Stricklandians’ first first-round Knicks memories
As we prepare for another Knicks playoff run, four Strickland writers reflect on our first times following this team in that setting, beginning a lifelong love affair.
Alex Wolfe
I became a Knicks fan at in retrospect arguably the worst possible time: the 1999 Finals run captured me in some way when I was eight/nine years old. I’m mostly kidding. Obviously it was fun as hell. But getting into a team during what would end up their last trip to the Finals for 25 years has a way of making you expect success.
I’d be lying if I said I had distinct memories of that run. I was a Knicks fan because my now-mostly-estranged stepbrother had a poster of Patrick Ewing on the wall of our shared bedroom. I don’t even really remember watching any of the games, just the feeling that I got from that time and the love of Latrell Sprewell that developed. I think more than any specific basketball game memory of the end of the glory days in the early 2000s, I remember my Sprewell And1 shoes that I literally wore the soles off of playing basketball outside, my Allan Houston NBA Lego figure that I always made sure “won” the All-Star games I’d stage on my Lego set, and always playing as the Knicks in NBA Live against my friends – because I was a Knicks fan, and that’s what I was supposed to do.
The first first-round series that I actually remember and paid some attention to was 2004 against the Nets. The Knicks, fresh off acquiring Stephon Marbury, were the eight seed, against the (Eastern Conference) juggernaut Nets. They got absolutely stomped, but me being a dumbass 13-year-old, I was convinced that things were about to turn around. I thought Starbury was cool and I was excited to see what was ahead.
It turned out what was ahead was that the Knicks wouldn’t hit the first round again until I was in college and wouldn’t exit it again until I had graduated. By that point I had fallen in love with Posting and Toasting and its lovely community, one I still spend time talking to every single day via The Strickland. That made it that much more fun to watch the 2012-13 team hit the second round, seemingly paving the way for more playoff appearances throughout my 20s. As it turned out, my 20-something expectations were just as dumb as those in my teens. The Knicks didn’t make the playoffs again until I was in my 30s, the “We Here” Knicks who got handily bounced by the Hawks in the first round.
So, really, this year’s Knicks are the first I can remember that have expectations. Two straight 50-win seasons. Two straight second-round playoff appearances. Over a half-dozen first-round picks and swaps sent out last offseason to try to take this team to a new level. So maybe it makes sense that this year, for the first time in my life as a Knicks fan, I’m both expecting the Knicks to make the second round and the most terrified I’ve ever been that they’re going to lose in it. Because if they lose in the first, just like in 2004, just like in 2013, there’s always a chance they might not get back for another decade.
I know that’s silly to think about, because Jalen Brunson isn’t going anywhere, and this team still has good leadership at the top and the avenues to get better. So my goal this round: let the ghosts go. Try to put myself in the frame of mind of the fans that just preceded my fandom in the ‘90s: enjoy the hell out of this run and build memories that can carry me for 30 years – even if the Knicks don’t win it all, even if they lose to Detroit this round or get demolished by the Celtics in the next. The successes, the disappointments, the overachieving, the underachieving – it’s all worth something in your memory, eventually.
Shwinnypooh
Series are not won in a game or two. They're rollercoaster. Sometimes they level out into a calm draw back to the station after the first couple of games; others have wild twists and turns throughout.
