Knicks Ready to Be Relevant
Written by Jason Keidel, Thursday March 11 2010
Jeff Van Gundy gathered the shards of the shattered empire Pat Riley left behind in 1995, keeping the New York Knicks relevant for a few more years. The Knicks made one more trip to the NBA Finals in 1999.
Van Gundy, keenly aware of the increasing incompetence of the Dolan family (who owned the team), resigned as coach in 2001. And the Knicks have been irrelevant since, going winless in the playoffs for a decade.
Adding to the disgrace, the Knicks have flashed a phalanx of stars (Lenny Wilkens & Larry Brown) and scrubs (Don Chaney, Herb Williams, & Isiah Thomas) to coach and play for the team, often ravaging the salary cap with misguided drafts and free agent signings. Jerome James and Eddy Curry, anyone?
Despite the erosion of the NBA's signature franchise in the world's media vortex, the Knicks have sold season tickets for next fall at a faster rate than any in its history. They have done so, in Wall Street vernacular, "On spec."
New York is the ancestral city of hoop dreams, and Madison Square Garden was once the grand canvas on which those dreams were painted. The simultaneous demise of the Knicks and St. John's have made Manhattan a graveyard for basketball fans.
So why the rabid rush for tickets? New Yorkers long for a King. That would be LeBron James. While the Cleveland Cavaliers can offer James more money than any other NBA team, the Knicks are banking on cache and the myriad media dollars that sponsors will shower upon Mr. James should he migrate to Madison Avenue.
If the Knicks don't secure LeBron James, there is a fertile free agent market this summer that includes Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, Amare Stoudemire, and Joe Johnson.
But perhaps not landing King James will be seen as another failure in a list of failures. In the city that never sleeps, the Knicks need to stalk LeBron with the power and patience of a leopard, giving New Yorkers a new reason to stay awake.
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