It was the summer of 1993. I was a few weeks away from 3rd year high school. I started my very first journal. I wrote short stories and poetry, mostly inspired by the music I was listening to. My favorite bands were The Cocteau Twins, Radiohead, Sonic Youth and The Sundays. My favorite person (musical or non-musical) was Tori Amos. My least-favorite basketball team was the Chicago Bulls.
At the time, they were up against the New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals. It was a foregone conclusion that they were going back to the Finals that year and that the only team even capable of stopping them was the Charles Barkley-led Phoenix Suns. Then suddenly, the unthinkable happened: the Knicks jumped on them, 2-0. Their guard, John Starks, even dunked on Michael Jordan, Horace Grant, AND Scottie Pippen on a crucial play in Game 2.
My new favorite basketball team became the New York Knicks.
They went on to lose that series. They went on to lose the NBA Finals the following year. They eventually lost my favorite Knicks ever: Starks and Charles Oakley. They would get Allan Houston and Latrell Sprewell and impossibly reach the Finals in 1999 without Patrick Ewing. They would lose to Tim Duncan, David Robinson and the San Antonio Spurs. They went on to suck profoundly for the next decade.
None of these events deterred me from being a Knicks fan. I didn’t really fall in love with a team, so much as with an idea: that an unpolished, untalented team can claw, bruise, and thug their way to victory. That you can win without having the most talented players. That you can win just by WANTING it more.
The fact that the 90s Knicks were seriously flawed didn’t make them unattractive; it was the reason I adored them. I loved how every offensive possession seemed like a struggle. I loved how Ewing seemed to only have three moves, yet he somehow would always end up scoring 20-plus points every game. I loved how Starks can go 2-for-15 one night then shoot the lights out of Madison Square Garden the following night. I loved how Oakley always dived for loose balls simply because he wasn’t fast enough to grab them in time.
That was the Knicks of more than a decade ago. Somehow I’ve always expected to see another Knicks team that I could love with the same irrational passion. And somehow, all these expectations pointed to this year: 2010, A.K.A. “The Summer of LeBron”.
It’s been more than 15 years and some dreams just die hard. I would love to tell my 15-year-old self that one of his dreams came true, that I did become a writer; but that has been tough to prove the last few years. I did get to write stuff that got published; some I am proud of, some not so much. I probably was a writer. But right now I’m just someone who rents out “writing services” to people who have something to sell.
I'm still a Knicks fan, though. And while I’m still waiting for the break my writing “career” desperately needs, my break as a Knicks fan is supposedly coming in a few months. Sports columnists, mostly from New York, are raising expectations that LeBron James will wear the orange and blue next season. But I have two problems with this:
1. It's becoming increasingly apparent that LeBron will be playing for the Chicago Bulls (who I don’t hate that much anymore, unfortunately) because they have a talented young nucleus of Joakim Noah and Derrick Rose, and…
2. Even if it were possible, I’m not sure I want LeBron playing for my favorite team.
There is no question that he is at least a hundred times more talented than Derek Harper, John Starks, Anthony Mason, Charles Oakley, and Patrick Ewing ever were. But after watching him in Game 5 of the recently-concluded Cavs-Celtics series, I realized that I can never root for him again. None of those above-mentioned players, as flawed and as athletically-limited as they were, would have quit on their team and quit on a game like that. Ewing would’ve tried to get his team back in the game and “choked” in the end. Starks would’ve fired blanks. But they never EVER would've quit.
I just watched someone who was supposed to be the greatest basketball player of his generation QUIT. The idea that he can possibly play for my favorite team scares me to death.
I can’t do anything about my favorite team's fortunes. All I can do is write about it because writing about things when I’m helpless is an instinct I developed a long time ago, back when I was still in high school, during a summer when the air was rife with promise, when all the things that I wanted seemed so clear. Some things just never change. And my most intense sports allegiance has yet to yield my long-desired reward: proof that you don’t have to be the most talented to succeed, that WANTING something can be enough.
The last thing my life needs right now is LeBron James.
1994 New York Knicks photo courtesy of i.cdn.turner.com/sivault; LeBron James photo courtesy of OneManFastBreak.net
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