A Tale of Three Knicks Fans

 

OG Anunoby with the tip-in that changed everything.

At the age at which one develops a lifelong relationship with a sports team, generally around age 8 or 10, Curmie lived about an hour and a half north of New York City (the local community theatre was called “90 Miles Off Broadway”), so for six decades or so his teams have been the Mets, Jets, Knicks, and Rangers.  The big wins, alas, have been rather rare.  In the last 53 years, those teams have combined for one World Series championship, one Stanley Cup, no Super Bowl appearances (let alone titles), and now, finally,  one NBA title.  Three titles in 212 chances… <sigh>.  But hey, that’s better than 2 for 211.

Who is the most famous Knicks fan?  Well, Spike Lee is probably the most famous for being a Knicks fan.  The most famous people who are also Knicks fans are Donald Trump, who grew up in Queens, and Taylor Swift, who became a Knicks fan in the early 2010s through a friendship with Amar’e Stoudemire, the Knicks’ star power forward (and one of Curmie’s favorite players) at the time.  Curmie has no reason to believe that either of them are anything but true Knicks fans.  (Things may get a little complicated for Swift, as Travis Kelce is a Cavs fan... but Curmie has been married to a Cavs fan for 44 years, so it can be done!)  The sportscaster/talking head who most wears his Knicks fandom on his sleeve is ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith.  It’s Smith, Trump, and Curmie himself who are the title characters of this piece, although it’s only fair to mention Lee and especially Swift for their celebrations after that crazy Game 4.

Curmie has seen hundreds of Knicks games on TV, but he’s never been inside Madison Square Garden.  That doesn’t make him less of a fan, any more than the thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers who, to quote Mayor Zohran Mamdani, “have watched… on televisions in the windows of electronics stores, and from projectors balanced on fire escapes,… alone in [their] apartments,… [or] shoulder to shoulder in bars where the signal flickers.” 

This is not to say that the Mariska Hartigays, Timothée Chalamets, and Ben Stillers of the world aren’t true fans.  But the folks who don’t have the resources to plonk down a few thousand dollars to watch a single game live instead of on TV, the ones who had to work that night because they’ve got a family to feed, the ones who were jumping up and down and screaming in the streets blocks or even miles from MSG, or in Kennedy airport, or in watering holes throughout the metropolitan area: these people aren’t necessarily more loyal, but it’s a good bet this victory meant more to them because they needed it more.

It’s definitely fair to say that it’s a lot more fun to watch your team win than to see them lose.  Repeatedly.  Comprehensively.  Curmie confesses that he didn’t watch the end of Game 4.  He would have if either team could have clinched, or if had been a close game at the time, but the worst that could happen from his perspective was a 2-2 series tie.  That looked pretty likely with the Spurs up 27 when Curmie called it a night, having watched his team find a way to lose both games and series momentum far too many times.  Curmie had seen this movie before, or at least thought he had.

Yes, he remembers Willis Reed’s entrance into MSG in Game 7 of the 1970 championship game, and Walt Frazier’s 36 points and 19 assists in that game.  He remembers Allen Houston’s runner from the lane to beat Miami in 1999.  But he also remembers Charles Smith not getting a foul call (he was fouled, dammit!) in 1993, and Reggie Miller scoring 8 points against us in less than 9 seconds in 1995.  And those were the not-awful Knicks teams.  There were plenty of really bad ones; they’ve lost about 100 more games than they’ve won since ’73.

After that miraculous comeback in Game 4, though, Curmie wasn’t going to miss any of Game 5.  With the Knicks down 16 in the first half, seemingly unable to throw the ball in the ocean from the shore, he turned to Beloved Spouse and said something like “If this team hadn’t come back from more than this several times just in the playoffs, I’d turn the game off.  But we’re going to see what happens.”  The Knicks, in fact, had trailed by double digits in every game in the finals, and indeed finished the series having spent more time down by ten or more than leading by any margin.  What happened, of course, was that the Knicks got yet another comeback victory, thereby clinching the championship, four games to one.

So Curmie was really happy.  He’d remained a loyal supporter, but perhaps wasn’t as enthusiastic as he might have been in the past.  Guys named Jalen Brunson and OG Anunoby and a few of their friends cured that.  He’ll watch more closely next year.

But let’s move on to the other two title characters, Stephen A. Smith and Donald Trump, linked together by their comments about each other.  When word got out that Trump intended to attend Game 3, Smith went off, saying “If it causes the New York Knicks to lose tonight, I’m blaming him.  I’m blaming the President of the United States.  I’mma stay on that.  And damn it, I hope the G.O.P. lose votes because of it if we lose tonight.”  There’s more, but you get the idea, Gentle Reader.  And… um… wow.

OK, so Curmie once described SAS as an “insufferable blowhard,” and he’s not seen anything of late to alter that impression.  But did ol’ Stephen A have a point?  Well, maybe.  Sort of.  It is certainly true that Trump’s appearance disrupted the dynamic.  Fans had to go through TSA-like security and arrive much earlier than necessary (possibly having to take time off of work to do so).  It’s a reasonable surmise that they were generally in foul rather than celebratory humor when they finally entered MSG. 

Local bars, restaurants, etc., that were counting on increased customer traffic got none.  Even people who couldn’t care less about the game were inconvenienced by cordoning off a “several block radius” around the Garden.  That would certainly include Penn Station, and depending on the precise meaning of “several,” perhaps a chunk of the theatre district.  Plus, of course, it is simply a statement of fact that Dear Leader does whatever he can to make literally everything about himself, even if he ends up being heartily booed in the process.  Was Trump’s attendance “selfish [and] narcissistic,” as Smith said in the lead-up to the game.  Well, sure, but when has DJT ever been otherwise?  It’s important to note that Smith goes out of his way to say he’s being apolitical and concerned more about traffic congestion and similar issues.  Could be…

Did Trump’s presence change the feel of Game 3 and ultimately carry over into Game 4?  Marginally, yes.  Did he cause the Knicks to lose?  Let’s just say that Curmie hopes that SAS was being facetious, and it does appear that way in his post-game comments.  

DJT actually wasn’t lying about being a Knicks fan.  Did he go to Game 3 because he could?  Sure, but so did a host of celebs whose presence seems not to have bothered much of anyone.  And he was apparently invited by Knicks owner James Dolan.  Did he then proceed to fall asleep at the game?  The video evidence isn’t conclusive, but it does suggest as much.  Dolan says otherwise, but Curmie notes that the video suggests that Dolan seems to be nodding off, too, so his claims of talking to Trump throughout the game are at best open for debate.  And anyone who says that Dear Leader is “a great guy” is not someone Curmie is going to believe uncritically.

Of course, Trump was asked about Smith’s comments and responded by saying, “I think he’s a nice guy, but you need a certain aptitude to run for President [Smith is apparently contemplating a run].  You need a high IQ; I’m not sure that Stephen has that.  I don’t think he does, actually.”  There is, to be sure, no little irony in the fact that it’s Donald Trump making that allegation.

The headlines proclaimed that Smith subsequently “doubled down” on blaming Trump for the Game 3 loss, but whereas he seemed in earnest before the game, the context of his remarks after the loss suggests that it was all in fun.  Curmie knows something of that phenomenon.  In the 20 years he taught at his most recent university, he directed a Mainstage production at some point in the academic year 17 times; there were no named storms in the area any of those years.  He dramaturged once; there was a tropical storm.  He sat out completely twice: Hurricanes Rita and Ike.  Curmie didn’t claim to control the weather, but he made it clear he wasn’t denying it, either.  Anyone who really thinks all this was anything but coincidence is too stupid to be reading this blog, but it was a bit of fun for Curmie and his friends, colleagues, and students.

So, Trump is still a narcissist and Smith is still a blowhard, but perhaps not quite as bad as usual.  Knicks fandom is a Big Tent.  But if we have to keep these two, we damned well better be able to claim Tay-Tay and Mariska.

Race and College Basketball. Yes, Again.

There are a lot of important stories out there right now—Tennessee making their case to surpass Florida as the leading national embarrassment, the bizarre threat by Wisconsin Republicans to impeach a newly elected Supreme Court Justice before she even takes office, the Donald Trump trial (Curmie sincerely hopes the case is stronger than it appears to be, or the damage will be significant), the “revelation” of what anyone paying attention has known for decades: that Clarence Thomas is devoid of any moral or ethical sensibility. And plenty more… 

Still, Curmie’s going to concentrate for a moment on college basketball and race. He’s already discussed that with respect to Big 12 coaches on the men’s side; let’s talk about the women’s NCAA tournament. We can begin with the commentary from South Carolina coach Dawn Staley. Her team had entered the NCAA tournament undefeated on the season, but lost in the national semi-final to Iowa, who won behind the heroics of their star guard Caitlin Clark, who registered 41 points, 6 rebounds, and 8 assists. 

But there was a lot of commentary about South Carolina’s style of play. Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said prior to their game with the Gamecocks that going for a rebound against them was “like going to a bar fight.” Earlier in the season, Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma described what he perceived as the Gamecocks’ overly physical style and declared himself “sick of it.”

What’s this got to do with race? Well, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley is black; so are most of her players. Indeed, the only two white players on the team totaled a mere 222 minutes for the entire season; that’s less than 3% of the team total. Bluder and the majority of her team, including their star, Clark, are white. 

Auriemma is also white; whereas his team is roughly evenly divided between white and black athletes, most of his complaints about South Carolina were about what he regarded as numerous missed calls involving Huskies forward Lou Lopez Sénéchal, who is Latina and appears white. (It should be noted here that Auriemma’s commentary was generalized to how teams, plural, played Lopez Sénéchal and how referees allowed them to do so; South Carolina was just the most recent example.) 

So, is race a factor? Well, as Curmie was fond of saying when he taught Asian theatre, yes and no. Staley’s defense of her coaching strategy seems to suggest a racial element to the criticism of her team’s physicality, saying among other things that “We're not thugs. We're not monkeys.” This is not only a straw man argument, it’s a craven one, implying without actually saying that her and her team’s critics are engaging in racial stereotypes. No one, at least no opposing coach or player, and no sports commentator of any stature has ever used those terms, at least in public. Over-reaction, then? At the very least. 

Ah, but Gentle Reader, we’re not done. Multiple LSU players accused Clark of “disrespect” when the Iowa star waved off South Carolina guard Raven Johnson rather than run out to guard her late in the first quarter of the national semi-final. That’s just game plan: South Carolina lives and dies in their interior game; it’s perfectly reasonable to leave a 24% three-point shooter open in order to sag inside to make it harder to feed the post. There’s one easy way for Johnson to put an end to that tactic, of course: shoot the wide open three-pointer and make it.

Caitlin Clark-- we can’t see her

Significantly, the media lapped up Clark’s brashness. Cory Woodroof of For the Win, for example, raved about Clark’s “absolutely hilarious disrespect.” Media types also thought Clark’s derision of Hailey Van Lith when the Iowa-Louisville Elite 8 game was clearly going to go the Hawkeyes’ way was absolutely peachy. She got special props for the waving the hand in front of the face gesture. Curmie is told that this frankly stupid-looking display is intended to mean “you can’t see me”; the originator of this taunt was the pseudo-wrestler/pseudo-actor Jon Cena. Cena himself joined in the celebration of Clark, exclaiming on Twitter, “Even if they could see you…they couldn’t guard you!”. 

Ah, but here is where the fun really begins. When LSU defeated Iowa in the national title game, LSU star Angel Reese, who is black, pointed to her ring finger, suggesting that she was about to get a championship ring. I mean… Curmie hadn’t seen that gesture in, hell, a few weeks, when Kansas forward Jalen Wilson made a similar gesture to celebrate clinching the Big 12 men’s regular season championship. (Curmie is certain there are other, even more recent, examples; this was one Curmie, as a Jayhawks fan, saw live on TV.) 

Angel Reese, echoing the sentiment

Not only that, she used precisely the same gesture to Clark that the Iowa star had used in the Louisville game. OMG, the unmitigated gall! Oh, the humanity! Think of the children! Keith Olbermann, for example, declared Reese a “fucking idiot”; five minutes later he added “Mindless, classless, and what kind of coach does this team have?” 

To be fair (sort of), Olbermann apologized (sort of) the next day, with the rather feeble excuse that he doesn’t follow hoops (yeah, right, the guy who spent two decades as a sports journalist and hosted SportsCenter for five years doesn’t follow hoops), so he didn’t know the backstory. As if the backstory really mattered. 

Olbermann, of course, took a lot of heat for his initial response, including from the likes of Samuel L. Jackson and Shaquille O’Neal, neither of whom were particularly kind in their criticism. Olbermann wasn’t alone in his hypocrisy, of course, but as the most famous of her detractors, he certainly works as an exemplar of the phenomenon. Curmie cringes at the thought of agreeing with a blowhard like Stephen A. Smith, but he was right in tweeting that “When Caitlin Clark did it...people were celebrating it and talking about nothing but her greatness. BUT the SECOND a sister stepped up and threw it back in her face, everyone is mad. Come on!”  

Reese herself was, to say the least, unapologetic, and certainly didn’t shy away from the racial dimension: “All year, I was critiqued about who I was…. I don’t fit in the box that y’all want me to be in. I’m too hood, I’m too ghetto. You told me that all year. But when other people do it, y’all don't say nothing. So this is for the girls that look like me, that want to speak up on what they believe in. It’s unapologetically you…. It was bigger than me tonight.” Of course, 16 of the previous 17 tournament Most Outstanding Players in the tournament were black, so Reese wasn’t exactly breaking new ground. 

Clark, to her credit, downplayed the entire incident, claiming she didn’t see Reese’s gestures, an unlikely proposition… but maybe Reese actually became invisible with the “you can’t see me” gesture? More importantly, she defended Reese: “I don't think Angel should be criticized at all. No matter which way it goes, she should never be criticized for what she did. I'm just one that competes — and she competed…. LSU deserved it; they played so well, and like I said, I’m a big fan of hers.” 

Irrespective of the factors leading to his perspective (age? class? race? something else altogether?), Curmie has never been a fan of trash talk, but accepts it as a fact of life in today’s sporting world. One supposes there are unspoken boundaries, but exactly where they are is difficult to determine. But those limitations, whatever and wherever they are, need to be the same across the board: age, gender, race, etc. cannot be a factor. And, of course, the racial (and perhaps gender-based) overtones to all this are impossible to ignore. But, as they say on the late-night infomercials, Wait! That’s not all! 

First Lady Jill Biden was at the game, and apparently enjoyed it. After the contest, she uttered remarks that were no doubt well-intentioned but rather stupid: “I know we’ll have the champions come to the White House, we always do. So, we hope LSU will come. But, you know, I’m going to tell Joe I think Iowa should come, too, because they played such a good game.” 

The suggestion that any losing team ought to be able to share the spotlight with the winners not only goes against tradition, it’s just dumb. But the implication that inviting LSU is more a matter of custom rather than appropriateness, coupled with the race of the majority of the players on those teams… well, the optics are less than optimal. 

Iowa’s Clark and Bluder both, by the way, said that the White House visit ought to be reserved for LSU. Biden’s minions were quick to “clarify” Dr. Biden’s remarks, but the inevitable damage was done. 

Reese promptly tweeted “A JOKE,” and rejected the (inevitable) apology. Her teammate Alexis Morris tried to wangle an invite from Michelle Obama instead (yeah, like that’s going to happen), and Reese proclaimed that the team was not going to visit the White House, but that “we’ll go to the Obamas. We’ll see Michelle. We’ll see Barack.” 

To be fair, she said that last part apparently in jest. The part that seemed to be serious, though, was that LSU would not accept the White House invitation. Apparently Reese believes she sets policy for the team, now. Curiously enough, the LSU athletics department had other ideas. Go figure. 

Jill Biden, by the way, was apparently to visit both locker rooms before the championship game, but LSU didn’t want her, for the oh-so-very-mature reason that Joe (not Jill) had not included them on his bracket. Sigh. 

OK. So who looks good in all this? If we forgive the trash talk and the narcissistic showmanship, Clark looks pretty good. The same could be said for Reese. On the other hand, she blew everything out of proportion by acting like a pampered 12-year-old. Olbermann should indeed shut up. Jill Biden should apologize in person rather than have her press secretary issue a walk-back. The tournament featured record-breaking performances, shattered attendance records, and some really good basketball. It kinda sucks that it will be remembered primarily for other things. 

Oh, and just because nobody else has mentioned this: much has been made of the black and gold tiger-striped outfit LSU coach Kim Mulkey wore to the final. No one seems to notice that black and gold are Iowa’s colors—Curmie isn’t sure what the visual equivalent of tone-deaf is, but this was it. Sigh.