These Knicks Prove You Don’t Need a Megastar—Just Good Vibes—to Win
Robert SilvermanThey’re not yet championship caliber, and they’re still owned by an arch-villain, but the so-called “Nova Knicks” are the feel-good story of the 2024 playoffs.
Somewhere permanently lodged in the back of my mind, there’s a rusted, creaking file cabinet. Open up any of the overstuffed drawers and you’ll find it crammed with ex-New York Knicks: Utterly forgettable failed prospects, botched draft picks, bored and surly free agent signings, journeymen nobodies.
The truly remarkable failures are there, too. But these odd spreadsheets are mainly littered with the likes of Chris McNealy, Lou Amundson, Randolph Morris, Quincy Acy, Jerrod Mustaf, Lee Nailon, Sergio Rodriguez, things of that nature.
Fans of any bedraggled and misbegotten franchise probably have a similarly well-worn mental inventory tucked away somewhere. It’s an act of self-preservation, in a way. Or at least it is for me. During the truly execrable Knicks seasons—and there have been so, so many—I’ve found myself frequently thumbing through it, maybe lingering on a two-week period where I thought Alexey Shved could be a rotation-grade NBA player. The present may seem hopeless, sure, and the past just as nightmarish, but maybe that doesn’t matter. Perhaps, I’d tell myself, time spent devoted to a thing that doesn't love you back, that never seemed to care, really, whether you paid attention or not, is in its own way not just admirable, but beautiful.
Except now, all those misspent hours are being repaid—with interest. The Knicks are a frighteningly good team.
More than that, they’re a smart, well-constructed outfit, with a clear path towards improvement and, perhaps most shockingly, a wholly competent front office capable of executing their best-laid plans. And yet they’re still owned by James Dolan. James Dolan!
As the final seconds ticked off the clock of the New York Knicks’ 118-115 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers on Thursday night, I could barely muster the energy to move. It was a truly bonkers series, in which every game came down to the wire. The Knicks won four games to two, and by a cumulative total of three points. As a longtime Knicks fan, I watched every single second alternating between an anxiety-riddled, sweat-soaked fetal crouch and howling with joy at decibel levels that pissed off the neighbors.
The best part of all this is that it shouldn’t have worked, or at least not this well, not this soon. Instead, the Knicks, a team defined by its insular, self-destructive paranoia, and short sightedness for most of the 21st century, now boasts an incredibly fun, lovable roster—and here’s the most improbable part of this whole yarn—one that’s been built on the power of friendship.
A brief primer for the uninitiated: In the 1990s the Knicks were good. Goonish, brutish, and ugly, but quite good. The only way to beat Michael Jordan, they surmised, was to play basketball with a hammer in one hand and a burlap sack filled with doorknobs in the other. They failed. For the next 20 years, they went desperately and thirstily hunting for stars. Said stars chose functional teams or ignored the Knicks altogether. They failed again. The on-court product was godawful.
