The Knicks are bringing hope and title dreams
The Knicks are bringing hope and title dreams back to New York after years in the doldrums
Jesús Velázquez still has his old John Starks jersey at home. He remembers the New York Knicks going to the NBA Finals in 1994, Patrick Ewing’s infamous “finger roll” in 1995 and all the on-court fights with the Miami Heat. Last Friday night, Velázquez was one of hundreds of fans who waited in the rain to watch Game 2 against the Indiana Pacers in Central Park.
Velázquez has fond memories of the good times in the ’90s but also remembers the bad, which defined the team for most of the last 25 years. As bad as those times were, they don’t compare to watching his team so close to the NBA Finals - even if they did lose on Tuesday night and are now a heartbeat away from elimination.
“I never once put my paper bag on, but it came close,” Velázquez, 56, a long-suffering New York fan from Queens, told CNN Sports.
As heartbreak and desperation faded to failure over an excruciating 25-year period, Knicks fans are now overwhelmed, knowing their team has a chance at winning a championship soon – even as they face a 3-1 series deficit to the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals.
The return to sustained relevancy –- something that seemed next-to-impossible for over two decades –- is new for younger fans who never saw the beloved 1990’s teams. Those teams never won, but coming close became good enough for their older counterparts who clung to the memories of “almost” winning and tightened their grip on nostalgia as the hopelessness increased.
“It’s been a long drought. It’s been a heartbreaking drought because it’s not like we haven’t been close,” Velázquez said. “Last year, it was finally good to hear that song ‘Go NY Go’ because before it was not something you wanted to blast on your radio.”
This is the first time in 25 years that the Knicks have gone this far in the playoffs, but the gut punches the team and their fans have taken dates back further. From Michael Jordan’s three-peats to Reggie Miller scoring eight points in nine seconds, followed by Patrick Ewing’s missed layup in 1995 and the injury-riddled squad willing itself to the Finals in 1999, only to get crushed by the San Antonio Spurs, fans have had hope and then watched it get swatted away.
Those heartbreaking moments led to the slow and steady decline that started in the 2000s. Each move the Knicks made – whether it was bringing in Isiah Thomas as president of basketball operations in late 2003, trading for Brooklyn’s own Stephon Marbury, or then Knicks president Phil Jackson drafting Kristaps Porziņģis – the fleeting hope always gave way to despair.
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The consecutive sellout streak of Madison Square Garden was gone and so were the A-list stars.
The Carmelo Anthony-led Knicks had a brief resurgence, even making the second round of the playoffs before they lost in six games to the Indiana Pacers in 2013. Jeremy Lin in 2012 caught fire and famously scored 38 points to beat the Kobe Bryant-led Los Angeles Lakers as one of the highlights of the short-lived “Linsanity” era.
But from that point, it was quiet at Madison Square Garden – until now. Despite being down 3-1 in the series, the Knicks are playing in the Eastern Conference Finals, something they haven’t done in 25 years.
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A call back to the ’90s Knicks
“It’s decades of disappointment coming out. That’s what I hear,” author Paul Knepper told CNN of the cheers coming from Knicks fans.
Knepper is a longtime Knicks supporter, took his fandom several steps further and wrote “The Knicks of the Nineties.” The book chronicles the rise and fall of what could be considered the golden era of Knicks basketball for those who weren’t old enough to see Willis Reed hobble onto the Madison Square Garden hardwood for the championship clinching game against the Lakers in 1970 or the subsequent title in 1973.
Knepper, who grew up on Long Island, was watching Game 1 against the Pacers with his wife in Austin, Texas, where they live. Knepper said she’s not a Knicks fan but roots for them, even though the anxiety and pressure of seeing the historic collapse was almost too painful to watch.
“She’s like, ‘I don’t know how you do this. This is terrible. How do you watch games like this?’ And I said, ‘I’ve felt this pain before,’” Knepper said. “I felt this pain with Reggie Miller. I felt this pain when Charles Smith couldn’t make a layup in 1993 against the Bulls. I’m familiar with this pain.”
Knepper says he hears both joy and relief in the screams and cheers from fans.
“I don’t hear the Carmelo Anthony or the Jeremy Lin era. I hear Phil Jackson and trading Porziņģis and Charles Oakley getting kicked out of the Garden, which, for me, I think, personally, was probably the lowest point in this whole terrible, extended era,” Knepper told CNN Sports. “That’s the kind of stuff that I hear. I hear all of the times there was some degree of hope.”
Images of an army of Knicks fans spilling out into the streets flooded social media after the Knicks beat the defending champion Boston Celtics in Game 6 of the second round. Timothée Chalamet lowered the window of his SUV and dapped up fans as he left the building and Spike Lee was smiling ear to ear as he left the Garden – all while roughly 3,000 fans cheered in the streets. Nothing was damaged and there were only five arrests for disorderly conduct, according to a law enforcement official.