To be a real Knicks fan, you must own a fortitude that other team fanbases aren’t required to have.
Your patience, passion, emotional disconnection, recognition and resolve must be strong if you plan on keeping your mental capacity intact.
Real Knicks fans know what I’m talking about because they’ve experienced the pain of bleeding blue and orange.
The Knicks will give you thrilling moments and then rip your heart out in the biggest games.
They will dominate the best teams for three quarters and then falter in crunch time.
That’s what I, along with Knicks fans of my age, have experienced as we continue to hope for a revival of the glory days of the 70s and 90s.
The 2022-23 team is led by All-Star Julius Randle, RJ Barrett and Jalen Brunson, who more than deserved to be an All-Star this year.
Randle, the Knicks’ 2x All-Star is having a career year in points (25.2), rebounds (10.4) and three-pointers attempted (8.3) and deserves his accolades.
Barrett is a model of consistency. He’s averaged double digits in scoring every year, including this season (19.8).
Brunson, the floor leader the team has lacked for so long, has surprised many with his play. The fifth-year player out of Villanova is averaging a career-high in points (23.8), assists (6.1) and three-point shooting (41.4%). His play has silenced the doubters who questioned whether he’s worth his hefty four-year, $104 million contract.
The Knicks also have good depth off the bench with Immanuel Quickley, Obi Toppin, Isaiah Hartenstein and the newly acquired Josh Hart.
The team is currently in the sixth playoff spot with 12 games remaining and has a good chance at moving up a few spots before the end of the season.
That the Knicks are relevant, and in the playoffs, is great for New York and the NBA in general.
But New York continues to lack what they lost when they traded Patrick Ewing to Seattle in 2000- a true superstar.
If the lottery balls had bounced the right way, the team could have had Ja Morant or Zion Williamson; while they both have their issues, they both have superstar power.
Had drafted properly in 2017, they could have selected Donovan Mitchell or Bam Adebayo.
And we won’t even discuss the selection of Frederic Weis.
The organization’s inability to acquire a superstar has put the Knicks behind their outer-borough rival, the Brooklyn Nets. The Nets assembled not one but two “Big Three” teams- Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Joe Johnson (2013) and Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden (2021). While the Nets ultimately failed to win a title with either team, the fact remains that Brooklyn was able to create those teams while the Knicks couldn’t.
That allowed the Nets to steal some of their rival’s thunder in the city.
The Knicks need a superstar to build a team, organization and city-wide presence around. The inability to find one has frustrated long-suffering fans.
Yet despite the playoff droughts, losing seasons, internal turmoil, poor management, bad drafts, horrendous trades and lack of superstar talent, fans haven’t abandoned the Knicks. It’s hard to explain the devotion Knicks fans have and why the love and loyalty for a team that has ripped our hearts out so many times never dissipates.
The latest heartache is a nine-game winning streak that morphed into a three-game losing streak, which included a bad loss at home to the Eastern Conference cellar-dweller Charlotte Hornets. New York gave fans a similar bout of agita in December when an eight-game winning streak was followed by a five-game losing streak that included ugly losses to the Raptors, Bulls and Spurs, all of whom have losing records.
Those maddening losses further frustrate fans who support the team in every arena across the country.
A day after losing to the Clippers, the Knicks beat the Lakers on Sunday night in a close game that put them back on the winning track.
New York will face Portland Tuesday to conclude its four-game west coast road trip. They then return to the Garden against the Western Conference-leading Denver Nuggets on Saturday.
So will the Knicks show up against a struggling Trailblazers team or will they play down to Portland’s level? Will they elevate their game against Denver or falter to a top team? We have to wait and see.
Yet despite the uncertainty, heartache and inconsistency, we love and hate our New York Knicks all the same.
But we’ll never give them up.
