3 A.M. Thoughts on the Greatest Knicks Win Ever
Went to bed at one. Impossible to sleep. Still vibrating from the Knicks’ impossible comeback against the Spurs in Game Four. If this persists, schedule an EKG. Got up at three to check the truth machine to see if this had really happened. Down twenty-nine points. At the brink of seeing the series tied at two games apiece, with all the momentum on San Antonio’s side. Disaster is so easy to envision, especially for a catastrophist: Wemby hoisting the trophy after a Game Seven (or worse—after a Game Six at the Garden!). And, considering how young the Spurs are, we could be watching them (or O.K.C., for that matter) collecting trophies in a rain of confetti for a decade to come. This was our time! Our shot! Had we, after opening the series with two wins on the road, blown it?
It took a thorough doomscroll on the phone—is there such a thing as an assurance scroll?—to realize it was true. OG really had soared past a clutch of leaping Spurs, and, with just the right arrangement of his fingers, just the proper pressure applied to the basketball, and with God on his side, he tipped in Jalen Brunson’s barely errant three-pointer to take the lead. Cue the courtside hysterics! Cue the watch-party explosions across five boroughs! Cue the collective exclamation points and fireworks. And, yes, with just over one second left on the clock, the Spurs fumbled their last chance—they failed to find Wemby for the win. Final score: Knicks 107, Spurs 106. It really had happened.
And yet sleep is not easily given to the nerve-jangled fan. Even listening to Brian Windhorst’s post-miracle pod did little to settle the mind. Nor did my usual late-night remedy: a cup of coffee. (That’s a story for another day.) Instead, I had what all fans have in these moments. Thoughts. Theories. Here are some which I inflict on you before sleep overtakes me:
1. Let’s please not get too far ahead of ourselves. Please. Curb your enthusiasm. At least a little. Teams down three games to one in the playoffs have made comebacks. In fact, New Yorkers will darkly recall 2004, the Year of the Bloody Sock, when the Yankees were up three games to none against the Red Sox. What happened next haunts the dreams, dents the bravura of every New Yorker.
2. OG Anunoby’s tip for the win was the greatest shot in Knicks history. Boomers will point to Willis Reed’s two game-opening jumpers from midrange to open the decisive game in the finals, against the Lakers, in 1970. And, although some scholars will argue that Reed was playing with a leg shot up with painkillers, he did not exactly win the game. He stole the Lakers’ self-confidence from the jump, that is true, but it was Walt (Clyde) Frazier who really brought the victory home with a gaudy thirty-six points and nineteen assists. OG’s shot was what believers would call a miracle. And yet, he was characteristically calm. “It feels cool,” he allowed after the game. “I mean, everyone’s pretty excited.” Pretty excited? OG, they are filling the streets and jumping on top of trucks across the city! “The ball went over my head, so I really couldn’t dunk it,” he went on calmly. “So I tried to tip it in softly, and it went in.” Yes, it did.
3. Charles Barkley speaks his truth. And surely that counts for something. Sir Charles, the Chuckwagon, the Round Mound of Rebound, has an unerring talent for getting to the point. His merciless postgame point Wednesday night was that the Spurs were “the dumbest basketball team in the history of civilization.” He didn’t stop there. “The San Antonio Spurs helped this New York Knicks team win this game by doing some of the most stupid-ass stuff I’ve ever seen on a basketball court,” he argued. Namely, the Spurs, after draining one three-pointer after another in the first half, obliviously kept on shooting from beyond the arc long after they had gone cold. And, on the penultimate possession, the Spurs up by one, De’Aaron Fox could have dribbled it out but instead went up for a layup, only to have his attempt blocked by OG. Barkley had it right. He usually does.
4. Best social-media aperçu: Based on my blurry-eyed random scan and a stream of thoughts and links sent from friends and correspondents all over, the best came on X from one Myles Brown (@mdotbrown), who (assuming he is not a bot) is clearly a fan of “Succession” as well as of the Knicks. He wrote, “If the New York post headline isn’t ‘L to the OG’ someone is slacking.” Good point. In fact, the Post’s Thursday-morning headline is a simple and enormous “OMG!” done up in orange, white, and blue letters over a photograph of OG’s tip-in. The Post’s wood the day before was better: An old-timey shoot-’em-up “Wanted” poster (“For Crimes Against the Knicks”) of Wemby over a photograph of his ref-neglected Game Three assault on Jalen Brunson. And, because the Post is the Post, the bottom line read “Even Soft-on-Crime D.A. Bragg Could Find Him Guilty.”
5. Sometimes the heavens, in the form of teammates, save us. Looking at you, Josh Hart. One of the most energetic players on the New York roster, Hart can be a huge asset even when he is missing his threes and committing foolish fouls. He is a terrific rebounder, pushes the fast break, takes pressure off Brunson, and never stops. But, on Wednesday night, he damn near blew the game (and the entire series, by my doom-ridden estimation) when he went up for a breakaway layup with the Knicks trailing by a single point nearly at the end of the game. Instead of dunking or gently dropping the ball through the hoop, he did something in between—and doinked it off the rim. After OG saved the game with his for-the-ages tip, you have to figure that Hart will send him a six-pack of gratitude.
6. Keep Donald Trump away from the Garden, please. The only comeuppance for his insane city-disrupting, boo-inducing, utterly unwanted appearance at Game Three was the clip of his granddaughter poking him to wake him up as he snoozed during the action. Way to go, Kai! Run for the hills while you still can!
7. Fandom is a complicated state of being. And sometimes it requires a selective and powerful measure of cognitive dissonance. Especially where owners are concerned. New Yorkers will recall the assholic behavior of the Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, a swaggering builder of ships, who always seemed to delight in humiliating his managers and players. And yet. James Dolan is generally a glum courtside presence, with his arms folded grimly across his chest even on the most glorious of nights. Credit him with underwriting the assembling of this team—credit the personnel mastermind Leon Rose a lot more!—but Dolan’s creation of a surveillance system at the Garden is beyond creepy, and his battle of the quotes with Mayor Mamdani over who should be blamed for the watch-party cancellation outside the Garden on Wednesday night was beyond petty.
8. But mostly fandom is a matter of patience. Dynasties are freak occurrences in history. Such dominance might be pleasurable, but it does not encourage good character. Real fandom is about endurance and waiting. (At times it feels like waiting for the Messiah.) Knicks fans have endured. As Landry Shamet, the always energizing and often deadly bench player, put it recently, “Y’all know, Knicks fans are a specific species of human that should be studied.”
9. Enough with the incessant press focus on the courtside celebs at the Garden, most of whom are getting comped tickets that would otherwise go for about the price of a midsize automobile. Credit is due to Spike Lee, who always shows up, and has since Patrick Ewing was a slender rookie and the world was young. If the Knicks are playing Memphis on an icy night in February, Spike’s there in full Spike regalia. Ben Stiller, Michael J. Fox, Fat Joe—stalwarts all. But maybe a little less self-admiring performative ecstasy from some of the rest? You know what I’m talking about. Charles Barkley, might you have something to say on this?
10. Bitching about the refs is ordinarily for amateurs. Stuff tends to even out. And yet. Don’t get me wrong. The Spurs are a magnificent team. As my Substack Live partners Louisa Thomas and Vinson Cunningham keep pointing out, they are like athletic L.L.M.s, learning from experience with every game. They are going to be astonishing. (They already are.) But man. The Knicks are also getting whacked every time down the court. The Spurs’ strategy is clear, and it is, admittedly, wise: Do everything possible to slow down, shove, envelop Jalen Brunson. He is the key to the Knicks’ flow, and if they muffle him as the shot clock ticks down, and Wemby is in the paint just waiting to deflect shots with his endless flyswatter arms, then San Antonio is tough to beat. But must the refs assist in the effort?
11. Finally, refer back to No. 1. It ain’t over till it really is. Fandom is patience. See you Saturday, couchside. ♦