“Ooh, yea, and I like it. And you say New York City!”
Grand Puba, I Like It, 1995
The Eastern Conference Finals came and went with a flurry. We’ve already given the Cleveland Cavaliers fans some harsh love so now it’s time to talk… Knicks basketball.
A friend of mine for fifteen years decided to embark upon a little Midwestern adventure. You guys remember Fibbs, life-long Knicks fan, long time reader, contributor and supporter of the site. His voicemail the other night was direct and to the point.
“I’m going to give Cleveland the business,” he said. Fibbs was flying to Ohio. He wasn’t the only one.
Fibbs has turned over a new leaf. Since he stopped womanizing (he’s now happily married) and quit drinking (a noble feat for a service industry lifer), Fibbs must find a good time somehow. So, he booked two tickets each for Knicks-Cavs Games Three and Four.
Fibbs is not the only one getting his act together. His beloved Knickerbockers, a team that has consistently provided him and other New Yorkers with their bitter and agonizing shortcomings, decided to run roughshod through the Eastern Conference playoffs and make a mockery out of what many thought would be competitive series.
After an early scrap with the Hawks, the Knicks closed out the final game of that series with a 51-point beatdown. New York then swept the Philadelphia 76ers, who had surprisingly upset Boston.
Not to be outdone, from the third quarter of Game One of the Eastern Conference Finals, the Knickerbockers outscored the Cleveland Cavaliers by 91 points, which I suppose is easy when you play defense like the Cavs.
The Knicks shot 52% (to the Cavs 39%) in Game Two. Upon returning home to Cleveland to make one final stand, the Cavs allowed the Knicks to shoot even better, 56% from the floor in Game Three. So much for turning up the heat. Cleveland’s defense was downright abysmal. Meanwhile, their coach, who recently got a vote of confidence from Cavs owner Dan Gilbert, offered up soundbites claiming his team, despite the outcomes, had statistically won two out of the first three games. I’m not sure what sort of bath salts math Kenny Atkinson was churning up but when he returns to the scene of the crime, he might want to wear one of those Bobby Valentine mustaches.
Unable to regularly afford tickets to see his Knicks in Madison Square Garden, (per his sources, admission started at $800 a pop), Fibbs decided to take his show on the road, an impromptu roadie to Cleveland where the cuisine was worse than he’s used to and the streets, as it turned out, were vacant, unless you include the hordes of other Knicks fans who also made the trip.
After the effort their Cavaliers put forth, Cleveland proper understandably couldn’t be seen in public.
In New York’s previous series against the Sixers, Joel Embiid warned of traveling Knicks fans. Sixers fans didn’t pay attention. The ninety-minute drive was not deterrent enough to keep rabid Knicks fans away. Games Three and Four in Philadelphia, both blowouts, were overrun with New Yorkers. They ate up all the cheesesteaks, then drove home for cheesecake.
It looked that way in Cleveland too; the visitors center awash in orange and blue. The hour and a half flight had to see commercial airlines overrun with Knicks fans who could live high on the hog in exchange for the cost of a night out in Madison Square.
Per Fibbs, the atmosphere in Cleveland was overwhelmingly Knicks-friendly. His trip, which included an Indians game, a trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and an NBA Today cameo alongside Fat Joe, was so dreamy that his final score prediction wagers missed by a single point. Knowing Fibbs as I do, he wouldn’t have traded that point for a loss.
Walking around downtown Cleveland after the Game Three disaster, Fibbs reported a ghost town, as if a nuclear sports bomb of even Cleveland proportions had drained the city of its lifeblood. Game Four’s victory sealed the deal.
Fibbs and I joked that the locals were as welcoming as the Cavs’ soft interior defense and that his visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included seeing such dead-and-buried legends as James Harden’s jump shot. The Cavs went out with less of a whimper than America’s theoretical invasion of Greenland. Scratch that. Greenland would have put up more of a fight.
While it’s easy to point fingers, Harden is a fair culprit. His games 1, 3 and 4 were grossly inefficient. He shot a combined 2-20 from distance and had 17 turnovers, a lumbering liability by all accounts. One of the game’s all-time great (regular season) scorers, Harden didn’t score 20 points in any of the four games and is about to be as non grata as Coach Atkinson, that is if Cavaliers fans come out of hiding long enough to give a shit.
There is plenty of blame to go around but, ultimately, this Cleveland team wasn’t good enough or deep enough and ran into a team that could easily expose those flaws. The Knicks were too well-rounded, too efficient and too motivated, with more players that could take better shots, defend more aggressively and who had been playing together longer.
And their fans.
“They have to keep raising the music to drown out the Knicks fans,” texted Fibbs during Game Four. This is my surprised face.
The Knicks haven’t reached the Finals since 1999. They haven’t won a title since 1973. That’s a long wait, which is exactly why fans like Fibbs invaded Cleveland. They’re staging their own parade and they’re not cleaning up the horse poop when they leave.
As of two weeks ago, nobody gave any team in the East, particularly the Knicks, a chance against either Oklahoma City or San Antonio. A lot has changed since then. Both the Spurs and Thunders seem beatable, and the Knicks right now are a locomotive who have not only won eleven straight playoff games but done so in historically bludgeoning fashion.
Knicks fans are brewing with anticipation and Jalen Brunson, already beloved, is four wins away from becoming New York City’s most revered sports figure. More so than Eli, more so than Namath, more so than Messier, more so than Seaver, more so than Strawberry. He’ll be fighting Jeter and Mariano for all-time city status in a town that worships its legends and brandishes their jerseys all over Times Square.
As the late, great Denny Green once said, it’s premature to “crown their ass” but the New York Knickerbockers are four wins away from an NBA title. I’m not sure we’re ready for a world where Knicks fans terrorize the planet like they just did Cleveland. But I know a lot of people that are going to be real happy if that’s how it all goes down.
It’s been a long time comin’.
And thanks, Fibbsy, for taking us along for the ride.
