2019 is a year which will live in infamy for New York Knicks fan. That spring, despite having slogged to the league’s worst record, the Knicks were forsaken by the basketball gods, who blessed New Orleans and Memphis with lottery leaps while dropping New York to third. Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving were long rumored to sign with them that summer. Instead of Zion, KD and Kyrie, the Knicks ended up with RJ Barrett, Julius Randle and Marcus Morris. Yet the building blocks for a title were in place:
RJ, JR and IQ (via the Morris trade) landed the Knicks the second and first runners-up for 2026 Finals MVP, i.e. OG Anunoby and Karl-Anthony Towns.
2019 was a memorable year for the NBA. LeBron James left Cleveland after four straight Finals to take his talents to south California. The Warriors reached their fifth consecutive Finals, the first and only other team to do so since the 1960s Celtics. Kawhi Leonard made an audaciously aspirational series-winning buzzer-beater that bounced on the rim for nearly as long as the investigation into his links with Aspiration, eventually leading Toronto over Golden State to win the title. Do you remember what happened in Game 3 of those Finals?
Mark Stevens shoved Kyle Lowry after the Raptor dove into the first row to save a ball from going out of bounds. Lowry said Stevens also told him “Go fuck yourself” multiple times. Stevens, a Warriors minority owner who estimated his net worth at $10.5 billion last year, was suspended for a year and fined $500,000.
In Game 1 of this year’s Finals, a fan ran onto the court in San Antonio to try and take a selfie with Victor Wembanyama, making it all the way to the Spurs star before being dragged off by security.
He actually got all the way to the Spur star before being dragged off by security. No one was hurt (though someone could have been). The fan showed neither malice nor aggression. The fan was suspended from attending an NBA game for the rest of his life. So was a second fan, one who never set foot on the court. Stevens, who laid hands on a player and cursed him out, was suspended a year and fined $500,000, equivalent to fining someone who makes $100,000 a year five dollars.
But even immunity isn’t enough for the gilded rage. Impunity or GTFO — and the calls aren’t even coming from inside the house. After the attempted Wemby selfie, Yahoo Sports broadcasters Caroline Fenton and Jason Fitz called for blood. Below is the transcript from their episode; the original doesn’t offer quotation marks, so I’m not sure between Fenton and Fitz who said what:
If likening a fan trying to take a selfie with a star athlete to an act of premeditated violence that killed thousands of people feels like a stretch, that’s ‘cuz it is. Ye old slippery slope fallacy, gone but never forgotten. Yet if a broken clock is right every now and then, it follows to reason that sometimes taking the wrong turn down the wrong road really is all it takes to end in tragedy. But which way is right, and which is wrong?
The morning of the Knicks’ championship parade, James Dolan claimed the White House had already reached out to the NBA champs. “We just did receive an invitation from the White House,” he told WFAN, “which we accepted. We still have to figure out the details.”
Variety just published an interview with Jalen Brunson. In it, Brunson says, “[Visiting the White House is] something that we actually haven’t discussed as a team. And so obviously people are making assumptions and saying everything, but together we haven’t discussed it yet, and so we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
Whenever I write something that ties the Knicks in any way to the larger world, some readers thank me. Some are repulsed, even insulting. Sometimes I get death threats. Lotta “I read about sports to read about sports and only sports. Keep your commie nose outta my sports, missy” from dudes kicking back with their “non-woke” beer and getting half a chub-on from the national anthem, military members furling flags and weapons of mass destruction flying overhead. Wanna talk sports instead? Okay. Let’s.
Do you love Jose Alvarado?
Rhetorical question. Who doesn’t? The grand thefting; the clutch 3s; a level of shithousery that’d fit right in with Argentina’s men’s World Cup squad. It’s why we kept seeing features like this throughout the postseason and after. Hometown kid comes home, makes good, makes history. Not everybody *is* a Knick from day one. Anthony Mason was. Josh Hart. Ditto Alvarado.
Riddle me this, sports fans: whaddya think woulda happened during Games 3 and 4 of the Finals — or any Knicks playoff game at MSG — if someone in the crowd heckled Alvarado by yelling that, as a Puerto Rican, he descends from a people who comprise “a floating pile of garbage”? What if it happened within earshot of Dolan? Care to guess?
No need! Because Dolan has been clear about what kind of behavior results in ejection from the World’s Most Boastful Arena. Back in that magical 2019 season, a fan at a game against Sacramento yelled to Dolan that he should sell the team. No profanity. No ad hominem attack on millions of people. He didn’t call Dolan a floating pile of garbage. Just offered his opinion on a matter of business. Serious people do it all the time.
The emperor — resplendent in layers of security personnel — asked if the fan really thought so, and if he wished to be able to keep coming to MSG. The fan said he’d merely shared an opinion, to which Dolan answered, “No, it’s no an opinion. And you know what, enjoy watching them on TV.” Dolan had the fan detained by security, questioned by police, then kicked out of the arena and banned for life.
I lied before. When I said my question was rhetorical. It wasn’t. It’s very much along the lines of the Mark Stevens/Spurs fan juxtaposition. Alvarado doesn’t “deserve” to be respected because he can help Dolan’s team win a title. He deserves the respect and dignity that comes with being a human being. Just like every Puerto Rican who can’t dribble deserved better than what we got during the Republican National Convention. Better than the Black and Brown children Elon Musk has killed. Better than what our Haitian and Somali brothers and sisters endure, our non-binary loves and whoever else the Fourth Reich hates.
But in a world where to be heard requires one to be seen, even Alvarado isn’t visible enough to make waves. But there are a few players who do. Including the captain of the melting pot’s favorite basketball team.
What happens if Brunson and the Knicks decide they don’t want to be “honored” by a racist rapist? I imagine if they ask agents and financial reps and other wealthy people, they’ll be advised to go, or at least advised against not going. Is that “political”? Some people can’t read that the president hates Black and Brown people and rapes children and women without melting down in a molten puddle of weird fury. Boil away, babes.
Some readers think I write about the Knick owner too much. Confession: there are a list of names of Knick-adjacent characters I wish I didn’t have to type as often as I do here at P&T. One is “Carmelo”; to this day, nearly a decade since he last played here, it still prompts as much passion — and division — as it did then. “Arron Afflalo” is another; I’m a good speller, but my Achilles heel is with words with double-consonants. And I cringe every time I write “Enes Freedom.” Believe it or not, there is not and never has been a day I woke up and wished I got to write about Dolan.
But reality matters to me. More than the Knicks, if you can believe it. So it matters to me when a public figure has the clout and the opportunity to tell a billionaire, “No.” Our politicians won’t. Take it where you can get it, I say.
As high as Dolan may feel he’s riding after the Knicks finally won it all, he’ll still never approach the popularity Brunson has earned. Dolan’s not as popular as Mayor Mamdani. He never will be. I don’t know how much that matters to someone with enough money to literally build an alternate, insular reality that only contains the people and things you think matter. I don’t think Dolan leaves work at the end of the day and wishes more people who are poorer and less powerful than him liked him more. It’s not about him wanting love. It’s about him wanting more power, more authority. And someone needs to stand up and tell him and his ilk, “No.”
This story caught my attention because of the fascinating conflict it potentially could lead to. Dolan, we know, is used to playing with his toys when and where and how he likes, especially showing them off to the Rapist-In-Chief. He doesn’t care what Adam Silver says. Or Mamdani. Or anybody. When is the last time you can remember anyone Knick-related defying the owner in any kind of public way? About anything? And coming out on top?
And yet . . . what if Brunson doesn’t wanna go to the White House? What if half the team doesn’t? How might the owner react if his employees take advantage of the moment and their momentum and just say “no”? A word he and his pals Trump and Harvey Weinstein and Derrick Rose (yes, him too) claim not to understand?
Dolan has all of the (hard) power in this equation. But Brunson is literally closer to god-like status than any New Yorker since Derek Jeter. He has the power to defy Dolan. The Knick players have that power. Will they exercise it? Do they want to? Athletes are among the few people in position to publicly do so without being punished.
Or does the world move on, as always, and sometime this summer I’m hate-watching Hart and KAT laughing alongside the man who kills children in other lands, kidnaps those who live here and condemns all children to the worser world he’s created? I know what I think and I know what I hope. If Brunson and the Knicks refuse to co-sign Dolan’s latest forgery, I will love the New York Knicks 100 times more than after Game 5 in San Antonio.
