That Time of Year

One of the great things about Fall is the convergence of basketball, baseball, and football. In recent years, I’ve fallen off the football train a bit; that’s largely due to the hypocrisy surrounding the Colin Kaepernick situation. I still haven’t forgiven the NFL for blackballing him—and before we debate this, please keep in mind that the Jets signed Ryan Fitzpatrick and chose mediocrity as a ceiling, over signing a quarterback that took his team to the Super Bowl—but the New York teams are doing better right now than they have in several years from what I understand, so I’m keeping a cursory eye on the game, I might not be able to watch much (whether or not I even wanted to) thanks to recently cutting the cord, so I’m not going to talk about it all that much.

What I will start with is the MLB Playoffs. This is the first year the league has adopted a six-team seeded format—three division winners, three Wild Card teams—and the Yankees earned a first-round bye. That is unsurprising to the point of being a cliché. What’s fun on the AL side is that the Seattle Mariners have made the playoffs for the first time in 21 years, and at the time of this writing is one win away from facing the Astros in the ALDS. I’ve lived in the Northwest for over a decade now, and while I have not changed my allegiances—that’s never going to happen; I enjoy going to Yankees/Mariners games as the villain—I’m genuinely happy that Seattle gets to experience playoff baseball. I’m hoping they beat Toronto and Houston to get to the ALCS to eventually face the Yankees. Mostly that’s because I imagine playoff tickets to be cheaper in Seattle than they would be in New York, and I don’t have to fly. And while I assume great things or the Yankees as a default, I should keep in mind that it’s not a cakewalk to the championship this year. Don’t get me wrong; when the Bronx Bombers are firing on all cylinders, they’re nearly unbeatable, and the power in that lineup—from Judge to Rizzo to Stanton—can light up the night. The path isn’t going to be easy, though. Right now, Tampa Bay and Cleveland are in the midst of a dogfight, with Cleveland up 1-0 in the series and in the bottom of the 13th of a thrilling 0-0 game as we speak. Personally, I’d really rather see the Guardians, as we’re 5-1 against them, and the Rays know us too well. (Update: the Guardians hit a walk-off home run in the 15th inning to advance to face the Yankees in the ALDS.)

It’s also noteworthy that the Mets have been shockingly good this year. They won over 100 games in a tough NL East. They tied the Braves in record (though lost the tiebreaker in a heartbreaking three-game sweep at the end of the season) and in the process posted a better record than even the Yankees did. They’re still a Wild Card team and now have to face a solid San Diego team—one that smacked around their ace, Max Scherzer, last night—just to earn the right to face the MLB-best Dodgers. I’m rooting for a Subway Series this year, though. It’s something we haven’t seen since 2000 and is a throwback to an era when New York was the center of the baseball universe.

And then there’s the Knicks. So much ink has been sacrificed in the last sixteen months, predicting and reveling in the team’s reversal of fortune between the 2020 and 2021 seasons. For months, it’s been some variation of “the Knicks are a fraud,” “Julius Randle is trash,” or my favorite, “the Knicks need a ‘real’ superstar.” This has been the narrative with professional pundits and armchair GM’s alike amplifying the rhetoric. The truth, as always, is a bit more nuanced than that.

The Knicks either underachieved in 2021 or overachieved in 2020. Based on the record, that much is undeniable. There are a bunch of reasons why. We hear a lot about how the bulk of the pandemic shortened 2020 season was played to empty arenas without the pressure of cheering or booing fans. I would have been inclined to agree with that if during the pandemic year, the Knicks had lost a home court advantage. They were a better home team in 2020 than a road team, and the reverse was true in 2021. Which means that either the Garden and its fans are toxic or there’s another reason. In debates with other fans, I hear some variation of the contradicting arguments “they only played well with no fans/the fans shouldn’t matter.” To that I say, “pick one.”

A more reasonable argument boils down to point guard play. The Knicks in 2020-21 were buoyed by soled drive-and-kick play from Elfrid Payton and Austin Rivers, and later from Derrick Rose. We went into last season having not re-signed the non-scoring Payton and long since cutting Rivers, instead going with Kemba Walker. It was widely assumed that the combination of Kemba Walker and Derrick Rose would average out to one

elite point guard. It didn’t work out that way; neither Rose nor Walker was healthy, and we had to find another way. We started Alec Burks out of position and the offense lived and died with Julius Randle. Granted, we could have (and probably should have) handed the keys to Immanuel Quickley and/or Miles McBride as a “next man up” scenario, but we didn’t and that’s neither here nor there. Since then, we’ve acquired a new floor general in Jalen Brunson, handed the keys to the franchise to RJ Barrett, and put enough pieces in to take the focus off Julius Randle. It's only preseason, but the team already looks more fluid and organized than last year.

Now, a lot of those same armchair GM’s and pundits (I’m looking at you, Stephen A. Smith) are saying that we didn’t do enough to get better, or that we still lack a necessary superstar. That we should have blown it all up to get Donovan Mitchell when Utah dangled him in front of us. My response to that: I honestly don’t feel like any team that wasn’t already championship-ready—the Sixers, Bucks, maybe the Nets—actually got better. At least, not better than us. So many of the teams in the East, which has the smallest talent gap from the top to the bottom of the conference in decades, have significant holes in talent, coaching, or health. The Knicks are in a prime position to take advantage of a league that is asleep at the wheel, or at the very least, not looking out for New York.

This is a super exciting time for sports fans, especially New York fans. I know I’m going to be glued to my TV and internet over the next month to see what happens. This October, it’s New York or Nowhere!