Lincicome: Will welcoming the Knicks to the NBA Finals at long last make it worth watching?
There is an old saying that goes something like this: 30 days have September, all the rest have basketball.
Or how about this? Things it takes two to do — conversation, tango, hug, harmonize, wash a Rottweiler, the NBA Finals.
The Finals stay on the list, more out of stubbornness than appeal, having not the theater of the Super Bowl nor the tradition of the World Series.
Opening Day is a greater attraction than any game of The Finals, save a Game 7, and there hasn’t been one of those in 10 years.
Yet, here we are again, invited to pay attention to basketball, to The Finals. It is not the catchiest title. It sounds more like an execution than a celebration, but it is a promise that whatever has been going on since last we looked will be decided.
A conclusion will be reached; Queen will play through the arena speakers and confetti will fall.
And who will watch all of this, besides the locals? That is a consistent concern of the NBA. The Finals will get an unexpected market boost this time and an unlikely Cinderella story to sell.
Media excitement is frothing because an unusual entry has crept into the fray, celebrated by the famous and the infamous, the privileged and the possessed, the undeserved and the unwashed.
I am speaking, of course, of the New York Knicks. Remember them?
When last the Knicks mattered, they were losing to the Bulls, and the last time the Bulls mattered Oklahoma City still had hitching posts.
According to actual witnesses, the Knicks have earned the chance to save basketball from the sticks, a duty that had lately belonged to the Lakers. Los Angeles has replaced New York as the address of champions, featuring the home of Shohei Ohtani, the most significant import since the Camry.
Chicago used to figure in discussions like this but is a decade beyond mattering and, depending on the White Sox’ teasing restoration, probably another decade away.
Word has leaked beyond Manhattan that the Knicks are, to quote a local gusher, a “newly minted juggernaut,” having won 11 in a row in the playoffs without breaking a sweat and in spite of seasonal mediocracy, finishing third in their conference.
The Knicks are comprised of players known for being unknown, familiar maybe to fans of Villanova, where three of the starters hung out, having earned the alliterative name “Nova Knicks.”
But to identify Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges you will have to take their words for it, or leaf back through the March Madness archives to find, yes, they were on the same NCAA winning teams at Villanova. And yet none were drafted by the Knicks.
The Knicks are a team assembled by used parts from the same car, a notion that must include their coach, Mike Brown, often fired and yet tenaciously remaining employed.
This is a good story and more suited for, oh, Charlotte or Sacramento, struggling off ramps of the nation’s attention, some place where luck or clean living will be rewarded. For New York to become Cinderella is as weird as finding a lug nut in the chicken soup.
The NBA Finals have needed something fresh ever since the weathering of LeBron James and the ho-humming of Steph Curry, and anyone who can tick off the champions since then, go to the back of the class since Hoop Heads are not welcome here.
What do we want from The Finals? We want to be enthralled, not exhausted, witnesses to brilliance and ingenuity, partners in something special, neither our time nor theirs wasted.
Like the Super Bowl, like the World Series, like the Stanley Cup in a product placement sense, the NBA Finals are a stand-alone event, on its own, but dependent on not just the teams but the star attractions involved.
Thus, when we think of the recent occupants at the top, the Thunder, the Nuggets, the Bucks, we sigh for those old guys who are now behind studio desks, more interesting than are the players who are playing.
Could New York winning The Finals change that? Not as long as Charles Barkley speaks, and may he never shut up.