This is the story of an unexpected overtaking, the story of the unlikely Knicks who have overtaken the baseball and football champions in the city’s popularity rankings. The team that hasn’t won a title for 50 years is playing for a place in the NBA Conference East final, with a team without big stars. Except Jalen Brunson
This is the story of an unexpected overtaking, the story of the unlikely New York basketball that bypassed the passion for baseball and football.
There’s no shortage of top-tier teams in town, but none are nicer today than the Knicks. Those who haven’t put a title on their board for 50 years and have collected not defeats, but real series failures in the last 20 years, between fiasco signings and melodramas of their stars, with consequent snobbery of all the best in the League; throwing even the most hardened fans of Madison Square Garden into despair, «the world’s most famous arena».
After the last not so terrible seasons, something is changing: the enthusiasm is rekindling to levels seen in this century only in the two months of the contagious “Linsanity”, the passion for Jeremy Lin, symbol of the Asian-American community, far from prejudice associated with them.
The collective madness for basketball has returned, in a city that is embracing a new version of its team, the most entertaining of the playoffs, certainly the favorite of the American star system.
The star
The main symbol of this rebirth is the name of Jalen Brunson, who has become the top athlete in the city. He is less self-centered than Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers in football, more empathetic than Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge in baseball, more reliable than any Giants or Mets player.
Chosen only in the second round of the 2018 draft by the Mavericks, he left them after 4 seasons, so as not to remain in the shadow of the ace Luka Dončić. The doubts about him continued after his arrival in New York as a free agent, with a contract considered heavy based on what he had demonstrated up to that point and a lot of skepticism about the leadership role envisaged by the management and technical staff (including his father, assistant coach ).
Instead he turned out to be a giant on the parquet, with his height of under 1.90m which makes him much shorter than average. In his two years with the Knicks he won more playoff series than the entire franchise since 2001. Until the explosion of recent weeks: he is not just the “simple” best scorer, but he is putting together numbers of historic importance: just think that he has become the eleventh player in history with 5 games of at least 40 points scored in a single playoff, along with people like Michael Jordan and LeBron James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Shaquille O’Neal.
Among the champions on that list, Brunson remembers Allen Iverson, a catalyst for offensive responsibility and inspiration for many kids, an icon in his rise from underdog to the 2001 finals, an unstoppable undersized attacker who always found a way to get to the basket .
Around Brunson moves a group of players without that talent that blinds and produces highlights, but people with a determination, a combativeness and a sense of collective that allows individual limits to be overcome. Starting from Josh Hart, literally always on the court, a guard made of titanium and a sense of the game, the best rebounder on the team; up to the defensive ace OG Anunoby, passing through Dontae DiVincenzo who Italy would like to naturalize, increasingly continuous. Miles McBride was a reserve, who forcefully became an important wildcard in a few months, center Isaiah Hartenstein was the third in the role and is now irreplaceable.
Tom Thibodeau, the coach, is a guy often discussed for his tendency to use his players to the limit in every game, for a staid and not airy basketball, in contrast to current trends. It seems complicated that the Knicks can triumph, they are competing with the Indiana Pacers for a place in the Conference final against the Boston Celtics. But they reawakened basketball in the city. Given the souls hardened by years and years of failure, this is an even greater success.
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Mark A. Munno
2024-05-16 17:46:29
#York #rediscovering #passion #basketball #true #miracle #Knicks
