You’re reading Fanfare With Will Leitch, a newsletter on the cultural moments capturing America’s attention. Click here to get the full edition in your inbox, including bonus musings on trends and recommendations for the weekend.
There are certain sports stories that everyone, even people who don’t care about sports, can’t help but pay attention to. Most of the time, these involve scandal: cheating, gambling, steroids, that sort of thing, stories to click your tongue about. Tsk tsk, what’s the world coming to? There are also your global events so massive they’re built for the casuals: the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the World Cup.
And then there’s my favorite type of crossover story: history happening before our eyes. These are the “you’ll never forget where you were” stories. Some are individual: the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run race. Tom Brady chasing his seventh Super Bowl ring. LeBron James breaking the all-time NBA scoring record. But the best ones are about the fans. Specifically: when a team that historically breaks its fans’ hearts finally has that special year. We never forget those. The 2004 Red Sox. The 2016 Cubs. The Saints winning Super Bowl XLIV. The ones that become a human-interest story, except they’re not about interest in the players — the interest is in the legions of ordinary people who root for them.
There aren’t a lot of these left, these teams that have put huge fan bases through years of torture. Football has a few: the Bills, the Browns, the Lions, the Vikings. Hockey has the Maple Leafs; baseball has the Guardians (or the Mets). But we could be about to see a big one get its moment: I’m not sure there could be a bigger story in sports right now than the New York Knicks winning an NBA championship. They have reached the NBA Finals, putting them on the cusp. As a Knicks fan, let me take this opportunity to invite you on board.
For five decades, the Knicks have delivered the very definition of Sports Fan Pain. But it’s been particularly acute under owner Jim Dolan, who took over in 1999 — the year that, not coincidentally, New York last made the NBA Finals. It’s not just that the Knicks haven’t won a title; it’s that they’ve been terrible and embarrassing. An organization that went a full decade without a winning record was also racked with scandal, from sexual harassment lawsuits to using technological surveillance on its fans to basically everything Isiah Thomas did with the franchise. The Knicks have always spent the most money and always gotten the least for it.
That changed in 2020, when Dolan (distracted enough by construction of his Sphere in Las Vegas to finally keep his mitts off the Knicks) hired longtime NBA agent Leon Rose to reconstruct a franchise at such a nadir that it wasn’t even invited to play in the covid-19 bubble. Rose immediately blew up a New York sports fan myth: He started a slow, methodical rebuild, and the city’s notoriously win-now fans were … patient. Rose compiled draft picks, he avoided the sugar-rush acquisition of overpaid veterans, he focused on team chemistry, and he navigated the NBA’s salary cap. And when it was time to make the big move, he made it, signing free agent Jalen Brunson to a contract that many felt was an overpay at the time.
It turned out to be the masterstroke: Brunson blossomed into a future Hall of Famer. He also became the cultural leader of the franchise. Stars Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges adjusted their games to fit his. It took a few years — the Knicks suffered postseason heartbreaks the past two seasons — but with a new, experienced coach in Mike Brown, the team has crested with the most dominant postseason run in NBA history. They just won 11 games in a row by an average of more than 19 points. Now they’re waiting for the Spurs and Thunder to finish battering each other in the Western Conference — relaxing, resting, healing, preparing. The Knicks are rolling in a way they never have before.
And you can see it in the Garden. Much has been made of the big celebrity turnout for Knicks games. But the fun of the boldface names in attendance, from Ben Stiller to Spike Lee to Timothée Chalamet, is that they showed up when the Knicks were bad, too.
Stiller was famous for live-posting about Knicks games when the team was terrible. Lee has been a courtside season ticket holder for decades. And Chalamet is such a fan that as a teenager, way back in 2010, he won a contest to hang out with Knicks benchwarmers Landry Fields and Andy Rautins; in photos, he looks happier than he will when he finally wins that Oscar.
The Knicks have sold out the Garden for decades despite the terrible teams, which has just supercharged those fans now that all that investment is paying off: It’s the rare New York sports team that knows what it’s like to be an underdog. They’ve put in the time. And now they know all that time was worth it.
The Knicks may not win the title this year. They won’t be favored against either Oklahoma City or San Antonio. But they have made it further than they have in any season this century, and they are playing as well as any team in the league. This could, in fact, be the year.
And, as a Knicks fan, you’ve gotta trust me here: If the Knicks can win a championship, any team — your team — can too. The Knicks were helpless, pitiful, completely pointless (and endlessly painful) to cheer for. And we kept showing up, hoping someday it might turn. It finally did. The world is a dark, scary place. But I’m telling you, if the Knicks can turn it around, there is hope for us all.
So come on board. And don’t worry: You can take this ride and still hate the Yankees. It’s fine.
The post The most abused fan base in basketball becomes a hope train appeared first on Washington Post.
