All the news that’s fit to hint
Sometime late last century, advertising consultant/futurist Faith Popcorn predicted we’d someday stop experiencing our day-to-day lives as the passage of time and instead as the passage of trends. In that vein, think of this as a springtime mailbag, clearing away the dead thoughts and detritus of a winter that saw the Knicks survive rather than thrive, with the promise of new growth as the playoffs and its thousand untold stories await to bloom.
Knowing what we now know, would the Knicks be better off if they had traded a couple years ago for Donovan Mitchell — and thus presumably not for KAT last year? Lots of unknowns within this question (who gets traded?) but still, whaddya think?
— PolyphonicSprewell
I was thinking this same question. As someone who was always anti-acquiring Donovan specifically because I didn’t want to pair him with Brunson, and as someone who was rabidly anti-trading Julius Randle for Towns, I had a lot of feelings to check in with. I think the Knicks are still better where they are, for a couple reasons (though we’re unlikely to put this to the test tonight, with Mitchell Robinson out because it’s the second game of a back-to-back and Towns possibly out again with knee soreness).
First, while Mitchell and Darius Garland have obviously had a lot of regular-season success together, I think the differences between Garland and Brunson matter. Garland is both faster and quicker than Brunson — he travels through space faster, and I think he gets into his moves a little quicker. Brunson is Batman; if footwork could carry shark repellent, Brunson’s would.
Garland is more like the Flash in my eyes. I think that matters when mixing two volatile scoring talents into one compound. I’ve never thought Brunson and Mitchell would make each other better. Like STAT/Melo, but less flashily dressed. Seeing how comfortable — and effective! — Brunson’s been alongside guards like Donte DiVincenzo last year and Mikal Bridges this season, I think the Knicks have probably gotten more out of him than if they’d paired him with Mitchell.
Second, while deserving of all the flowers their regular-season have earned them, these Cavs haven’t won all that much. They survived a seven-game war of attrition with Orlando in last year’s first round, then lost in five to the Celtics with an average margin of defeat of 15. Small backcourts can be all the rage six, seven months into a season. But good backcourts that are bigger can flip that script. Cleveland is 3-3 against Boston and Oklahoma City, whose guards are either taller, longer and beefier (SGA/Lu Dort) or preternaturally fierce (Holiday/White). The Cavs’ first meeting with the Knicks was a three-point game with under a minute and a half left.
In all kinds of ways, the Cavaliers should be the better regular-season team. Seven games in May with those guards getting a steady diet of Bridges, Deuce McBride and Josh Hart? And the occasional OG Anunoby? All while having to chase Brunson on the other end? We’ll see. Hopefully!
Hypothetically, if [the Knick and Celtic] cores stayed more or less the same for the remainder of Jalen Brunson’s contract, how many times do the Knicks get past or further than Boston in the playoffs?
— allzingers
This would be a tough question to tackle even if Boston’s ownership weren’t changing hands, but they are — kinda — and soon — sorta. Which makes the whole question even hazier.
The Grousbeck family sold the team to Bill Chisholm, and with it a lotta promise but also some other stuff. The Celtics are the defending champions and one of the betting favorites to win it all this year; if they do, they’d be the first repeat champs since the 2018 Warriors and the first Celtics to win consecutive titles since 1969. Last week was Walt Frazier’s 80th birthday. The last time the world suffered the Celtics repeating as champs, Clyde was 24. Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, et al can do something Dave Cowens, Larry Bird and Paul Pierce never did. If you’re wondering about future motivation, the last team to win three straight was the Shaq/Kobe Lakers. Last year’s title moved the Celtics past their blood enemy for the most in NBA history; repeating followed by reclaiming the threepeat belt would arguably be the greatest Celtic accomplishment of the past six decades.
But . . .
Bill Chisholm is a billionaire. He may as well be an alien. He doesn’t experience life like you and I do. I can’t say if his senses work any differently, but we don’t occupy the same reality. Or we do, the way a deer and a highway share it. It’s nice to think Chisholm, a Massachusetts kid and self-described “die-hard” fan of the team, goes home to his mansion and plops on his couch at 7:41 ‘cuz he knows that’s when the game actually starts and lives and dies with every quarter the way we do. There is literally more of a chance of him smacking you in the face than that owner-as-fan pipe dream. That’s no exaggeration: billionaires will literally choose kidnapping and kill you and thousands of others over things like, say, paying federal taxes or seeing their employees as something beyond costs to be reduced.
Does Chisholm care enough to spend what it’d cost to keep the C’s competing? The Grousbecks didn’t. They reached the top of the mountain after years of close but no cigar, took a look at the view and decided to cash out rather than face a half-billion dollar bill for next year’s roster. If the Celtics don’t win the title this year, that’s Chisholm’s Celtics who failed. If they win, they’ll be inextricably linked to last year’s team that pre-dates Chisholm’s greedy little paws. That’s some lousy binary: either Chisholm’s the Steve Cohen of the NBA or destined to be hated? Why would anyone want that heat?
Turns out they don’t. Chisholm’s deal leaves the Grousbecks as the ruling power the next three seasons. The old boss won’t do anything the new boss isn’t simpatico with, but the timing is interesting. Three years from now is the end of Payton Pritchard’s current contract and possibly Jrue Holiday’s. Holiday holds a player option that year for $37 million. Pritchard is one of the league’s most financially exploited players, slated to make only $23 million total the next three years. Al Horford and quite possibly Kristaps Porziņģis will have needed replacing by then. Between all those other needs and Tatum and Brown earning $130 million a year between them, that’s a lotta moving parts. Expensive moving parts.
Jalen Brunson is under contract through the year after that, 2028-29. Counting this year, that’s five seasons. How many of them do I see the Knicks getting further than Boston? Twice. I’d like to say more, but I’m not confident New York’s stability in ownership is an advantage over whatever transitioning is happening up in Beantown.
I’ve noticed some of us fans say “we/our” when referring to the Knicks, and some say “they/their.” What do you make of the two different approaches?
— JorgiePorgie
I cringe whenever I hear fans use “we/our/us” discussing their favorite team. As an editor in the past at P&T and now at The Strickland, I delete or change that language whenever I see it (except for Prez, who writes in a language that’s a world all its own; telling Prez not to use “we/our/us” when writing about the Knicks would been like telling Thelonious Monk he needs to resolve all those clusters in his piano playing.
In an imaginary world where sports still exists for the next 25-50 years, I wonder how this pronoun question evolves. I was struck as a professor by how often I’d ask students who professed themselves fans in any sport who their favorite teams were and their answer would be a player or players rather than any team. If sports gambling and social media continue the fragmenting of sporting identities, will that lead to more fans identifying with individual players over whole teams? Or do teams, fueled by the insatiable greenlust of their rapacious owners, create a counter-market by soaking the die-hards for every penny they can, appealing to their vanity to sell their own passion back to them? “Hooligan” is a pejorative term for a fan — but gambling was taboo, too, until the law let the league’s absolutely hose themselves in its grime for the payout promised. If the NBA sees the slightest profit in appealing to the worst of ourselves, they will drown us in our own blood in broad daylight.
The Knicks have started home games at 7:30 p.m. for years. Would you prefer to see them follow their co-tenant Rangers and start home games at 7?
— NYCKING
Yes. Because I’ve reached the age where my body’s started going to sleep by 11 most nights, whether I’m on-board or not. A 7:00 start would leave 60-90 minutes most nights between the final buzzer and bedtime, enough time to come up with a clear blueprint for a recap — or on rare nights, to write and publish one. Plus I watch Jeopardy! every night, which where I live runs at 7:30, so I always have to click the Knicks on late and then rewind it on my DVR, only the DVR sucks so rewinding it invariably ends up freezing the screen or costing so much time and frustration waiting for the lags to de-lag that I figure I’da been better off not rewinding at all and just missing the first 30 minutes, (19, really, since games start at 7:41), but then what’s the point of paying full price for a service if one of its main selling points doesn’t even work, so I sit there “winning” this philosophical war with a company I’ve already paid while missing the game.
So yes. 7:00 would be lovely.
The Knicks were one pick late in the 2009 draft. Some of us had our eyes on Curry. If he played for the Knicks, would he be pulling that night-night shit? Or would have somebody slapped him silly?
— freddy
If Curry had fallen to the Knicks, James Dolan would’ve thrown him into the Carmelo trade two years later and Knick sadists would have an entirely different timeline to whip themselves silly with.
That’s all for now, bubs. See you later this month, probably, hopefully as the Knicks are pushing toward their first conference finals since 2000. Peace.