What would it be like if all the Wisconsin cheese suddenly turned green? Or if every jazz musician in New Orleans developed a tin ear? Or the beer flowing from Milwaukee breweries began to taste like watered-down apple juice? It would be not unlike what is happening in New York City these days, where something is amiss.
That something is the game of basketball. The Big Apple is to hoops what Texas is to football, Iowa to wrestling and rural Montana to the meth lab. But each night, the city that never sleeps tosses and turns in hardwood misery. The New York Knicks, once one of the NBA’s most storied franchises, couldn’t pass for the Los Angeles Clippers’ D-League team. St. John’s is celebrating its basketball centennial by losing to the likes of Niagara, Ohio and Tulane. Of all of the city’s once-proud basketball programs, two (Columbia and NYU) have winning records, while the rest (Manhattan, Iona, St. John’s, NYU and City College) flounder in mediocrity.
Even the women are bad. The New York Liberty — who took four trips to the WNBA Finals earlier in the decade — finished the 2007 season below .500.
You’d have better luck finding a Red Sox fan in the five boroughs these days than a decent game of five-on-five.
It’s a shame to see this basketball oasis become a desert wasteland. New York has been the locus of all things hoops since the days of the set shot. NYU won the NCAA title in 1935 and made the Finals in 1948. St. John’s won the NIT Championship in 1944 (back when the NIT meant something). In 1949-50, CCNY captured both the NIT and NCAA crowns, the only school in college hoops history to have ever won both tournaments in the same season. The Knicks made three straight NBA Finals appearances in the 1950s and won two championships in the ’70s. They won with both ultra-cool swingers like Walt Frazier, Willis Reed and Earl “The Pearl” Monroe and with ultra-dorky white guys like Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere and Phil Jackson.
Then came 15 years of pure basketball glory. From 1985 until the dawn of the new millennium, it was Patrick Ewing and his knee pads, Lou Carneseca and his sweater, Spike Lee and Mars Blackmon, Rucker Park and the Coney Island Special.
“Louie” took the Johnnies to the 1985 Final Four with Chris Mullin and Mark Jackson and won 526 games during his time in Queens. During the early 1990s, with Ewing dominating down low, Lee razzing Reggie Miller from the stands and Pat Riley plastering his hair with motor oil on the sidelines, the Knicks always seemed to be one amazing Michael Jordan performance away from the NBA Finals. In ’94, while Jordan was experimenting with minor-league baseball, they took the Phi Slamma Jamma Houston Rockets to seven games in one of the best Finals series of all time. In 1995, Rick Telander published “Heaven is a Playground,” which chronicled a summer spent at a Brooklyn street hoops haven and gave rise to the popularity of Rucker Park in Harlem. The Knicks made the Finals again in 1999 and gave Tim Duncan, David Robinson and the beginnings of the current San Antonio Spurs dynasty a fair fight.
Since then, hoops in NYC have been stiffer than a lock of Riley’s hair. The Knicks traded Ewing for some draft picks, Glen Rice and Vernon Maxwell. Brilliant. Six members of the St. John’s basketball team were accused of gang-raping a stripper in Pittsburgh and escaped prosecution only when one of the players revealed he had videotaped the whole thing on his cell phone. Classy. The Knicks hired Isiah Thomas after he had successfully run both the Canadian Basketball Association and the Indiana Pacers into the ground. Clever. St. John’s alumni Jayson Williams and Ron Artest exemplified the true spirit of a Vincentian education by shooting a limo driver and slugging Detroit Pistons fans, respectively. How pious. Then the Knicks apprehended Stephon Marbury. Ugh.
But hey — NYU won the 2007 ECAC Division III Metro Championship! Say it with me now New Yorkers, “LET’S GOOOO VIOLETS!!!!”
Mark Jackson isn’t buying it. In an interview with The New York Times earlier this year, Jackson offered his view on his alma mater’s — and his home town’s — current funk.
“When St. John’s is doing good, it gives everyone in the city a lift,” said Jackson. “When St. John’s is going bad, everyone’s depressed.”
But don’t get too down, for there is hope on the horizon. Blue chip prospect Lance Stephenson, one of the best shooting guards in his class, continues to lead Abraham Lincoln High School to new heights in Brooklyn. The Big East tournament is coming in a few weeks, and while the Johnnies will be watching from their parents’ place in Queens, it will bring a long-forgotten buzz to Madison Square Garden. Sometime in the near future, the New Jersey Nets will become the Brooklyn Nets (Thanks Jay-Z!) and allow the old men in Prospect Heights whose childhoods were ruined when the Dodgers skipped town to enjoy one season of pro sports before they die. And Knicks fans, don’t fret. This time next year, Isiah Thomas will be either coaching blind kids in Greenland or at the bottom of the Hudson River, but he won’t be leading your team.
No, New York basketball isn’t dead just yet. After all, the Harlem Globetrotters still win every night.
Harlan Goode is a senior in the College. He can be reached at goode@thehoya.com. THE GOODE WORDE appears every Friday in HOYA SPORTS.