Earlier today, my New York Knicks defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers to clinch their first playoff berth since 2004. I was at the gym when I checked the score and heard the news, and I will admit it prompted a little smile and a few brief moments of satisfaction. After all, it's been brutal to watch the Knicks play over the past couple of seasons, and the playoff appearance will be a lone bright spot in a decade otherwise filled with total futility. I was glad to see the Knicks put together a solid, complete victory (albeit against the NBA's worst team), and found myself excited to see what will happen come playoff time in two weeks.
Never could I have imagined the reactions of Knicks fans to this not-so-surprising development, however. After the win, Madison Square Garden was rocking as if the Knicks had just earned a trip to the NBA Finals. My Facebook news feed was filled with joyful commentary on the victory, with New York-based friends proclaiming their love for the Knicks on their status feeds, and dozens of others "liking" their updates. While I'm glad to see the enthusiasm, I can't help but wonder how Knicks fans ever got to this point in the first place.
After all, we're talking about the New York Knicks here. While Springfield, MA may claim to be basketball's official home, any true hoops fan knows that the game is based out of New York City. And while the Knicks haven't historically been the NBA's most successful franchise, they represent what basketball is all about. The Knicks have traditionally been, and more importantly should always be, a fixture in the NBA playoff scene, making all of the celebration surrounding a .500 team who had to wait until the regular season's final week to clinch one of the 16 playoff spots a little sad.
True, it's much better than where the Knicks were even last season, floundering at the bottom of the Eastern Conference and waiting for a savior to come to the Garden. A year later the Knicks are anchored by two young stars, have a few other complementary pieces to build on, and are headed to the postseason. Never mind the fact that the team seems to have regressed since the Carmelo Anthony trade, or that guys named Anthony Carter, Jared Jeffries and Shelden Williams are getting regular minutes, or that it took a heroic effort by Carmelo to hold off the hapless Nets at home last week. The Knicks are better than they've been in the last seven years, and that's reason enough to celebrate.
In a way, though, I almost feel worse about how far the Knicks have fallen now that they're back to respectabiity. Maybe I was able to subconsciously ignore the last few seasons and almost pretend like they never happened, as if my brain forced me to block out the horrible basketball I was watching. While the Knicks were horrible, they were so bad that I wasn't able to fully process it. In fact, it was almost funny, with every additional disaster (and there were a lot of them) a different funny joke. Eddie Curry's out for the season again? Why not! The Knicks traded for Steve Francis? Of course they did! We used our lottery pick on Michael Sweetney? Naturally!
Now, though, the playoff berth has forced reality to set in. All of the pageantry and celebration surrounding the Knicks' "accomplishment" only serves as a reminder that, yes, things really were that bad towards the second half of the 2000s; it wasn't all a bad dream. While I'm glad to have the Knicks be competitive again, any true Knicks fan shouldn't be flipping out over a dead-average team that clinched a postseason spot in a league where more than half of the teams go to the playoffs every year. While I know a lot of the buzz comes from fair weather fans who simply tuned out the last half-decade of Knicks basketball, I hope the diehard supporters aren't too pleased with today's news. The playoffs will be fun, but it won't really be New York basketball again until the Knicks are still competing in June, not just early April.
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