September marks the last full month without New York Knicks basketball for the foreseeable future. Maybe until May 2025, or June, or even July, or some unforeseen and totally bonkers change to the Gregorian calendar. Perhaps the powers that be will name four new months after the Villanova guys, and DiVincenzuary will be commemorated as Knicks History Month (presented by Chase Sapphire). Personally, it’s the most preseason hype I’ve entertained for a campaign since the Stat & Melo outfit more than a decade ago. There are definitely some uncertainties to settle and issues worth raising. Are the Knicks good enough to run with the defending champion Boston Celtics? Will Mikal Bridges unlock another level of his game? Can OG Anunoby play all 82? Could Julius Randle be dangled onto the trading block? These are questions with real gravity.
I’m not here to answer those questions, but instead remind our handsome and intelligent readership how dumb the questions used to be. If Durk, Baby and Rod Wave can get “Rich Off Pain,” shouldn’t we at least get a tax break for surviving the Knicks’ desperate and most depraved roster constructions? Respectability itself is no consolation prize, but before the stresses attendant to a championship-caliber team, let’s acknowledge how much stupider and less dignified our offseasons used to be.
What we have here is not a drinking game, nor a struggle session, but an exercise in mindfulness and perspective. It’s like that scene in literally every movie where the main characters reminisce about how far they’ve come. It’s also an excuse to remind you of Chris Smith. So, before we continue to stoke the unbridled expectations of the 2024-25 Knicks, let’s appreciate what we no longer have to deal with.
Remember when the Scott Layden-led Knicks traded Marcus Camby and the no. 7 pick in the 2002 Draft for a fully-injured Antonio McDyess? With the Knicks, Camby averaged about 9 rebounds and 2 blocks in 28 minutes per game; as a Nugget, that went up to 11 boards and 3 stuffs, and he finished top five in Defensive Player of the Year voting four straight seasons. The draft selection became Nenê Hilario, who averaged 12 and 7 for a full decade in Denver. McDyess had suffered a tear in his patellar tendon the year prior, then promptly re-injured his knee in the last two minutes of a goddamn preseason exhibition. He played 18 total games in blue and orange. When you are in the throes of Thibodeau-induced anxiety this winter, remind yourself of all you’ve been through and the strength you can summon.
How about the time Isiah Thomas and the Knicks signed career backup center and former Harlem Globetrotter Jerome James to a five-year contract? The Sonics backup big joined New York with NBA career averages short of 5 points and 4 rebounds per game. A low bar, fine, but surely one the under-the-radar breakout guy would clear? Man, not even a lil bit! James averaged 2.5 points and 1.8 rebounds in four Knicks seasons. Apparently, the franchise paid him $175,000 per point scored, empirically making him the biggest free agency bust in league history. “James was a mistake before he ever took the court at Madison Square Garden,” Chris Mannix wrote for Sports Illustrated in 2006. “The day the Knicks announced his signing, they were universally panned by executives, experts, journalists — really anyone with a voice box.”
Does anyone regret buying into that timeshare in E City? I remember mocking this tepid, wet fart of a media campaign when it was actually happening, and I was a 13-year-old that chewed his retainer and still adhered to the laws of Volkswagen Punch Buggy No Punch-Backs. Come on…E City…in which Stephon Marbury had to feign outrage for Dwight Howard getting an All-Star nod over Eddy Curry?! “We’re calling him E City because he’s taking over New York,” Marbury told the Post. Superman vs. E City was billed as a Broadway marquee title match. By all accounts, Curry seems to be a standup human being and a resilient soul still reconciling with his own grief. Nothing but love and respect for the man. But E City as a municipality was the basketball equivalent of Ben Wyatt’s Ice Town.
“Did anyone see that? You see the move Isiah pulled off?” A totally for-real 2007-08 promo video featured a bespectacled Knicks fan calling the Zach Randolph Knicks “formidable.” He repeats it again, this time directly addressing the reigning champion Celtics. Those Knicks finished 23-59 with a net rating of -7.1. You – yes you, beautiful fan reading this – you are strong, you are worthy of love, and this year you are finally formidable.
What about when they drafted Jordan Hill no. 8 overall in 2009, only to trade him 24 games into his rookie season for a calcified Tracy McGrady and cap room? Oh, and the Knicks also attached a first-round pick to get this done? Woah, that was dumb! In getting off Jared Jeffries, the team at least opened a full $30 million for that forthcoming offseason. Now bring us home, ESPN’s Marc Stein – “they will pursue several members of a free-agent class headed by LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade.” A note to your future self, complaining about a three-game lull in March 2025 and wondering why we stopped calling things “brat” – you’ve thugged it out through far worse.
Let’s give our readership a breather now, because this has been a lot of trauma dumping. JUST KIDDING, AIR BARGS!
The 2016 first-round pick that we attached to get this guy became no. 7 overall. It was used to select NBA champion and perennial 20 PPG point guard Jamal Murray. We are brave, we are strong.
Why did the Knicks eat $2 million of cap room to keep J.R. Smith’s brother Chris in the franchise? They paid into the league’s escrow account to make Chris Smith the most expensive player in G League history. At the time, Rob Mahoney of SI wrote, “It’s not unusual for teams to go to great lengths to entice free agents back and keep them happy, but there’s a clear, distinct boundary between compromising with another party and compromising basketball sensibility.” I suppose there is indeed a difference between J.R. Smith and Giannis Antetokounmpo. Nowadays, when this franchise gets brazen in appeasing its targeted free agents, they at least do it for FIRST-TEAM ALL-NBA JALEN BRUNSON, and they are rewarded with unprecedented good vibeage. How did the Smith family pay it forward after that summer? Chris averaged eight points on 35.6 percent shooting in the G; J.R. shot below 41 percent in his subsequent 98 Knicks games, before he was traded with Iman Shumpert for Lou Amundson and Lance Thomas. This is our fight song, take back our life song, etc.
At some point in the next several weeks, you may find yourself wondering, “Is it really a good idea for the Knicks to recreate an NCAA title team?” It’s at this point you will remind yourself that it won’t be worse than their recreation of the late-aughts Chicago Bulls. The Phil Jackson-led Knicks (remember that!?) gave a four-year, $72 million contract to Joakim Noah, who had just suffered consecutive injury-plagued campaigns. He was somehow on the payroll through 2022. Derrick Rose joined via trade, and said that he, Carmelo Anthony and Kristaps Porziņģis comprised of a superteam on the level of the 73-win Warriors.
And yet…the past few offseasons have been sane, defensible, even kinda fun? Leon Rose really pulled off the “I can fix him” meme, only the him here isn’t a novelist-turned-bartender in Bushwick but our very favorite professional basketball team. Is it nerve-wracking to build high expectations around something we care about deeply but cannot control in the slightest? Yeah. Have we seen far worse and way stupider? You bet your formidable butt we have. Knicks fans of a certain generation have collectively built up a super-high tolerance for that precise kind of stress. I’ll be watching all 82 games (or as many as I possibly can before getting laid becomes getting Laydened). I’ll have no shortage of imperfections or uncertainties to dwell on. All I’m saying is that we’ve put in our 10,000 hours, and at this point nothing can phase us. Let’s bookmark this for when Cameron Payne plays 38 minutes on some December night, or Jacob Toppin drops a diss track on the Erie BayHawks.
