The plight of the NY Knicks fan

I did not write this, but oh God I wish I had....

The tickets were up in the old blue seats at the Garden. This was opening night for the Knicks, Oct. 27, 1984, and we had taken the train in to scream like Beatlemaniacs for Bernard King, to heckle the hell out of Isiah Thomas, Kelly Tripucka, Kent Benson and the rest of the Pistons.

Bernard was Bernard, dropping 34 on his way to the scoring title, and the Knicks won the game, 137-118. But all we talked about on the train home was one guy: Eddie Lee Wilkins, sixth-round rookie from Gardner-Webb, making his debut, only playing because both Marvin Webster and Bill Cartwright were hurt.

Eddie Lee scored 24 points that night, grabbed 10 rebounds, had the Garden chanting his name for most of the second half. We were sure a folk hero was born that night, if not a superstar. But the Knicks only won 24 games that year. Eddie Lee never scored as many points in any of his other 321 NBA games.

Years later, I was talking to the great Dick McGuire, who watched more Knicks games than anyone, and I mentioned that night to him.

“Eddie Lee!” he beamed. “You want to know the truth? I was here the night Bill Bradley made his Garden debut, in ’67. I was here when Patrick [Ewing] made his. The gym got pretty crazy both nights, but can I tell you something? It wasn’t as crazy as it was when Eddie Lee Wilkins went nuts that first night. Honest to God, it was something.”

So, yes, the Garden has fallen hard before, and it hasn’t always been for Clyde or Earl the Pearl.

This is the building’s special province, and the sport’s. We just saw how smitten the city can get with a football team, and we know how besotted it can be with the Yankees and the Mets when we get a good baseball summer to sink our teeth into.

But there is more quiet desperation among Knicks fans because this is our game, and our sport, it is the city game, and we are constantly on the lookout for a savior to fall out of the sky, since he rarely arrives through the draft or a trade. It always been that way.

Remember, as great as Ewing was, the most popular characters on his best teams were John Starks and Anthony Mason, two vagabonds in glass sneakers whose illogical, improbable journeys captured not only the Garden’s attention but its imagination.

Now, we have Jeremy Lin, and he has strung together three games that have injected passion and energy and — most important — fun into a Knicks season that 15 minutes ago seemed like it was careening into the harbor. He has burned up Twitter, inspired dozens of banners, probably saved coach Mike D’Antoni’s job for now.

It’s easy to get carried away, sure. But even after you chisel away the hyperbole, you have to be intrigued at how Amar’e Stoudemire will play alongside someone so precociously proficient at the pick-and-roll. You have to believe that Carmelo Anthony — who is no dummy — understands he has to buy into the new look Lin brings to the offense, and likely is relieved to shed the burden of being a play-making forward.

Do you find yourself having to stand on the brakes once in a while? Of course you do. There are few secrets and fewer surprises in basketball. Logic screams there has to be a reason everyone in the league whiffed on Lin.

But again: This is basketball in this city. These are the Knicks. At the Garden tonight are the Lakers, and even the proudest New Yorker will cop to envying the hell out of them, out of their unbroken string of excellence from West to Wilt to Kareem to Magic to Shaq to Kobe, and everyone else in between. That’s what New York craves.

What we’ve gotten, too often, are too many patches of ice and darkness, too much haplessness and hopelessness, so much that sometimes you can confuse Eddie Lee Wilkins with Moses Malone. Hoping — always hoping — that someone really will fall out of the sky one of these days and be the real thing.

Or maybe just make the drive down from Harvard Square.

More I did not write...

When they watched Jeremy Lin, what were they seeing? I'm talking about the coaches around college basketball who watched Lin in high school in California but didn't offer a scholarship. I'm talking about the general managers in the NBA who watched Lin at Harvard -- no scholarships in the Ivy League -- but didn't draft him.
I'm talking about the Golden State Warriors, who had Lin for the 2010-11 season but rarely played him, sent him down to the D-League -- where he averaged 18 points, 5.8 rebounds and 4.3 assists -- and then released him when the lockout ended in December. I'm talking about the Houston Rockets, who picked up Lin three days later for preseason camp, then released him before the season opener.
And don't get cocky here, New York Knicks fans. I'm also talking about your team, which sent Lin down to the D-League in January -- where he recorded a triple-double three days later -- brought him back to New York, then buried him for seven games before playing him 36 minutes against New Jersey on Feb. 4 out of emergency.
All of them. When they watched Jeremy Lin, what were they seeing?
Obviously they weren't seeing a point guard with the confidence to lead, the charisma to have others follow, and the talent to make it all work. They weren't seeing a 6-foot-3 athlete with the explosion to get to the rim and the elevation to finish above it. They weren't seeing a shotmaker or a playmaker.
So what were they seeing?
An Asian-American? Is that what they saw? It's true, few Asian-Americans have made it in college or the NBA, but college coaches and NBA scouts aren't jingoistic beasts. They routinely mine the countries of South America, Africa and Europe for untapped talent, though they've done very little in the Far East. Quick, name every Asian player you can think of. I'll start: Yao Ming, who stood 7-foot-6 and was tremendous when healthy. Yi Jianlian, whom I happened to watch at the ABCD high school camp a decade ago. And ... that's it. I can't name any others. I know they exist, could find them with a quick Internet search, but can't name them from scratch. Maybe you're the same.

So what were they seeing?That's no excuse. Not to the college recruiters and NBA scouts who watched Jeremy Lin destroying his competition -- not just competing evenly, not just winning, but destroying -- and didn't see what they were seeing.
An Ivy Leaguer? Is that what they saw? The Ivy League has produced one of the greatest players in basketball history, Bill Bradley of Princeton, but it hasn't sent many others to the NBA. Before Lin came along, the NBA hadn't had an Ivy Leaguer since 2002-03, when center Chris Dudley (Yale) and guard Matt Maloney (Penn) played. Previously, Geoff Petrie (Princeton) was a two-time NBA All-Star in six seasons and a lifetime 21.8-ppg scorer before suffering a career-ending knee injury in 1976 -- and Petrie has been the Sacramento Kings' top personnel guy for more than a decade. What did Geoff Petrie see when he was seeing Jeremy Lin?
They were seeing something -- just not Jeremy Lin, basketball player. They couldn't have been seeing that guy, because after his senior season in high school, as California's Player of the Year, Jeremy Lin could have suited up for any college in the country. A high-academic achiever from Palo Alto, Calif., Lin wanted to play for hometown Stanford, but Stanford coach Trent Johnson didn't offer a scholarship.
What was Trent Johnson seeing?
Not offered a scholarship by any of the other 300-plus schools in Division I, Lin took the hint. The son of two engineers, Jeremy Lin wasn't going to walk on just anywhere, so he sent a DVD of his highlights to all eight Ivy League schools, seeking a walk-on spot on their team. Only two coaches, at Brown and Harvard, offered him one. What were the other six Ivy League coaches seeing?
At Harvard, Lin dominated. Again, he didn't just compete, didn't just win, but dominated. As a junior he was the only player in the country to place in the top 10 in his conference in the following eight categories: scoring, rebounding, assists, steals, blocked shots and shooting percentage from the field, line and 3-point arc. As a senior he put up similar numbers (16.4 ppg, 4.5 assists, 4.4 rebounds, 2.4 steals, 1.1 blocks) and was devastating against UConn, scoring 30 points in the final 24 minutes and totaling nine rebounds, three assists and three steals -- with a spectacular block of Jerome Dyson, whose dunk attempt was swallowed above the rim by Lin's right hand. Afterward, UConn coach Jim Calhoun called Lin "terrific" and noted, "He's one of the better kids, including Big East guards, who have come [into Gampel Pavilion] in quite some time."
Calhoun also uttered another comment, meant as praise, but still ... Calhoun uttered a short sentence that might have been inside the head of other men -- first college recruiters, then NBA scouts -- when he commented on Jeremy Lin, athlete:
"He's athletic -- more than you think," Calhoun said.
More than you think.
Which brings me back to my question, and there are a lot I could ask at this point. I could ask: After averaging 26.8 points and eight assists in his first five games of significant NBA action, how good will Jeremy Lin be? He has led the formerly 8-15 Knicks to five straight wins, but what happens when Carmelo Anthony and Amar'e Stoudemire return? And how long before sports fans, who are loving his unique story now, reach their Lin-sanity saturation point and turn on him?
Those are questions I could ask. But for now, I'll just return to the question I can't stop wondering. The question is simple, but loaded. Harmless, but dangerous.
Before he became a revelation, Jeremy Lin had played lots of basketball for lots of basketball experts, and almost all of them decided they were unimpressed. So when they watched Jeremy Lin, what were they seeing?

I really like that if Lin does keep a starting spot it reaffirms that Basketball is a thinking man's sport and not just the realm of freakishly talented morons devoid of moral fiber.
If Lin can make Basketball matter again in NYC then I will go back to church with new purpose. Because this can only be an act of God that an Asian kid from California made the New York Knicks relevant again!

Tru dat.
Lin is going to thrive once he and the Knicks get more time together.
Give Shumpert the credit, Calderon was putting it to Lin throughout with very little answer, but the kid sacked up at the end and buried that shot! When Melo gets back I see about a 2-3 game warm up/feeling out process where they can lose 2 of the 3, but once they jell, the sky's the limit! I just love watching the Knicks being a team again!

Black people on the Knicks been losing all season. When you are the fan of a team you love that they win. If the black dudes were playing winning basketball,Lin would probably be on a different team now. They were not. He is not. We are strange people. We look at supermodels and make comments about the size of their feet. We look at Megan Fox and notice her thumbs.
If Lin were an Eskimo, an American Indian, a Hindi or any other race you don't normally associate with basketball, the NY media would hype it. That's what they do. IT'S THEIR JOB! They sensationalize obvious differences to humanize the story, make it more interesting allowing the story, to touch us. But in a world full of cynics, the fact Lin is SRWA (setting records while Asian), blows a big stinking hole in Floyd's hypothesis. He is not setting records for Asian players, or European players or even Floyd's precious Black players, he is setting records for basketball players! I see the bigger issue here and Floyd just needs to come to grips with the fact: Asians can drive!

They can also fight. Would love to see Floyd fight Genki Sudo. That would shut his dumb ass up once and likely forever.

Unfortunately you are quite accurate. I have been a Heat fan since they were smoked by Jordan & Co in their first years. Good teams are getting better and bad teams are not improving (Bobcats anyone?). Some trades will make teams that were bad dramatically better (Hornets) but like the MLB, it is mostly a case of good teams getting better.

That said, Lin is just an awesome story that to me has more draw than Tebow. Lin appears to be of all star or better caliber, at least as of his first few games, and when you consider how many passed him over for marginal role player, that just does not happen that often. Lin is also a player of faith but he is more of the mature Warner ilk than Tebow is at this point in time... at least that is how I perceive it. Anyway, the Colbert take on Lin is really funny and true. How hard is it on Wall Street when a kid with a Harvard MBA has more opportunity with the Knicks than getting a job based on their degree? Pretty sweet stuff...

Mor-Lin

This just hit me: If Stern doesn't veto the Lakers/Rockets/Hornets trade Jeremy Lin would still be a Rocket. Houston couldn't keep Lin because they already had 3 PG's with fully guaranteed contracts (Lowry, Dragic, Flynn). If the trade is allowed to go through, Lin would have been able to take Dragic's spot on the roster. Instead Stern vetoes the trade, and now Lin is singlehandedly saving the Knicks season, and keeping them out of the lottery. Oh ya, Houston owns New York's first rounder (top 5 protected). Is it possible Stern knew all this, and this was his actual reason for vetoing the trade? Also is this Stern's way of getting back at Houston for booing him after Game 7 of the NBA Finals? Let's be honest, the man isn't above grudges.
— Adam Spolane, Houston
SG: I love when Daryl Morey writes me with the alias "Adam Spolane." And yeah, you're right — if the Gasol trade goes through and Houston follows that up by signing Nene (something the Rockets believe would have happened, even if the rest of the league is dubious), here's Houston's team right now: Kyle Lowry, Courtney Lee, Chandler Parsons, Nene and Pau Gasol (starters); Jeremy Lin, Marcus Morris, Patrick Patterson, Jordan Hill, Chase Budinger, Free Agent 2-Guard to Be Named (bench). Pretty interesting. Daryl will now light himself on fire.
(PS: Did you notice Houston was awarded the 2013 NBA All-Star Game last week? My buddy House is convinced that was Stern's way of apologizing for screwing the Rockets over. It's like Warden Norton letting Andy Dufresne shine his shoes right after he killed Andy's buddy who could have testified that Andy was innocent, and throwing Andy in the hole for two months for calling him "obtuse." Sorry about what happened, Houston — here, shine my shoes with the 2013 All-Star Game!)

If the knicks can someone find a way to work together and find chemistry I can easily see them contending. However that's much much easier said than done and really it all depends on Carmelo.

Melo is your only play since no one will take Amare. (knees & contract) But if Howard is hot to be a Net or Laker, why bother?