Eleven Thoughts After that Knicks Game

11 Jun, 2026

The New York Knicks took a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals last night by completing the greatest comeback in Finals history. Just an incredible game, and so much fun to watch a game in real-time that you know you will be talking about in 20 years.

Eleven slightly-related thoughts:

1. As discussed previously, there's nothing quite like a Knicks playoff run to light NYC on fire. The corollary to that is there's nothing quite like a Knicks playoff run to remind you how lame DC is as a sports town, both generally and during playoff runs.¹ Just too many people who like out-of-town teams, and way too many people who don't like sports at all. Even when the Nats and Caps have won titles, it hasn't come close to feeling all-consuming the way it does in other cities.² I know a lot of people born-and-raised here who love sports just as much as people from NY or Chicago or Boston, and I legitimately feel bad for them that this is the atmosphere they are stuck with.

2. I couldn't stop thinking about my Dad last night during the Knicks comeback. He was a huge old-school NY sports fan. Rangers, Giants, Yankees, Knicks.³ And he loved to scream at the TV during games. He would have hated Wemby. I actually got myself laughing last night after the game ended, because I think if Dad's alive to see the game there's an 85% chance he's gleefully screaming FUCK YOU WEMBY!!! over and over again after the final horn.⁴

3. The Knicks were a distant fourth for me growing up, well behind the Rangers, Giants, and Yankees. I liked college basketball way better than the NBA, and we lived walking distance from a great mid-major team. After my dad died in '97 and the Jordan-era stars aged out of the league, I more or less stopped watching the regular season NBA. It just bores me. Combine that with the Knicks being bad for so long and me moving out of the NY media market, and I really lost interest in them.

4. But the NBA playoffs is such a great product, especially in the later rounds. I've still always watched them. For me, it's still not overall as good as the Stanley Cup playoffs, but the NBA Finals might be the best 7-game series experience in sports. Both hockey and basketball lend themselves well to repeated games between the same teams, but the importance of fewer players and the more direct matchups in basketball really make it shine in the series format. So much so that I think both leagues would benefit from constantly playing two-game series during the regular season, like the NHL did during COVID.

5. Mid-June is such an underrated period on the sports calendar, when the NBA and NHL finals are going on simultaneously. Especially when you have two really compelling series going on, like we do right now. The only thing that could make this better would be if there were likeable cold-weather teams in the Cup finals. Make it Edmonton-Buffalo or Minnesota-Montreal and we hit June sports nirvana.

6. For me, nothing will ever top June 1994, Knicks and Rangers both playing in the Finals. I got my driver's license on June 9, which I remember because it was the day the Rangers were supposed to win the Cup in game 5. They did win on June 14 in game 7, which was the happiest I ever saw my dad in his entire life. June 17 was the OJ Bronco chase, and that night the Knicks won game 5 to take a 3-2 lead. Of course, the Rockets came back to win the series---John Starks going 2 for a million in game 7, ugh---but even that could not ruin an unbelievable 3 weeks.

7. The other piece of June 1994 was the US hosted the World Cup beginning on--yes--June 17th. What I cannot believe right now is how distant the current World Cup feels. Aside from reading Nate Silver's couple of pieces of statistical analysis, I have basically seen zero coverage. Just a shadow of how it felt in 1994. Some of this is the collapse of the monoculture, but even conditional on that I'm just stunned at how little soccer media and/or hype I'm running into.

8. It is very hard for me to believe that the Knicks have gone almost as long without a title (53 years) as the Rangers had gone when the won in 1994 (54 years). Obviously, this is just misplaced perspective, but the year 1940 just loomed so distant in our heads---Before the war! Before television! Before rock music!---and I cannot believe that's how my kids perceive 1973. Though they undoubtedly do.⁵

9. Obviously, if the Knicks hold on and win this team is going to be legendary in New York. But I suspect the national sports memory of this series is going to retrospectively be "the series that Wemby got to too early, before he was great and had the complete team around him," the same way we think about Shaq and Lebron getting swept in 1995 and 2007.

10. 82-0 is such an addictive game. I enjoyed Zac Hill's analysis of why it has become so beloved among men of a certain age: it's just so much fun to collectively remember old players in a shared day dream, and then imagine them playing together in a lineup.

11. I remember thinking when the Rangers lost game 5 at MSG in 1994 that maybe I wouldn't be that sad if they lost game 6 in Vancouver, so that they'd get a chance to win the Cup at home in game 7. And then they lost game 6 and I immediately realized what a moron I was for even considering that. Saturday night will be slightly different for the Knicks in San Antonio; losing would still leave them up 3-2. But however great it would be to win the title at MSG in game 6, I will not be rooting for that even in the slightest.

#Dad #Knicks #sports