knew better than to get comfortable, but instead of relaxing with a lead like that, I felt my blood pressure increase. It went from a joke to something serious.

Some snapshots from the ensuing weeks: There were the Philly blowouts, the last of which I watched seated in a Boystown (excuse me, Northalsted) sports bar beholding the unreal spectacle of seemingly every three the team threw up actually going in well beyond strict necessity, a completely unfamiliar feeling. In a rural Wisconsin hotel bar previously mentioned around these parts, I wound down for the night watching Game 1 of the Cavs series with some co-workers and a stray stranger evidently rooting for the Knicks after a long drive. Down 22 in the third, the guy (again to my left, always to my left) closed out his tab and told me he couldn’t be bothered to witness the rest of this. I told him I’d see him for Game 2, but come on, even I knew better than to look away by now. Over the course of the fourth, I kept glancing back at the TV; my co-workers noticed, too, and slowly the remarks picked up steam. You know how it progresses, can feel the flurry of hope in your bones:

“Huh. They’re finally starting to go in.”
“Looks like they found a rhythm.”
“They’re not out of this.”
“You know, they could still win this.”
“Yup, that’s the team we know and hate to love.”
“That’s overtime.”
“They’re pulling away.”
“They’re actually gonna win this.”
“Huh. They won this.”

If I had to pinpoint a moment when I realized this team really was capable of anything, when “Why not?” lost its humor, it was there, sitting at a bar in the middle of nowhere impressed but not especially dumbstruck because of course this would happen when I had to get up at 5 the next morning, of course they’d drag it all the way out, but — ah, this most of all — of course they’d end up winning. It didn’t feel electric at all, actually; it felt like stormclouds brewing on the towering heights. The Cleveland series would be tough, but if you ask me, Game 1 sealed the outcome psychologically. I was staring down the very real prospect of a Knicks Finals appearance for the first time since the summer before I entered high school. Why not?

I texted Rory after they finished Cleveland off for their 11th straight playoff win that despite the Knicks’ record against San Antonio during the regular season, I’d have preferred Oklahoma City if for no other reason than the doubt of both the ‘99 Finals and the revenge storyline leftover from the NBA Cup. Turns out you get what you get; turns out it also didn’t matter what the Knicks got, they gave. They gave and gave and gave and there was not a single second of the Finals that I felt comfortable, that the end looked inevitable, that the result wasn’t beyond doubt … until it was. All of it in service of a preposterously underrated team, a trophy, a city, a fanbase, a fanbase beyond, immortality for as long as humans have to live down here.

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Enough essays have tied Trump’s rancid presence to the Knicks’ only loss, have tied Brunson’s monetary gambit to the team and the moment, have frozen O.G. in midair forever, have tied this improbable bright light to a way forward from the darkness. I don’t know about any of that; we have to make the bigger decisions for ourselves together, and it’s gonna be a whole lot harder even than rooting for the Knicks. But I’ll tell you what I do know: After a long day wandering the perimeter of the unopened Obama Center before a beer festival before a patio under perfect weather where we sat nervous and tense, then gradually relaxed as they only fell 12 behind before finally erupted when the Finals were finished, there as I fell to my knees before a flatscreen surrounded by old friends and new, everything felt funny again. It went from something serious back to a joke. We were there even if we weren’t there to see the horseshoe fully bend back. It wasn’t a place, it was a moment. A beautiful, improbable, hysterical moment that started when we smirked, we took seriously for what was probably too long a stretch, and then, yes, finally: We did better than merely smile — we laughed again. We’re laughing the whole way out from here.

Like a “Ciao” or an “Aloha,” sure man, why not? Once more, go ahead, say it with me before we send it off forever: Knicks in five.