Every year, I promise I won’t let the Knicks get me excited about their chances of winning an NBA title.
I swear I won’t let them snatch my emotions and draw me into the false hope that they always seem to give us long-suffering fans.
Yet every year I cause my own heartbreak because I fail to emotionally distance myself from the team that I, along with every true New Yorker who has supported the team for decades, can never stop cheering for, disdain, support, curse out and celebrate.
It’s like being Pookie from the movie New Jack City and the Knicks are the drug that we turn back to every year.
“It just be callin’ me man. Callin’ me man. I just got to go to it.”
And like Pookie, we know our fandom will only hurt us in the end, but we can’t stop taking part in their annual rollercoaster of a season.
This season began with big moves starting in June 2024 that showed us all that the organization was serious about reaching the NBA Finals.
We had superstar Jalen Brunson, All-Star Julius Randle and the Villanova Knicks and were poised to run it back with a team that almost made the Eastern Conference Finals the previous year.
Then management traded away five first-round picks to Brooklyn for Mikal Bridges. A few short days later, the team locked up OG Anunoby with a five-year, $212.5 million deal in June, the largest deal in team history.
Then in October, the biggest stunner hit when the team traded Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo to the Timberwolves for Karl-Anthony Towns.
While it broke up the Nova Knicks, it gave the team two true offensive threats in Brunson and KAT.
That move reinvigorated the championship dreams for fans who knew they needed more offense to get by the reigning NBA Champions, the Boston Celtics.
The season, as is the norm for the Knicks, was filled with highs and lows, including being swept by the three top teams in the league- the Celtics, Cavaliers and Thunder.
But at the end of the regular season, New York finished third in the East, which meant it would play Boston if they could get through a tough matchup with the young Detroit Pistons.
While nail-biting and rough, the Knicks made it through the Pistons and faced the Celtics, a team that had demolished them in the four regular season games.
Shockingly, the Knicks took the first two games in Boston and eventually won the series in six games, stunning NBA fans and sending the city into a frenzy.
