One of a Kind

The Knicks closed out Philly as only they could.

On Wednesday, I started off the newsletter with a series of apologies. I hoped they’d be the last I’d have to offer for a while. Turns out, I was wrong.

To everyone who opened your inboxes at 5 am and saw no newsletter (I know you’re out there…I see the timestamps on those comments), I apologize. The combination of a 9pm start time and a nearly five hour postgame livestream was too much for me to overcome, so this is coming your way a few minutes late.

If I’m being completely honest, I even had a notion to say “fuck it. They won. Everyone is thrilled. An afternoon edition won’t kill anyone. We’re moving on to the next round, for crying out loud. Who’s going to complain?”

As if.

You know me well enough by now to trust that there was no way I was going to sleep before getting something out.

Why?

Sports. That’s why.

On Tuesday night, with a loss that I feared would stick with me until I was old and gray, I pondered why it is that we do this to ourselves. Open ourselves up to this level of pain over what is, as Jerry Seinfeld famously said, essentially laundry.

Is the juice really worth the squeeze?

Is the joy truly worth the heartache?

If that was all there was too it, the answer is probably no, simply because only one team can win every season, and the math dictates that there will be more sad moments of consequence than happy ones. Sometimes many more.

A team could go literal decades without capturing the ultimate prize. Just ask any Knick fan under the age of 50.

But attaining happiness isn’t our only goal when we watch.

We also watch (and cheer and root and cry and bleed and all the other things that come with the territory of fandom) to get inspired.

Not to go out and try to do what some of the world’s best athletes are able to accomplish on a nightly basis, but to win our own version of a Game 6, on the road, coming off utter heartbreak, when the opponent just engineered a 32-point turnaround and is seemingly rocketing towards a series win with unstoppable momentum.

Whether it’s making a sale, closing a case, curing an illness, or simply making it through a workday in one piece after you’ve stayed up until 6 am writing a newsletter, every one of us can use some inspiration now and again.

Sports, at its best, can provide it in a way that nothing else can, and in over three decades of being a fan, there has never been another team that has made all of us feel like we can take on the world quite like these New York Knicks.

Led by the most improbable superstar in NBA history, guided by a stubborn genius, and bolstered by an unrivaled supporting cast, these Knicks don’t seem to know when their clock has struck midnight. As I wrote on Monday when I deemed them a team in the ultimate image of New York City and all of its “not on my watch” ethos, they just seem to find a way, no matter how high the deck is stacked against them.

Many of us love this team, both collectively and for the individual components that make it up. They are easy to love, mostly because they win, but also because of how they win. They make you fight for a mile just to grab an inch. Get the inch? Prepare to fight for another mile. And another afte that. And another. And another.

There is no end to their relentlessness. No way out of the gauntlet. Thinking back to a movie that was released a month after the Knicks made their last NBA Finals appearance, opponents playing them must feel like they are in their own version of the Blair Witch Project. What a fright it must be to feel like you are nearly out of the woods - perhaps, say, by overcoming a 22-point first quarter deficit to take a 10-point lead midway through the third - only to find that you’re right back where you started, in a dogfight to the death with a team that has nine lives and an infinite reserve of energy.

Should they give so much when they have been granted so little? Probably not.

Is there an ounce of pity in their locker room? Good luck finding it.

Gone is their All-NBA power forward. Done for the year is their midseason trade acquisition. And unlike so many other teams remaining in the playoffs, their “all in” move has yet to be made. They’d have had every single excuse to pack up shop and take this thing to a Game 7. Lose that, and hey, you gave it your all. No one is going to blame you.

Except they don’t play to escape blame. They play to attain glory.

If that doesn’t get you out of bed and ready to run through a brick wall, nothing will.

And that, more than anything, is why we watch.

Everything we hope to be as stivers, as survivors, as achievers, and as believers, we see in this group of young men.

They could never get over the Game 5 loss…until they did.

They could never overcome blowing a huge lead…until they did.

They could never hang around through the third…until they did.

They could never take the lead…until they did.

They could never hold onto that lead as Philly made one final, furious charge…until they did.

And they could never pull it out with the same heady plays that eluded them on Tuesday night…until they did.

Which brings us to the ultimate never, ever: the Knicks could never, ever overcome a team with two superstars to their one, not without some sort of divine intervention.

Until. They. Did.

Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey are as dynamic a duo as there is. At the end of the day, their supreme efforts weren’t enough, not when confronted by a whole that is so much greater than the sum of its parts that the parts themselves have become indistinguishable from one another. Every night is someone else’s turn to step up. Yesterday, Donte DiVincenzo led the charge. Josh Hart closed it out, and Jalen Brunson did all of the heavy lifting in between. The ‘Nova trio coming together for one more close out game on a court they know all too well.

But this win required the efforts of everyone, and that’s exactly what they got. It is also what they’ll need to keep moving forward, against an Indiana team that will give them everything they can handle.

The journey isn’t done, because when is it ever. There is always another mountain to scale. You win or you learn.

These Knicks have learned how to be a great team over the last two years. Last night, they turned that learning into yet another massive victory.

The latest - and greatest - of an era in Knicks basketball that is becoming defined by the impossible becoming possible.

No one does it like they do.

What a story. What a team.

COMING YOUR WAY LATER TODAY: A full recap of Game 6 (right after I get some sleep)

🏀