Opening Night Announced

Plus the next two Knicks on my 25 for 25 who will always be joined at the hip.

Good morning! Before we get to today’s edition of 25 for 25, we have a few news items to get to.

First, the Knicks made another addition to their coaching staff earlier in the week, hiring T.J. Saint, formerly head coach of the Pelicans’ G-League team. Saint appeared on a podcast last summer and went into detail on several of his coaching philosophies. You can check out the pod and some of the key pull quotes here.

Second, the league released some key schedule dates yesterday and the Knicks were featured prominently. They’ll be headlining the ESPN doubleheader on Wednesday, October 22 with a matchup against the Cavs (who they’ll also play at noon on Christmas), and then be in the 5pm MLK Day game on NBC against the Mavs. The full schedule will be announced Thursday.

Now let’s get to the next two entrants on my Top 25 Knicks of the last 25 seasons (which, ICYMI, are different than the larger ranking we’re doing on the podcast. Those were voted on by the entire faculty. What you see here was voted on by a committee of one!)

No. 15 Stephon Marbury & No. 16 Jamal Crawford

Home in Staten Island during Christmas break from my junior year at Fordham, I was feeling blue.

I had broken up with my college girlfriend about a week earlier. It wasn’t the cleanest break up, partially because I didn’t have the guts to do it in person, and partially because we were about as wrong for each other as two human people could be. I’d have been better off dating a house plant.

The week that we were broken up also wasn’t the best, as I was stuck in the house without much to do besides wallow in my own loneliness. Worse yet, my beloved Knicks weren’t only bad; they were boring.

Ever since the trade that shipped Patrick Ewing out of town, the Knicks had slowly morphed from one of the defining teams of the nineties into a bologna sandwich: barely edible and definitively unsatisfying even when you’re starving. Their roster was an exercise in NBA Mad Libs, with a group of players whose jerseys could all be found on the discount rack at Modell’s.

Then out of nowhere, the news hit. Two weeks into his role as president of basketball operations, Isiah Thomas swung a trade that would set the direction of the organization for the next half decade, acquiring Brooklyn-born Stephon Marbury from the Phoenix Suns.

As luck would (or wouldn’t) have it, Marbury was set to make his debut against the Cavaliers in Cleveland. Taking this as a sign from the divine that I had grievously erred with my ex, I got in my car and drove to Ohio, planning on winning back my girl while catching Marbury’s debut in the process. This grand gesture produced one of the more awkward nights of my young life. My ex and I sat in Gund Arena for two and a half hours watching a disjointed group of Knicks who might as well have been wearing “Hello, My Name Is…” stickers. They lost to a 10-23 Cavs team, albeit one led by rookie LeBron James.

Still, I was filled with optimism about what was in store. Emboldened by the arrival of the best Knick point guard of my life, me and my ex got back together. The relationship lasted about as long as that optimism.