EnyRants are cool!!!!
His frame of reference is 1990's knicks in the physical era that was Riles.
"X" Man! "Oak" "Spree" over the decade provided the "Sneer" in the hand checking era!
Mine is 1970's. "Hit the open man", The Funk of WOR channel 9 opening theme (Can't find a youtube of it!, Sorry), "Earl the Pearl" doing his thing to the sound track provided by Issac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield while "Dancing Harry" put a whammy on the other team! Cool was not revenge or starting a fight, it was "Clyde" strong enough to not lose it, then steal the ball. Cool was not a dunk, but getting your team back on task. Cool was not making promises about winning, it was about winning. Cool was being strong enough to NOT fight!
Knicks were "The City Game". Now, Knicks are Manhattan while the Nets are making a play for blue collar. The Mecca of basketball is not NY anymore. The soul of the game evaporated into the atmosphere but is now spread world wide. Talented inner city players are jettisoned out of the pavement and sent to boarding schools to prepare for a one and done in schools with blue skies. Instead of honing the game in the playground it is taught in AAU leagues. They are coddled and entitled. Failed prodigy of Marbury and Stevenson have depleted the legends before them. They cannot replace Cousey, Tiny, the Hawk, Mullin, Alcinder, Bernard.........
Every game is televised if you want to pay. "Game of the week" is gone. Its a commodity broadcast around the world.
Expansion has delivered to the game to Canada, Charlotte, New Orleans, Orlando, etc......Nice cities with their own thing. They have fans, they have corp sponsers but they don't have the "Soul" of the game.
Its ok. New era of knick ball is upon us. Some fear globalization as it intrudes on our entitled. We are no longer "the mecca". Knicks have not upheld the title with substance.
Sorry Eny, I respect the past, but the era has been long gone.
But, in the new era, a blond Latvian GodZingis has descended from the heavens not from our very streets, but from lands foreign! Delivered to us from our spiritual leader tanking, the choosen one is not product of the streets, nor recruited by coach Cal or from the belly of Duke or Chapel Hill, but from a small nation of only 2,000,000 people finally independent from Russian/Soviet rule since 1990!
The most unlikely hero most of us would have never imagined to be our savior. Phil has come home, karma will prevail and things will be as it should be in time.
A new soundtrack will emerge..........and we shall prevail!