I can’t watch the World Series this year, not with the two teams I hate most playing against each other. Root for the Yankees? The Phillies? Baseball is over, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll watch the Knicks, knowing they’re not supposed to be very good — and thinking about a 2010-2011 season with LeBron James, Chris Bosch or Dwayne Wade in the orange and blue.
Tag: basketball
Knicks and good in the same paragraph? Now, that’s something to write home about
The Knicks took a rugged power forward — 6-10 Jordan Hill from Arizona — with the eighth pick in today’s draft. Here’s what ESPN’s Chad Ford had to say about it:
The Knicks are relieved. They were praying that Flynn went in the top seven so that they could get either Curry or Hill. They wish that Curry had been there, but they liked Hill a lot, too. Mike D’Antoni compared him to a young Amare Stoudemire. I think that’s a little much, but he’ll be good in D’Antoni’s up-tempo system and he’s insurance if David Lee leaves via free agency. If Lee re-signs, Hill can play some center the same way Stoudemire did in Phoenix. Good pick.
I hope he’s right. If he is — and they can resign Lee — it gives the Knicks an interesting core with the big guns (LeBron James, Dewayne Wade, Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony) coming on the free-agent market next year.
They also grabbed Toney Douglas with the Lakers’ 29th pick, a guard that Ford calls “a bit of a poor man’s Ben Gordon, a combo guard who can really light it up.”
He lets the 3s fly, and unlike Gordon, he’s a terrific defender. This is a really good pick for New York this late.
Kudos to the new regime.
Lakers-Celtics: What’s a Knicks fan to do?
It seems like old times. The Lakers and Celtics have returned to the NBA finals for the first time since Larry Legend and Magic were dominating the NBA and the league couldn’t be happier.
A Lakers-Celtics final most likely means better ratings than in recent years, and it should mean some good basketball, likely a seven-game finals with the Lakers coming out on top because they have the game’s best player and best late-game player (Kobe Bryant).
As a Knicks fan, I find myself in a quandary. Aside from the Bulls and the Heat, there are no two teams Knicks fans despise more (maybe the old Bullets), no teams that had thwarted more Knick fan dreams than the Lakers and the Celtics — the two have played each other 10 times in the finals, with the Lakers winning only the last two (’84-’85 and ’86-’87) and have combined for a total of 49 appearances in the finals (that’s 39 times that at least one of the two teams have been in the finals in 60 years of NBA history, with 29 total championships). It puts the Yankees to shame.
That said, I’m going to root for the Celtics this time out. Kobe has his rings. But Kevin Garnett, one of the greatest players in history — and, from what I read, one of the nicest — does not. He is making his first finals appearance and I look for him to come up big. He does it all — score, rebound, block shots, pass, defend — and he is surrounded by a pair of lethal scorers and some young and hungry guys.
I still think the Lakers are going to win, but I think Garnett deserves this one.
Best game of the year, Knicks version
The Isaiah Thomas era comes to a close tonight, an era that lasted four and a half years longer than it should have.
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A reminder of the glory days at the Garden
Patrick Ewing (pictured above from the Knicks’ Web site) gets a well-deserved honor, becoming the latest Knick and the only member of the great 1990s squad (which seemed always to fall short — a sort of basketball version of a Greek tragedy), to enter the Basketball Hall of Fame.
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Hank Kalet 