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Tag Archives: New York Knicks

This Is How It Feels

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June 16, 2026
America, Basketball, NBA
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We all got it slightly wrong. After the first round, it was never Knicks in six, as poetic as the phrase imminently is. It was Knicks in ’26.

Down double-digits yet again at halftime, I nevertheless had full confidence, after all of what we’d already seen, that the New York Knicks were going to win the championship. I told Megan, Steve and anybody else who would listen. They believed, for they had also borne witness.

Believe though I did that this would be the ultimate outcome, more or less for the transitive property than for any other reason once the San Antonio Spurs literally and metaphorically got the Oklahoma City Thunder out of the paint, I was nervous for every one of these games.

Only at the final whistle on Saturday night did I feel an unfamiliar warmth in the familiar heat of the East Village. We marched from Avenue A up to Madison Square Garden, high-fiving strangers and chanting the various Knicks chants. This is why you live in New York City. This is when it feels like nine million become one, for this team, on a gorgeous June night. The country’s biggest city became not much more than one giant neighborhood for the duration of this run. All the pieces matter.

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“Everyone’s Pretty Excited”

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June 12, 2026
Basketball, NBA, Sports
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“Everybody stayed.”

After the fact, once we’d escaped the throngs of the initial wave down one avenue, and eventually to another, it was a pointed observation about the bar on 40th Street where we’d taken in the entire occasion. When it looked in doubt, New York Knicks fans retreated to scornful, Costanza-esque chuckles and the related feeling of having been kicked in the head while retaining no visible bruises.

But all of those fans stayed to watch the second half. After everything so far in this playoff run, it seemed fair. Sometimes, the celestial reward arrives. Better yet: sometimes the celestial reward arrives in the form of a huge fan of scarves, Anne Hathaway and Olympic gymnastics.

Taking advantage of a momentarily-paralyzed San Antonio Spurs backline, OG Anunoby floated down the lane and, more quickly than the eyes nor camera could capture, tipped in a Jalen Brunson missed three to put the Knicks up one. Thanks to Anunoby et al., there is now a basketball Hand Of God – Pope Leo notably having gone to Villanova – and it was perfectly legal. One Karl-Anthony Towns-led defensive stop later, and the Knicks of New York are up in the NBA Finals, 3-1.

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In The Costume Of A Monk

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June 10, 2026
Sports
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In stark contrast to my circumstances during Game 2, I was hyper-aware, too much even, during Game 3. Standing in a midtown east bar with ex-college roommates and friend of the program Shannon, most of us decked out in blue and orange, I couldn’t avoid it had I tried: the standard slow Knicks start; the comeback and halftime lead (!); and, finally, Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle grinding San Antonio to its first NBA Finals game win since 2014, 115-111, cutting the Knicks lead to 2-1 in the series.

As his scoring has increased in each game, so has Wemby’s interior presence. Despite Karl-Anthony Towns’ stout defense carrying into Game 3, Victor was above the rim and closer to it more often than he had been all series. He had three blocks and generally seemed calmer than he had in either of the games back in San Antonio, though his uncharacteristically vengeful shove on Jalen Brunson, and subsequent mocking of him, might not all the way fit into the Shaolin lifestyle.

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Bounding, Astounding

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June 6, 2026
America, Basketball, NBA
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By the time my stomach had settled down, following the remarks at the wedding but not too long thereafter, it began to tighten again. I headed back to Brooklyn and tried my best to ignore it, but: the wedding party had settled in a place that had Game 2 of the NBA Finals on the screens. Unbeknownst to pretty much everyone else involved, it was time for the New York Knicks.

Through the first half, I tried my best to ignore it – really, I did, honest. When I felt my eyes stray for too long, I would shake myself back, trying to be present, trying to pay any amount of attention from a dwindling account. It was, coincidentally, also my parents’ wedding anniversary. I wasn’t ever going to forget any of this. Aside from a Knicks Spritz in the name of the gang, I mostly think I held it together in not talking about what was happening so apparently in front of me.

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Act I, In Two Plays

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June 4, 2026
Sports
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After all of that in the first three quarters, the multiple injury scares and the slightly-off shooting, Jalen Brunson tapped out an offensive rebound officially credited to Mikal Bridges, stepped over to the corner, and earned his first NBA Finals “BANG!” from Mike Breen by nailing a three over a diving Stephon Castle with 1:50 left in the fourth quarter.

Karl-Anthony Towns, the hero of the evening for his extensive two-way effort against Victor Wembanyama as well as his extremely effective stewardship of New York’s offense in Brunson’s absences, was yet again busy holding Wemby back in the paint.

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2000-Zero-Zero

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June 2, 2026
Sports
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This is it: it’s time for us to go to the wire. With one team having punched its ticket to the championship round over a week ago, and the other having had to punch its way through the widely-regarded toughest matchup in the league, the NBA Finals are finally set. For the first time since 2014, the San Antonio Spurs are returning to what’s become familiar ground since 1999.

At the same time, for these Spurs as well as the rest of the NBA, it is new territory because, for the eighth time in the last eight seasons, there will be a non-repeat NBA champion. None of the San Antonio players has even won a playoff series as a member of this franchise before this season. Parity being Adam Silver’s singular objective for the first decade of his stewardship of basketball bodes well for the league’s shift into international markets, at least as a roadmap. All anyone needs is a roadmap.

If Victor Wembanyama has anything to do with it, though, that tide may soon turn. Has he arrived ahead of schedule, or perhaps have his teammates? Is San Antonio going to auger in a new period of parity before it had a chance to launch? The short answer: not if Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks have anything to say about it in the next three weeks.

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The New York Knicks Are Going To The NBA Finals

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May 26, 2026
Sports
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The duality and imminent reality afoot is this: I can’t look at anybody and tell them that I didn’t think this was going to happen. I did; I wrote as much in October. This is the team, and this is their time.

This is it: the New York Knicks are going to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999. On the other side of the table, now that we’re allowed to discuss the surreality we are all about to experience, remains a best-of-three series between increasingly battered squads, both of whom are playing some of the best basketball mere mortals have ever seen. 

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Dust My Broom

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May 10, 2026
Sports
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Sitting at a place around the corner early Sunday afternoon, I openly pondered whether I had been alive when the New York Knicks last swept a series. In a knowing nod to my predilection for superstition, the other party replied, “You shouldn’t have said that.” 

As it turns out, I was – a conference semis sweep over, of all teams, the Atlanta Hawks in 1999 –  but the feeling that accompanied the Knicks’ 144-114 Game 4 win over the Philadelphia 76ers on Sunday is not at all what it feels like to be a Knicks fan generally. The Knicks don’t sweep series; they go down 2-1, like they did in the first round against those very Hawks, before making every subsequent brush with disaster the most heart-stopping affair possible. The Knicks play (and, recently anyway, win) close games. They don’t play close series.

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Game: A Recap

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May 1, 2026
Sports
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Since 1972, the same year in which The Omni opened in Atlanta, the taking (that is, the killing, capturing, selling, trading and/or transport) of protected migratory bird species without prior authorization by the Department of the Interior is prohibited under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, as amended via an agreement with Japan in 1972. First violation fines may reach $100k, maybe a year in prison if it suits you. 

Rather than leaving it to a federal approval that hmm might never arrive, the New York Knicks engaged in some taking (that is, killing, capturing, selling, trading and/or transport) of some old avian foes. While hawks are a protected species, the Atlanta Hawks knew no protection from OG Anunoby, who led the Knicks to an NBA playoff record 47-point halftime lead and, ultimately, a 140-89 series-clinching victory over the charred fowl.

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Prelude, 2026

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April 17, 2026
Basketball, NBA
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On Tuesday night, the NBA put forth the best opening night of the play-in era by a considerable margin. Opening proceedings, the Miami Heat met the Charlotte Hornets, the former with its ostensibly altruistic #HeatCulture, the latter with a singularly special do-everything point guard who should possibly only drive and also never drive again. 

To the former: a last-second layup from LaMelo Ball extinguished the Heat, setting up a date with fellow division rivals the Orlando Magic, themselves at a team crossroads going into the summer. Charlotte enters ablaze. Well, the thing with Bam, whatever happened there–

In the late game, Jrue Holiday reminded you that he’s won NBA championships, plural, in past lives, delivering the Portland Trail Blazers to a land that nobody promised: the 7-seed, to face off against the San Antonio Spurs. Frustratingly, and despite their best efforts, the Phoenix Suns remain in the present. Courtesy of the Wednesday game, Phoenix now has the opportunity to face the Golden State Warriors, fresh off a deconstruction of Kawhi Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers.

Standing two games away from us, finally, are the NBA playoffs. Breathe in; exhale.

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