Now We Can Die In Peace

The Knicks are World Champions.

When I was 11 years old, a team that I barely knew existed 12 months earlier made me cry myself to sleep.

It was June 22, 1994, at the Summit in Houston, Texas.

I’m not even sure I knew what state Houston was in, only that they had a basketball team, and that basketball team was better than our basketball team, my beloved Knicks

And they were beloved. Even though my father had only just introduced me to this sport the previous fall, I had become fully hooked on this team in that very short span of time. I don’t know what it was that got me so addicted. I’d been to baseball and football games, but neither latched onto me like basketball, and specifically like the Knicks, who I could tell instantly were very, very good, even knowing nothing about the NBA.

Watching the nightly battles of Patrick, Oak, Starks and Mase became a part of my routine, like soccer practice or Sunday mass, except unlike those events, every Knicks game I watched carried with it the promise of exhilaration. Often times, that promise was fulfilled. I loved the fact that we were usually the better team. I liked hearing the platitudes that were sung about them on sports radio. I yearned to read Mike Lupica’s regular tributes in the paper. I felt such joy anytime I put on that No. 33 jersey and got to wear it around my friends. I enjoyed everything about being a Knicks fan.

Most of all, I loved that there was always a tomorrow. Even after losses, they’d play another game. The fun kept going, and going, and going, with no end in sight. When the playoffs started - what exactly the playoffs were, I probably couldn’t say, but I knew they were important - things didn’t change. We beat the Nets, and then the Bulls, and then the Pacers, and surely we would beat the Rockets, because that’s what the Knicks did. They won. And they would keep winning until there were no games left.

Or so I thought, right up until that night - June 22, 1994 - when the music stopped, and another team got to sit in the only chair that remained.

I didn’t understand it. The thought of the Knicks not having another game to win was such a foreign concept to me that I cried myself to sleep less out of sadness than out of disbelief. It’s like someone told me Santa Clause wasn’t real. The brief incubation period of innocence had expired, replaced by the harsh reality of fandom.

Before long - maybe the next morning, I don’t remember - I got over it, realizing that, hey, the Knicks would have another chance to win it all next year. Surely they would climb the mountain then. They had to. They were the Knicks. My beloved Knicks.

And then next year came and again ended in heartbreak, this time even earlier, and of a more painful kind. The pattern repeated the next year, and the next year after that, and the next year after that. 1999 brought a magical run, and even though it too ended prematurely, I was weathered enough in my fandom to appreciate the accomplishment for what it was, which was a longer run than any reasonable person could have ever anticipated.

But it still wasn’t a title.

From there, the years began to pass like waves crashing against a shoreline. The pain of those earlier disappointments gave way to a new kind of tragedy, one that an 11-year-old me couldn’t possibly have envisioned in my darkest nightmares.

Five years became 10, 10 years became 20, 20 years became 30. Over that time, I’d dipped in and out of die hard fandom several times as life took hold in ways that relegate pastimes to their rightful place in the pecking order. Still, I never let go of the rope, which is to say that the Knicks’ success (or lack thereof, usually to an extreme degree) never ceased to have real, genuine meaning to me. Far more meaning than it should, frankly, and that was even before I decided to turn my pastime into something more, and watched as it eventually transformed into my profession.

As that evolution took place, I wondered whether turning my fandom into a full time job would impact how deeply I cared. It did, but not in the way I might have anticipated. Now, I wanted it even more. I wanted it for me, yes, but I wanted it for all the people I interacted with on a daily basis. People whose stories I’d heard and read and internalized as if they were my own. People who, like me, didn’t know where to find the off switch, and even if they did, wouldn’t have had the will power to use it.

What I started to realize, and what crystalized once the team became a full-fledged contender two years ago, is that my fandom, like the fandom of so many, had morphed into something else entirely. No longer was it a matter or rooting or wanting or hoping. We were now on a mission - a mission to see this team do something that we’d long thought wasn’t possible. A mission to overcome all the odds, all the doubters, and all of the history that said a team built in their mold, with their personnel, was not fit for June basketball.

The first mission began last April, and after the highest of highs, we were reminded how deep the lows could be. 31 years after I cried myself to sleep, Tyrese Haliburton put me right back in my childhood bedroom like no time had passed at all. After that loss, in that fashion, for the first time in my life, I wondered whether all the stress was worth it.

This time, it wasn’t nearly as easy to talk myself into “there’s always next year.” I’d been through three decades worth of next years. At some point, it’s probably best to take the hint the universe is sending you. I would never stop rooting, never stop hoping, and never stop engaging in this project that seemed to give so many people so much joy.

But belief? I wondered if after all these years, my supply had finally run out. I had become resigned to the fact that there would always be a void that existed within me, the one created back in 1993, that could only be filled by seeing the Knicks win a championship. There were certainly worse fates in life. It wasn’t the end of the world. It was only sports, after all.

If only I possessed those powers of self-persuasion.

As the playoffs began, and we trailed Atlanta, the void seemed to grow. I became more convinced than ever that my grandchildren would have a better chance of seeing the Knicks win a championship than I ever would. We’d missed our chance last season. Game 1 would live on in that void rent free, likely until I no longer had it in me to write or talk about this team.

And then a funny thing happened:

We won. And then we won again. And we won again, and again, and again.

As the wins piled up, you would think that the void grew weaker. That the victories, resounding as they were, batted down its defenses, causing it to cave in on itself like a fort being attacked from all sides.

Not so. If anything, the opposite was true. Each win only reinforced that when the inevitable moment of truth came, it would bear more heartbreak and more suffering than anything that came before it.

A sweep against Philly. A sweep against Cleveland. Taking the first two against San Antonio. Completing the largest comeback in playoff history in the most dramatic fashion possible. One win away from glory. One lousy, measly victory away from eternity.

By this point, the void was working overdrive to sustain itself, but it refused to collapse. Down 15 with under 15 to go, it was as if none of the previous 15 victories had even occurred. One win away from glory might as well have been 100. The total inversion of my experience watching the Knicks 32 years ago was complete. What was once a team I believed would find a way to win was now a team I was convinced would find a way to lose, despite all the evidence of the previous two months pointed to the fact that all they did was find ways to win. This was the maddening dichotomy festering inside of me - the only reality my conditioning would allow me to accept.

Even after yet another rally, and yet another chapter to add to a tome of comebacks that was now more robust than ever, I waited for the heartbreak.

OG at the line, 7.7 to go, misses the first. That was the opening. He would miss the second, the Spurs would get the ball, and somehow, some way, would get off a three, or get to the line, make the first, miss the second, put back the rebound, and win in overtime. Game 6 and Game 7 would follow the same script.

We would not win. We could not win. The void would never be filled. Not as long as I was rooting for the outcome that would fill it.

These were the thoughts that flooded my mind as the second free throw fell through the net.

I saw it, understood it, knew what it meant. I quickly went through the various scenarios that would have to unfold for the Knicks to now lose, but before I could even get past the first of those, Wembanyama’s shot missed, falling into the hands of a Knick, and no Spur was there to foul and extend the game.

That was it. It was over.

They had done it.

The void, 32 years in the making, was finally gone.

As tears of joy filled up my eyes, I knew what I was watching, and yet I still didn’t believe it. I watched one Knick after another raise the Larry O’Brien trophy high above their head, including Jalen Brunson, who solidified his place in franchise history, NBA history and New York sports history all at once. I watched them celebrate this achievement they’d worked their entire lives to celebrate, and still, I didn’t believe it. As hour one of the postgame show became hour 10 of the postgame show, and I read the comments of literally hundreds of fans who had spent their lives praying for and dreaming about this day, I still didn’t believe it.

Even now, after writing every word you just read, and taking you on a journey that I know every one of you has your own version of, I still…don’t…believe…what happened.

But it did happen.

The New York Knicks are champions of basketball.

The New York Knicks are champions of basketball.

The New York Knicks are champions of basketball.

Eventually, if I write it and say it and read it enough times, I know it will sink in.

Just not yet.

32 years is a long time. Too long, apparently, to erase in an instant, or a night, or even a morning.

That’s fine. I’ve waited this long. What’s another few hours, or days, or even weeks.

However long it takes, I know the wait will have been worth it.

Because whenever the reality finally, fully takes hold, there will be no taking it away.

The Knicks are champions, today, tomorrow, and forever.

They did it.

They really, actually, finally did it.