Escape From New Jersey

One of the great things about growing up in New York City is its vibrant pro sports landscape. Each of the four major professional leagues has at least two teams in the New York metropolitan area, creating natural rivalries. Eight of the nine New York area sports teams have devoted fan bases.

The one exception has been the New Jersey Nets. I don’t know of a single fan of the NBA team that plied their trade in the Garden State. The Nets were an afterthought; a mediocre team playing in a mediocre arena that was difficult to get to if you didn’t have a car, in front of very few fans. The Knicks dominated the hearts and minds of the region when they were winning and, sometimes, even when they weren’t. Since we didn’t have cable for much of my childhood, I’d watch the handful of Nets games that were televised on WWOR, but only because I wanted to see the Nets’ opponents. I used to make fun of Spencer Ross, the Nets’ play-by-play broadcaster in the early 1990s, because he seemed to be forcing a nickname on every Nets player to try and improve their likability: Kenny Anderson, a talented point guard who had trouble with health and with consistency, was always known as either “Special K” or “Kenny the Kid”; power forward Derrick Coleman, who could be one of the best players in the NBA when he wanted to be, was known strictly as “DC”. Legendary Knicks announcer Marv Albert never had to resort to such shenanigans, I thought to myself.

The thing is, it didn’t have to be this way. When the then-New York Nets agreed to join the NBA for the 1976-1977 season, they were coming off an ABA championship. They also had Julius Erving, one of the most exciting players in basketball history. The Knicks were still competitive, but the core of their great teams of the early 1970s was aging. The Nets had a legitimate chance to make serious inroads into the hearts and minds of New York area basketball fans. However, Nets owner Roy Boe had to pay $3.2 million to join the NBA and make the first of ten $480,000 payments to the New York Knicks to get them to waive their territorial rights. Needing a quick infusion of cash, Boe sold Erving to the Philadelphia 76ers (but only after offering Erving to the Knicks in exchange for them waving the territorial rights payments. The Knicks refused). So, instead of entering the NBA with one of the greatest basketball players of all time and an opportunity to steal some of the Knicks’ thunder, the Nets had to settle for mediocrity and obscurity. They moved from Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum to New Jersey the next season and, despite some halfway decent teams in the early 1980s, were largely ignored. Erving, by the way, would lead the 76ers to an NBA title.

When it comes to sports, baseball was my first love and the NBA was my second. I grew up rooting for those talented Knicks teams of the early 1990s that would always give Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls a run for their money before coming up short. Mom was also a huge Knicks fan and we tried to go to their games at Madison Square Garden whenever we could. But, the Knicks always sold out and we were lucky to catch one or two games a year from the upper reaches of The World’s Most Famous Arena.

Before the start of the 1995-1996 NBA season, Mom decided to get us a seven-game New Jersey Nets ticket plan because all of those plans included at least one Knicks-Nets game. So, off we went from the Bronx, across the George Washington Bridge and onto the New Jersey Turnpike, to see the New York area’s neglected franchise. The Nets played at the nondescript Brendan Byrne Arena, which was named after the governor of New Jersey who got the facility built. During that season, the name changed to the Continental Airlines Arena; of course the Nets would play in the only arena or stadium in the area named after a corporate sponsor. I saw some great basketball teams and players that season. I saw the Bulls, who won an NBA-record 72 games that year, thrash the Nets, but not before Bulls bad boy Dennis Rodman got ejected, taking off his jersey as he angrily stalked off the court. I also saw the Detroit Pistons who were on the upswing with young stars Grant Hill and Allan Houston, a very good Indiana Pacers team featuring future Hall of Famer Reggie Miller, and the 76ers who weren’t very good but had exciting rookie Jerry Stackhouse. I also saw the Knicks, of course, who had the nerve to lose the game I attended.

Unfortunately, I also had to watch the Nets, who served in the Washington Generals role most of the nights we were there. Their most consistent player was Armen Gilliam, a journeyman forward known as “The Hammer”, complete with a hammer pounding a nail on the arena matrix board whenever Gilliam scored. The talented Anderson stayed healthy that season, but the Nets knew they weren’t going to be able to sign him long-term, so they traded him to the Charlotte Hornets in January. That season, the Nets gave out replica jerseys featuring the name and number of rookie forward Ed O’Bannon, their first-round draft pick, despite the fact he wasn’t playing like a future franchise cornerstone; O’Bannon was out of the NBA two years later. During one game, Nets general manager Willis Reed was shown on the video board and showered with boos. The Nets would finish the 1995-1996 season with a 30-52 record and fire head coach Butch Beard, who hasn’t coached in the NBA since.

Things did get better for the Nets on the court after that, culminating in back-to-back NBA Finals appearances in 2002 and 2003. However, the fans never did show up and the Nets continued to fight a losing battle for the hearts, minds and wallets of area sports fans.

But, that’s all changing because the New Jersey Nets are now the Brooklyn Nets.

I’m excited about the Nets laying root in Brooklyn. Many New Yorkers have already embraced the Nets’ new, black and white logo, the Nets have made several moves to improve their on-court product and their games at the brand-new Barclays Center will be a hot ticket all winter. No longer will the Nets’ location on the wrong side of the Hudson River prevent them from drawing fans and keeping and acquiring quality players.

As a Knicks fan, I suppose I shouldn’t be excited about the Nets’ improved prospects. However, I’m looking forward to the Knicks having a true geographic rival. I’m hopeful the Nets will force the Knicks to improve their on- and off-court product since the Knicks will no longer be able to rely on the fact that they have little competition regionally. I think the Knicks will always be the more popular of the two franchises, but the Nets will be able to make a dent as the years progress.

In the near future, I hope I can make it to the Barclays Center for a Knicks-Nets game. It will be neat to watch the Nets play in a bright, colorful arena that’s filled to capacity and easily accessible by public transportation. There will probably still be more Knicks fans than Nets fans there, but at least the Nets will have a decent number of fans rooting them on. It will be a completely different experience from the Nets games I attended in the mid 1990s.

And, this time, the Knicks better win.

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The New York Knicks: A Tragedy

I recognized Mom’s number when I opened my flip phone. I knew why she was calling.

“Hi Mom,” I answered. “I hate this move. I think it’s a terrible move.”

Mom tried to be diplomatic.

“Just give it some time,” she said. “Things could work out.”

I wasn’t going to give it any time and I knew it wasn’t going to work out; I’d never been more certain of anything in my life as a sports fan.

So, yeah, I wasn’t excited about Isiah Thomas being named president of the New York Knicks.

The Knicks are the reason I care about basketball. I came of age living and (mostly) dying with those talented and tough Knicks teams of the early- and mid-1990s that regularly went deep into the playoffs and regularly succumbed to those great, Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls teams, save for one NBA Finals appearance in 1994, during Jordan’s basketball hiatus. The Knicks were Wile E. Coyote; they’d keep coming up with ingenious plans to win it all, yet they’d always be leveled by an anvil or go careening off a cliff, the Bulls yelling “Beep Beep!” and sticking their tongue out as they raced to another title. But, I loved Wile E. One of the best birthday presents I got as a teenager was an Anthony Mason jersey. I begged Mom to take her Toyota Corolla through the car wash that Charles Oakley owned. Mom was also a huge Knicks fan; the Knicks won their only two NBA championships when she was a teenager. Knicks tickets at Madison Square Garden were hard to come by, so Mom and I had a seven-game New Jersey Nets ticket plan during the 1995-1996 season in part because it included seats for one of the Knicks games against the Nets at Continental Airlines Arena. I privately sneered at the Bulls hats, jackets and jerseys that filled New York City back then; it’s easy to root for the Road Runner, but you have to stick by your hometown team, even if they continue to buy products from Acme that keep failing them and don’t reach their full potential.

The Knicks didn’t have much of an identity once the late 1990s rolled around, but they were still competitive and capable of doing damage in the playoffs, culminating in a surprise NBA Finals appearance in 1999. The following season, Scott Layden took over as general manager and, after a couple of decent years, the Knicks hit an iceberg. It had been a decade and a half since the Knicks had bottomed out, and their lack of high draft picks didn’t allow them to rebuild with younger players. The Knicks kept signing and trading for veterans who were either mediocre or over the hill and none of the handful of young players they acquired panned out. Eventually, they did hit bottom, and it cost Layden his job late in 2003.

By the time Layden lost his job, I’d left New York City and was working as a sports play-by-play broadcaster and a news anchor and reporter for a radio station group in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Growing up, the Knicks were my second-favorite team behind the New York Mets, but they’d taken a backseat to the New York Giants, who I could watch every week at a bar a few minutes from my apartment, and Syracuse University, my alma mater, whose men’s basketball and football games were regularly shown on cable. I tried to watch the handful of Knicks games that were on television in Michigan but, as their record dipped, so did their national exposure. But my passion was reignited that day I was working in the newsroom and saw the Associated Press wire story announcing the Knicks’ hire of Thomas, which was followed by Mom’s phone call a few minutes later. The Knicks had stagnated under Layden, but going from him to Thomas felt like having a malignant tumor removed only to find out I had cancer. Thomas, one of the best point guards in NBA history and a good evaluator of amateur talent, had failed as a coach and/or general manager in several stops, even taking the time to run the minor-league Continental Basketball Association into the ground. I knew the Knicks were doomed.

Unfortunately, he didn’t prove me wrong. Thomas, who eventually added head coaching duties to his team president responsibilities, saddled the Knicks with bad contract after bad contract. Like New York Yankees or Brooklyn Dodgers fans of a certain age who can recite the entire roster of their great teams of yesteryear by heart, I can name most of the Knicks poor acquisitions and the beneficiaries of the terrible contracts under Thomas off the top of my head: Eddy Curry. Jerome James. Stephon Marbury. Steve Francis. It got to the point where I stopped getting upset about the Knicks’ losses because I knew continued futility would be the only way for Thomas to get canned. I was amazed the Knicks stood by Thomas even after an embarrassing sexual harassment lawsuit filed against him by one of the Knicks’ former female employees; it was a lawsuit the Knicks could’ve settled out of court, but they chose to fight it, leading to a lot of their dirty laundry being aired in a public forum. Some of my ire directed at Thomas began to be diverted to owner Jim Dolan, who seemed to have more faith in Thomas’ ability than he should’ve.

I was living in Binghamton, New York when the Knicks finally fired Thomas after the 2007-2008 season, prompting a celebration. Moreover, Thomas was replaced by people with excellent track records: Donnie Walsh, who’d built some really good Indiana Pacers teams, was named the president and Mike D’Antoni, who’d won with the Phoenix Suns, became the head coach. It was going to take a few years to rid the Knicks of all the bad contracts Thomas had saddled them with, but there was now a light at the end of the tunnel. New Yorkers have a reputation as an impatient bunch, but we had no problem accepting and watching terrible Knicks teams for a few years because we were confident the manure would turn into roses.

And that’s what made the first few months of the 2010-2011 Knicks season so wonderful. The Knicks had cleared enough salary cap space to finally sign some good players, led by standout center Amar’e Stoudemire. I was concerned about Stoudemire’s injury history – the Knicks couldn’t find anyone willing to insure his massive contract – but I still thought he was a good piece to build around. Besides, Walsh had put the Knicks in position to make more free agent signings over the next year or two, so Stoudemire was going to get more help. I followed the Knicks closer than I ever had as an adult, and their improved on-court product led to a ton of national television appearances, making it easier for me to keep an eye on them from Kansas City.

Then, the Knicks traded for Carmelo Anthony.

I’ve had a soft spot for Carmelo Anthony ever since he led Syracuse to their first-ever championship in college basketball. That was during the 2002-2003 season, Anthony’s only year in Syracuse orange. After years of resisting the urge to bring in a “one-and-done” – players who plan on declaring for the NBA Draft after playing one season of college basketball – Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim relented and landed Anthony, and it couldn’t have worked out any better. Unranked at the start of the season, Syracuse gained momentum as the year progressed, thanks to Anthony’s ability to gel with the rest of his teammates. Fellow freshmen Billy Edelin and Gerry McNamara handled the point guard duties that season and both proved adept at getting the ball to Anthony in spots that would allow him to score effectively. Syracuse was a balanced team with the ability to score inside or outside and a tight rotation of players who all knew their roles; Anthony thrived in this atmosphere.

Things have been different for Anthony since he was picked third overall by the Denver Nuggets in the 2003 NBA Draft. He’s developed a reputation as a player who is only capable of scoring and incapable of helping his teammates score or making those around him better. At Syracuse, Anthony wasn’t asked to set up his teammates, they had several capable rebounders and their 2-3 match-up zone hid his defensive shortcomings; all Anthony had to do was score. In the NBA, the team’s star player is expected to pass at least occasionally and it’s hard for any team to make a deep playoff run when their best player isn’t an elite-level passer, rebounder or defender. Anthony certainly made the Nuggets better, but their ceiling was limited because Anthony was limited as a superstar.

I was aware of Anthony’s reputation when the Knicks acquired him in February, 2011. Anthony made it clear he planned on leaving Denver after the season and that the Knicks were the only team he wanted to play for. It was unlikely Denver was going to be able to trade Anthony to any other team and Anthony was all but certain to choose the Knicks during free agency that summer. Walsh reportedly saw no need to trade for Anthony; the Knicks were already good enough to win a postseason series or two and they’d have to give up quite a bit to acquire Anthony in a trade. By picking up Anthony in free agency, the Knicks would be able to keep their core intact and add Anthony, which seemed like a win-win proposition. Walsh’s strategy made sense to me, but he was reportedly overruled by the meddlesome Dolan and the trade was made. I was incensed. Not only did Dolan ignore the recommendation of the general manager he hired to rid the Knicks of the mess Dolan helped create, but I knew there was little chance of Walsh – or his allies – sticking around after the 2010-2011 season.

Not surprisingly, the Knicks gave up several key players to get Anthony, were swept in the first round of the NBA playoffs and Walsh resigned after the season, although he remained with the team as a consultant. And the lockout-shortened 2011-2012 season saw the Knicks get off to a terrible start, in part because of the difficulties Anthony and Stoudemire had playing together. Both players like to operate in the post, creating a logjam that made it more difficult for both to score. And, Anthony performs better in a slow-paced, half-court game, whereas D’Antoni had installed an up-tempo, full-court style of play. The Knicks didn’t start to play as a unit until the emergence of Jeremy Lin, an afterthought who’d been claimed on waivers and had never stuck at the NBA level. But Lin, a point guard, proved to be skilled at making his mediocre teammates better and got his start during a stretch in which Anthony and Stoudemire didn’t play much together, since one or the other was out for various injuries or family emergencies (Stoudemire left the team for several days after his older brother died in a car accident).

Last week’s predictable first-round playoff exit for the Knicks – at least they won a playoff game this time, their first postseason victory since 2001 – ended a tumultuous season that saw D’Antoni resign and several key players miss lengthy stretches of the season. Anthony was in the middle of the tempest; his strained relationship with D’Antoni reportedly led to the latter’s resignation, and Anthony’s work ethic, desire to share the ball on offense and ability to stay in shape were questioned by his coaches, media and fans. The fact that Anthony carried an injury-riddled team the last month of the season and ensured the Knicks got one of the final playoff spots in the Eastern Conference seems like a footnote. Many Knicks fans felt duped: Anthony was supposed to be the superstar who would lead them to bigger and better things instead of an impediment to their long-term success. I can’t say I expected many associated with the Knicks to sour on Anthony so quickly, but I’m not surprised.

Perhaps a full training camp and a traditional, non-condensed schedule will help Anthony and the Knicks find their rhythm next season. And, the Knicks have an entire off-season to surround Anthony and Stoudemire with players who compliment them. I think the Knicks will be better next season than they were in 2011-2012, but I still expect them to disappoint. I am glad the Knicks are good enough to warrant my attention again and that they expect to win more games than they lose. But, I’m still wary of that anvil that always seems to fall from the sky.

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Fan Or Media?

Thanks to my job as a reporter covering the Kansas City Royals for their flagship radio station, I’ve developed quite a following on Twitter. Recently, one of my followers asked me if I was a fan of the Royals. I replied that, while I like to see the Royals succeed, I don’t consider myself a fan. My response led to a lengthy Twitter discussion about why I’m not a fan of the Royals; some suggested I was a traitor for not unabashedly rooting for the Royals and others assumed I don’t care about the Royals if I’m not a fan of the team.

I can’t help that I grew up in New York City rooting for the New York Mets, rather than in Kansas City rooting for the Royals. I suppose I could toss my past aside and pretend the Royals are the only team I’ve ever cared about, but that would be disingenuous. Even though I do a Royals post-game show and have many people who follow me on Twitter because I cover the Royals, I don’t hide my past or present allegiances. I learned about and fell in love with baseball thanks to the Mets and pretending otherwise would be ignoring a key part of what’s made me who I am.

When I first took the Royals reporter job, just before the start of the 2009 baseball season, I scoured the internet for information about the Royals teams of the previous few seasons, taking detailed notes that almost filled up an entire legal pad. Now, in my fourth season covering the Royals, I feel like know as much about the team as anyone who didn’t grow up following them could. I’ve gotten to know many of the players, coaches and executives – past and present – very well. I enjoy interacting with and talking to Royals fans and I feel I have a good grasp of the fan base’s mood. I like to see the Royals do well – it’s easier and more enjoyable covering a winning team than it is covering a losing team – but I still don’t consider myself a fan.

I am a fan of Syracuse University’s teams, especially football and men’s basketball. I am a fan of the New York Giants. I am a fan of the New York Knicks. I will celebrate the successes of those teams and brood over their failures. I will always wear merchandise with the logos and colors of those teams. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, I will always care whether Syracuse, the Giants and the Knicks win or lose. However, if I stop covering the Royals, I will no longer follow them closely. Sure, I’ll still be interested in how they do – I occasionally peruse box scores, rosters and schedules for teams I covered a decade ago – but I will no longer concern myself with their day-to-day activities. I no longer consider myself a Mets fan because I’ve spent the last decade immersed in coverage of other baseball teams, making it difficult for me to follow the Mets closely at the Major League level; this is true even though I covered one of the Mets minor league affiliates for four years.

Some say covering a team you aren’t a fan of is a good thing; it leads to more impartial coverage, they say. I think there are advantages to covering a team you grew up rooting for: you’re already familiar with that team’s history, you know what’s important to that team’s fans and you know how those fans think. And, seeing the inner workings and getting to know the on- and off-field members of a team decreases the chances of a fan-turned-media member becoming an unabashed cheerleader. Even the most plugged in fans are prone to speculation about the motives and character of a player, coach or team, speculation that often isn’t very informed or is based on what others have told them. On the other hand, media who cover a team are less likely to speculate because they have a better idea of what’s going on. And, when they do speculate, it’s usually well-informed speculation based on their intimate knowledge of and on- and off-the-record access to a team and its key players. Unlike fans, media who cover a team every day are less likely to run hot and cold about a team or player’s performance because they usually have a better understanding of the big picture. If you are a fan of a team, covering that team every day will make you less of a fan and more of a shrewd observer.

So, no, I’m not a Royals fan and I doubt I’ll ever really be a Royals fan. But, I do enjoy covering them and I hope they succeed in turning things around and eventually make it back to the World Series. Because, who wouldn’t want to cover a World Series?

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