First mailbag in a while. First championship mailbag ever. Life is good.
How high did your blood pressure spike when it actually happened? I know my answer because I have to monitor mine.
— Unmitigated Gall
By the fourth quarter of Game 5 my body was completely falling apart. I’m not sure I was designed to withstand that much joy.
I’m not very externally emotive, in general and certainly fan-wise. I’d rather die than boo a player or a ref in-person, and from the comfort of home I mostly internalize my
emotions (cursing is not an emotion). My sister was two rooms away when the Knicks won Game 5; she said she was surprised she didn’t hear much from me as the game wound down. Not me. There are reasons I watch Knick games — and of all my teams, only Knick games — alone. On the surface, I am quiet as a churchmouse. Underneath, I am louder than Krakatoa.
By the fourth quarter I was no longer hoping the Knicks would win; I was craving. It was an actual lust in my body. I believed in them, more than I’ve believed in any Knick team since 1994 broke my heart. With 2:40 remaining, I was already weepy. Once OG Anunoby hit the free throw to make it a four-point lead with 20 seconds left, my legs started shaking. After a Stephon Castle follow-dunk and a Knick timeout to inbound from the frontcourt, Jalen Brunson was mugged at midcourt by Victor Wembanyama, with the loose ball luckily falling into the hands of Mikal Bridges. Had that obvious foul instead resulted in a turnover, I would have literally climbed through my TV like the girl from The Ring to torment Scott Foster & Co. for life.
I missed most of the televised aftermath of the game ending. Didn’t see the trophy ceremony until after it was over. I was too busy bawling. I don’t have language for what I was feeling, for what was released. I’ve wept after losing a child. Wept after the worst physical pain of my life. Cried tears of joy countless times. This was none of those things.
Someone asked me yesterday how I’m feeling now, nearly a week later. The truth is I’ve been mostly paralyzed with joy. It feels like someone planted bombs in my head and my heart, and when they detonated they completely cleared out those spaces. There is emptiness. There is a constant ringing. Both are delicious.
Been having some health problems. Starting to mess up my sleep. Last few nights I’ve gone to bed crazy early — 8 p.m. last night — and woken up 6-10 times by morning. I remember when the Knicks were randomly good in 2013, I was waking up 6-10 times a night to pee. Every time I woke, my brain was instantly in mid-conversation with itself about the team; it was like I was eavesdropping on myself. Can Jason Kidd really be counted on? What the hell is the point of Kenyon Martin? Did Chris Copeland hit on Mike Woodson’s wife?
Now I wake up thinking about Mikal Bridges’ best, quietest contributions. Karl-Anthony Towns defending all postseason with his feet instead of his hands, not biting on pump-fakes. Ariel Hukporti’s weakside rejection of Luke Kornet. Not having a dipshit owner. Uplifting thoughts only.
I don’t have my actual BP reading from the end of Game 5, but about a half-hour before it ended I remember wondering if my heart was healthy enough to watch the Knicks come back one last time. They pushed themselves to their physical limits to close the Spurs out. So did I.
What will you be approaching differently in life given what you’ve just experienced?
— BrunsOnGod
The Knick run dovetailed with me visiting the city in May, when they beat Cleveland to advance to the Finals.
I’ve been in a rut for months. Depressed, unmotivated, unsure not simply about what to do with my life, but whether there’s a point in doing anything at all. Materially, emotionally, existentially tapped. Bone dry. Waiting on a diagnosis that may answer some questions.
I stayed in the city a few days, which is when my health weirdness took off. But something else took off, too. My spirit. A quickening, if not to life than to the desire for one. There’s only one place I’ve ever loved living, and that’s NYC. There was only one place the Knicks needed to get to bring joy to millions of people, and they got there one step at a time.
They didn’t sign LeBron or draft Zion or trade for Giannis, pull a complete 180. They spent years putting one step in front of the other. Some moves were made before Leon Rose even got there, e.g. trading for Mitchell Robinson. Some moves you make aren’t the finishing touches, but keep you going until you get close enough to make those touches — hello, Julius Randle. Some moves require a leap of faith, i.e. the Bridges trade. Some reward leaps of faith, i.e. signing Brunson.
I struggle more than you can imagine with small, sequential steps. I want to buckle down and do it all in one heroic, Olympian act. It’s more instinctive for me to try to lift a mountain by myself than simply walk every day until building the endurance to climb it. Maybe that was somewhere I felt a kinship with the Knicks all these years. We were both chasing messiahs we didn’t need.
Ani DiFranco has a line about how when she looks up at the sky she trips, but when she looks down she misses the stars. My head is always in the clouds. The Knicks are inspiring my feet to stay grounded, stay focused and take one step at a time toward my goal. I want to move to NYC within a year. I want to be where I feel alive and loved with people I love. I want to feel alive. New York is that energy. If the Knicks could make their lifelong dream a reality, why not me?
1) Will Mitch get over/under/through whatever the heck is making him brick his FTs?
2) Are the Knicks no longer underdogs, or will they always have that spirit for you?
— SayAgainSayAgain
1) No. Too many people assigned male at birth worry too much what people they don’t know and will never meet may think of them.
2) The team the Knicks just beat 4-1 has better odds of winning the title next year. The team that team beat has better odds. The Celtics, who lost in the first round to a team the Knicks vaporized in the second, have better odds. I’m old enough to have seen a few seasons when the Knicks were the favorites to win it all. I imagine the next few years will be pretty similar to this one was, in that Knick fans know best how good their team is, and we will revel in the rest of the league finding out.
Should the Spurs replace Mitch Johnson? With Thibs?
— ClydeWingo
If I may, I’d like to defend Mitch Johnson here, and not only because he ranked just behind Brunson, KAT and OG for Finals MVP.
Sometimes a team — or maybe more aptly, a superstar — being ahead of the curve works against them. Por ejemplo, all the hoary yahoos who’ll trot out “Michael Jordan never lost in the Finals; LeBron lost six; ergo MJ da goat.” This penalizes James for lifting the 2007 Cavaliers and their 18th-ranked offense to heights no other human could have. Can you even name the other four starters in that Cav playoff run?
Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Larry Hughes, Sasha Pavlović and Drew Gooden. You’re welcome.
Michael Jordan’s Bulls reached the ECF in 1989 and 1990, coming up short both times. We don’t ding him for that. That’s reasonable. Blaming James for losing six Finals when his team was the underdog in at least five of them is lazy, absurd and utterly unreasonable.
The Spurs, despite how well they played, are not a title contender.
I know that sounds weird, maybe patently ridiculous. They *could* have swept the Knicks 5-0. They were the only team on Earth that could figure out the Thunder. I get all that. But if I can toot my own horn, I was locked-in predicting the NBA this season. Stay with me.
I invited scorn and clapbacks in early recaps, as I derided Detroit’s hot start (15-2; 28-9; 40-13) as much ado about nothing. I thought they were too young, too inexperienced and too poor on offense to beat any team that wasn’t one-dimensional, and they were. Despite all the accolades earned for rushing their best player back from injury before losing him to injury again in the playoffs, I never took the Celtics seriously, not when donuts have more going on at center. And though the Knicks eliminated the Cavs in May to win the East, the day Cleveland traded Darius Garland, their one and only player with a skill that could give the Knicks some trouble, was the day the East became New York’s.
Which brings us to the Spurs, who despite all their purported ethical charms are pretty clearly not ready for primetime, and before you assume I’m too dense to have comprehended the majesty of Wemby please kindly read up on the 1995 Magic and 2012 Thunder. Life is rarely linear. Teams that get thisclose to winning it all don’t automatically seal the deal the next year.
San Antonio is a fabulous team. How many teams could beat them in a seven-game series? Maybe three? The problem for them is two of those teams are Western contenders (OKC and Denver) while the third just gentleman swept them.
The Spurs, currently, are Wembanyama and a bunch of guards. You can get away with that when you’re playing Portland, Minnesota or Oklahoma City, teams with traditional 5s who don’t shoot 3s. Against those teams, Wembanyama is free to play free safety and blow up entire offenses. But your reigning NBA champs happen to feature a big who can bomb with aplomb. And I’ve a feeling any number of teams thinking they belong in the conversation will look to add a five-out element to their offenses, too.
So what, exactly, was Mitch Johnson supposed to do differently than he did? Before you get into trashing De’Aaron Fox, please remember I am the person who spent years defending Randle for all the crap he took after a postseason that started with him questionable with a badly sprained ankle, an ankle he re-injured at the end of the first round. How’d Randle look when he finally went into a postseason healthy? Brilliant, that’s how. Fox suffered a high ankle sprain in May and didn’t look like himself in early June. Weird, huh?
Maybe you found yourself patting yourself on the back for noticing Dylan Harper was a pretty good player, and shouldn’t he have gotten some of those minutes Fox did? Hey, that the same Harper who shot worse from deep in the Western playoffs than the regular season? Then bottomed out, making just 28% of his 3s in the Finals? I know, I know. I loved Harper’s game too. He’s sick. He’s scary. Obviously he’s far more than whatever his three-point numbers show.
But here’s the thing: NONE of the Spurs big-minutes players could hit from beyond the arc vs. New York. Fox made just 25% from distance, Wembanyama 27%, Harper 28% and Castle 30%. The only Spurs who combined volume with efficiency from deep were Devin Vassell and Justin Champagnie, with Champagnie a defensive weak link the Knicks repeatedly attacked. So, again: what was Mitch Johnson supposed to do?
I didn’t understand some of the times Wembanyama sat, especially in Game 5. But the next 7-foot-5 human being to average 40 minutes in a Finals will be the first. The Spurs have a lot invested in their alien. They don’t want him going the way of Ralph Sampson, so as close as they were to winning in his age 22-season, I suspect the organization’s policy on Wemby’s minutes came from a little higher up the corporate ladder than the head coach.
Johnson’s best player was clearly running on fumes this series, as evidenced by his crunch-time free throw misses and turning into Charles Bronson for a few moments of madness every game. His two-way players mostly couldn’t shoot straight. His bench, outside of Harper inside the arc, was invisible. I don’t know what buttons were left for him to press. Sometimes your players just aren’t quite ready for prime-time.
Now, to ClydeWingo’s specific question: no, I would not fire Johnson. I certainly wouldn’t replace him with Tom Thibodeau. That’d be like trading Wembanyama for Randle — who needs a floor-raiser when you’re already bumping your head into cathedral ceilings? For San Antonio to get to the promised land, they needed time and failure. They got plenty of the former and as much of the latter as they care to. A different coach isn’t gonna accelerate that any.
I think my biggest question, and I want all the opinions on this, is where does OG’s tip in rank on the single greatest plays in New York sports history? Above Bucky Dent? Above Buckner? Above David Tyree’s helmet catch?
Also, you never use a dash to separate out an appositive phrase. What shyster high school did you go to?
— Jesus and Ham on Rye
We talking the television age? Or all-time? I’m willing to claim OG’s put-back is — prisoner of the moment aside — the most celebrated. I don’t know how to quantify “greatest.” I can speak to some of the most celebrated plays in the other local teams’ histories.
For the Mets, Mookie’s grounder up the first-base line is still number one. God forbid I ever speak for Yankee fans; I imagine Jim Leyritz’s home run off Mark Wohlers is up there, as far as moments from my lifetime. Joe Girardi’s triple in Game 6? The Tino Martinez grand slam in the 1998 World Series? I wasn’t yet topside in 1978 when Dent homered at Fenway, but they’d just won the World Series the year before, so it wasn’t like that ended some long barren run for them.
The Giants have a ton, from Matt Bahr’s game-ending game-winning field goal to send them to Super Bowl XXV to Scott Norwood missing for Buffalo at the end of that game, all the way to David Tyree and Mario Manningham. The Jets? LOLOLOL.
I am a big Liberty fan, so when Breanna Stewart went to the line at the end of Game 5 of the Finals two years ago, a night when she couldn’t buy a basket, for the free throws that’d send the game to OT and the Liberty to their first-ever ‘chip, it was huuuuge. But the Liberty are not as loved as the Knicks (though James Dolan selling them has to help). To some extent, the Rangers fall into this same label. Whether you’re picking Mark Messier’s hat trick to push the ECF to Game 7, Stephane Matteau’s double-overtime winner in that Game 7 to send them to the Cup finals or Mike Richter’s penalty save against Pavel Bure, the moments are a-plenty, and to any Ranger fan who witnessed the ‘94 run there was nothing like it (imagine the Knicks wiping out the Hawks and 76ers, then being pushed to the BRINK by the Cavs and Spurs).
But the Rangers aren’t the Knicks. Not to NYC. So while I generally avoid people reflexively claiming “This thing that literally just happened is historically resonant!”, in this case I think they’re right. Every other great sporting feat in NYC history appeals to half the fans here. The Knicks, as the city’s only NBA team, matter to everybody. Thus, OG’s shot is the winner.
And as I’ve tried to demonstrate any number of times in this mailbag — including this sentence right here — you can absolutely set off appositives with dashes. I attended Webster High School in Webster, New York. The town motto is “Where life is worth living,” your first hint that there, it very much isn’t.
Where does this championship rank in terms of historical significance for the NBA?
What were your favorite moments from this 4 year run in the Jalen Brunson Era? Other than the OG hand of God.
— Allzingers
God these are fun mailbag questions! The Knicks should win the title more often.
I’m not sure anyone outside the league offices on Fifth Avenue ever thinks this way, or if anyone even can. It’s like knowing your whole block is knocking boots on Saturday night, and wondering “Who had the best sex tonight?” I think there’s probably no right answer; it really depends on from where you’re coming. Or if.
For instance: four years ago, the Golden State Warriors won their fourth title of the Steph/Klay/Draymond era. That made them only the fourth group to do so, joining the Russell/Cousy Celtics, the Magic/Kareem Lakers and the Jordan/Pippen Bulls. That seems historically significant. But if you’re not a Warriors fan, did you care? Remember: Adam Silver wants you to believe you hate dynasties, instead preferring an antagonistic collective bargaining agreement, forced roster ruptures and cost-control all masquerading as “parity.”
A lot of people have talked about Knick fans around the country coming together over the 2026 title. In 2019, a country actually did rally around its one and only team when the Raptors took the trophy home — and given that no Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since 1993, the same year the Blue Jays last won the World Series, I think it’s fair to say Toronto’s title was historically meaningful. But it loses some luster because the main cause behind it left as fast as he could for the Clippers.
The 2016 Cavs ended an even-longer title drought for their city, and not just an NBA drought but across the Association, the NFL and MLB, too. Consider the nature of their conquest: coming back from 3-1 down in the Finals, against the greatest single-season team we’d ever seen and the defending champs. Then consider the level both LeBron James and Kyrie Irving reached the last three games of the series. Remember: MJ held off on “The Last Dance” for years, right up until James won the one championship that made people think “Maybe he does go above Mike.” 2016 Cavs were pretty historically meaningful.
I imagine, ironically, that the true impact of the Knicks’ title charge will only grow clear the further we get from it. If they repeat as champs next season, win three of four ‘chips, then 2026 will have a particular importance. If 30 years from now you’re on your deathbed and this was the only time you ever saw the Knicks win it all, then 2026 will retain a particular importance for you.
Fave moments of Brunson era: the 32, 38 and 41 points Brunson put up the last three games vs. Miami in 2023 (that’s when I knew he was *him*); Randle bouncing back from the 2022 thumbs-down to be both an All-Star and All-NBA in ‘23; OG dunking all over Embiid’s head in the 2024 series; DiVincenzo’s game-winning 3; the Knicks hiring Patrick Ewing in an official capacity; upsetting Boston last season (the first time I think I’ve ever seen the Knicks upset someone); me being wrong about Brunson; me being wrong about KAT; me being wrong about Mike Brown; me being right about Bridges; everybody being right about OG; Josh Hart for existing; Jose Alvarado for being Puerto Rican; the entire 2026 playoffs, natch.
Who is the worst player on this team whose jersey/name will be a deep pull in 20 years? 40-50?
— Spike Lee’s Joint
Jeremy Sochan. Dude just has a way of being visible.
