"Concrete Jungle Where Dreams Are Made Of"

Though I grew up on Long Island going to primarily baseball and hockey games, I always knew that New York City was a basketball town.  While my friends and I would spend the year hitting up Mets games at Shea Stadium or Islanders Games at the Nassau Coliseum, Manhattan seemed like some far away, mysterious place where basketball ruled.  As a child of the 1990s, the Knicks rocked Madison Square Garden on a nightly basis, the St. John's Redmen (later Red Storm) were a relevent (and sometimes dominant) college basketball program, and kids rocked NBA-themed Starter jackets (the Charlotte Hornets and Houston Rockets were both strangely popular) while roaming middle school hallways.  Basketball owned New York.

In the 2000s, basketball almost disappeared from the New York sports landscape.  While inner-city youth still loved the game and dominated the city's playgrounds, city kids lacked a stable supply of New York-area basketball stars to look up to.  The Knicks were terrible, St. John's crumbled and in their place the Yankees began their dominant run.  Kids traded their Starter jackets for Mitchell and Ness throwback baseball jerseys and New Era 51/50 Yankees caps.

While there were still plenty of great sports to follow in New York, something seemed "off" without competitive hoops.  Well, the tide has turned here in the 2010s.  And while the Knicks, led by Amar'e and Carmelo, will get most of the credit and attention, they are hardly alone in this New York basketball Renaissance.  Despite losing to Syracuse in the Big East tournament earlier this week, St. John's is ranked and headed to the NCAA tournament for the first time in years.  Long Island University in Brooklyn will also return to the NCAA's (for the first time time since 1994), and I'm currently watching Long Island's Stony Brook University battle (and lead) favored Boston University for the America East title and a spot in the field of 68.  Clearly, whatever the Knicks caught this year is contagious.

I've forgotten how great it is to have competitive, local basketball to watch deep into March.  Because recently the Knicks have been eliminated from playoff contention by February and the New York-area colleges haven't been competitive, I typically associate the spring with pre-season baseball and the NFL combine.  Starting this decade, though, New York basketball has returned.  Welcome back, roundball - you have been missed.