June 22, 1994. That’s the last time the New York Knicks played a game with a trophy at stake and the eyes of the league upon them. Until two days from now. In defeating the Orlando Magic 132-120 in last night’s invitation-only (in more ways than one) NBA Cup semifinal, the Knicks advanced to Tuesday’s final against San Antonio. “Meaningful games in December” rings both true and false, but each points to good times — both had and ahead — for the Knickerbockers.
How important is winning the final? Mike
Brown is down a Deuce, true, but these are not the minutes you expect to see nightly from a team that fired the last coach in part because he played his starters these kinds of minutes. But Tom Thibodeau would play them this many or more in an NBA Cup semifinal or the proverbial Charlotte in March mundanity. Presumably Brown is doing so because these games matter. Hence the Vegas.
The city’s other professional outfit knows how much these games can matter. The New York Liberty never won a trophy until 2023’s Commissioner’s Cup. Winning that didn’t result in an instant dynasty — they lost the Finals that year to Las Vegas — but no doubt stomping the Aces 50-29 in the second half of the Cup final earned them confidence going into 2024, when the Sea Foam finally won the big one. The Knicks haven’t hoisted a trophy since their current head coach was three years old. Winning something other people wanna win counts as winning, even if it’s a make-believe contest you added to your already made-up contest to squeeze some more money out of the already shorthanded public sphere.
Though I can’t shake the sugar-high quality of it all. Say the Knicks win Tuesday, then lose in gut-wrenching fashion in the ECF or the Finals. Will you be comforted to think “At least we have the NBA Cup!” If Brown’s job security is a hot-button issue 12-18 months from now, will winning this trophy be a convincing argument in favor of keeping him? Maybe I’m focusing on the cocoon too much and not the greater transformation at play. If the Knicks are Cup champs 72 hours from now, it’s going to feel nothing but good. We will laud it over others, harass them with it, make it a pestilence. For what it’s worth.
The Oklahoma City Thunder have some people already ready to throw up their hands and quit the NBA, but you’ll note their absence from the Cup final. That’s because the Spurs are a good team without Victor Wembanyama but with him they’re Thor with Mjolnir, Indiana Jones with his whip, Popeye after some spinach. In his first action in a month, Wemby had 22 points, nine rebounds and a couple of blocks in just 21 minutes. There aren’t many chances for him to pick on someone his own size, but seeing him smother Chet Holmgren, a man who looks like the beanstalk Jack climbed, gives you a sense of what it’d look like if a great white stumbled upon a megalodon.
The Thunder are the perfect GOAT-candidate for the silicon-gilded age: a team to point to and hold up as the blueprint for perfection, for every nerd to point to some part of and say “See! That’s how it’s done!”, when the simple truth is, as usual, inheritance. As in sure, Sam Presti and friends have done a lot of things right. But acting like “lucking into the trade of a lifetime” because the Clippers were feening to pair Kawhi Leonard and Paul George is like when you see a video of two darling thirtysomethings who live in a castle where he paints skyscapes and digs for buried treasure while she churns butter and sings arias all day, and you’re wondering how they afford any of it until they throw how his parents founded etsy and hers run some biotech that made $78 billion yesterday and doesn’t pay a dime in taxes. Like, yeah, okay, that’s some life you’re living. But don’t act like you discovered it all on your own, Columbus.
Really, Knicks/Spurs is the final we deserve. Some people criticize people who criticize OKC for being boring. These should be among the first imprisoned when the revolution comes. All of this exists because people — LOADS of them — want to be entertained! Not because there’s some biological imperative to figure out which collective of a dozen basketball players is best-equipped to endure a two-month second season that is in almost all ways nothing like the first season that precedes it, whose results are used to determine the shape of the second. The Showtime Lakers, the MJ Bulls, the Steph Warriors: these were teams that transcended, that upended our thinking about the concrete by making things we thought abstract real. Much respect to them, but the first three Spurs title-winners didn’t do that.
Keeping it parochial, the Knicks and Magic are building the most promising rivalry ‘round these parts since . . . who? When? Knicks/Pacers never really became that, despite the recent playoff meetings. The Knicks all clearly love TJ McConnell, which if it were any kind of real rivalry he’d be the first guy you go after. I’m not complaining, mind you. I don’t need fake beef to make the game matter. But when your best players are fake-fighting in a wrestling ring, we’re done suspending our disbelief.
The 2023 the Knicks are 8-7 against the Magic. Yesterday’s win, brought to you by another Jalen Brunson 40-piece, magnesium-bright shooting night from Karl-Anthony Towns (9-of-11 from the field, 9-of-1o from the line) plus 52 points and eight stocks care of WingStop, keeps Jamal Mohsley’s guys firmly in the rearview, along with much of the league. The Thunder are at least three games ahead of all the other 29 teams. Next best is Detroit at 23; the Knicks, Spurs and Nuggets are all that clear of 22.
Not only is the NBA Cup invite-only, last night was for viewers, as Tuesday will be too. I don’t have Prime, so I can’t see these games. It’s a choice. I don’t have Prime because Amazon is Skynet if its public face was the world’s biggest gift shop, and I don’t want to be involved in that. As a Knicks fan, I find it especially heinous — though God knows familiar enough by now to be the back of my hand — that after following a team for 35 years, I can’t because the league struck yet another rights deal that materially benefits the owners, materially benefits (some of) the players (in some ways) but makes more material demands of its fans while offering them no benefits.
There is a point where something being wrong is enough reason not to do it. You can point out Prime isn’t all that expensive, that I could suck it up and just pay (or stream it somewhere). I’d answer the guy who owns Prime isn’t all that poor, and could suck it up and not need another revenue stream. Tomato, tomahto.
It’s a good day in Knicksville. Enjoy the high. Hopefully a couple of days from now, we’re enjoying the novelty of processing how meaningful a Cup championship is.
