http://www.nykfanpage.com/editorials/viewarticle.php?articleid=203

Vampire Writers Beware: A Love Too Strong to Die
By Donald Christopher
November 13, 2006

I begin to get weary of the blood-hunting stories about former New York Knicks coach Larry Brown's well-documented failures with the team last year. Stories that dissect the future Hall of Fame coach's psyche as if prying apart a laboratory frog. Patronizing stories written by sportswriters who know all there is to know about "getting the story" and "the story behind the story," but never "the story behind the story behind the story."


I may have lost you then, but just work with the kid.

I wearied of seeing a proven winner in Brown analyzed and diagnosed and explained by people, who one feels intuitively, regards the same Knick players that Brown found little success coaching as nothing more than a glorified modern-day version of the Bad News Bears.

Week after week, these blood-sucking writers tell us what is wrong with the Knicks: The coach is badly in need of adjustment, they say -- the roster lacks balance and needs fine tuning to whatever it is that a roster should be attuned to.

Brown may have been guilty of climbing the pole and hooking up free cable, but perhaps it is the players responsibility to be held accountable for their actions, or non-actions. For the vampire writers, last season was a Lifetime Channel movie starring a has-been actress, a struggle hinging on weapons of mass destruction and cigarettes, and the inequities of this or that. I can't be sure, but these writers seemed to think the players missed last season by having been away in a daycare center at the time and do not understand the concept behind signing a contract to play professional basketball.

Still, to me last season was not what it was to the human mosquitoes: A battered woman trying to heroicly escape her abusive relationship. Personally, it wasn't a perfect example of heartfelt inspiration upon the part of the players being smothered out by just plain old-fashioned stubborness, as they would have you to believe. Last season left me with memories these writers couldn't imagine. It left me with memories of Patrick Ewing standing on the scorer's table with his long arms spread outward like the wings of an eagle. Somehow, these writers seemed to forget Stevie Franchise's unwillingness to play for the Vancouver Grizzlies -- a team that had just made the NBA rookie a millionaire. I remembered the feelings of excitement that overcame me when John Starks drove baseline and performed a beautiful left-handed dunk that echoed feelings of, "We will take it to another level if we have to." I remember "The Bounce," "The Four-Point Play," Marcus Camby's tomahawk dunk over Dikembe Mutombo, and Latrell Sprewell's gut-wrenching fourth quarter performance against the Toronto Raptors in the playoffs. I also recall the Knicks sweeping a young, talented Raptors team in the playoffs once, when these same writers were busy preparing the Knicks eulogy. They said the Knicks didn't stand a chance against the more athletic and faster Raptors players. But to this day, not one coach has ever been given, or taken credit for the size of a player's heart. Hopefully, the current group of players are reading this.

As a Knicks fan, if I try to explain what last season's 23-59 showing meant to me, they may have to first check and see if I have any weapons on me. "My God," their eyes say, "he acts like it's the end of the world. Something in his experience as a Knicks fan clearly has altered his mind and left him with a perverse view of a silly game of basketball...the Knicks did that to him." They say, "Being a Knicks fan is hell."

Well, yes, they may have something there. When you have seen a teenager laying on the couch in tears because the referees refused to blow their whistles when Charles Smith was assaulted by the Chicago Bulls, then you see that Einstein may have been on to something. When the Sprewell-Keith Van Horn trade left you feeling like there's been a death in your family then, and only then can one truly grasp the depths of despair that have manifested within me. I cannot say the vampire writers are wrong in their understanding of my love for the Knicks, but still, somehow I just do not feel we were born on the same planet.

There are of course, Knick fans and Knick fans. Some can stomach the burnt taste of the toast. Some can't. Some fans went about their lives as if they never witnessed how medical doctors could actually stick their arm through the sockets where the knees of Antonio McDyess used to be. Some quietly prayed for McDyess to have a season-ending injury; the hatred for Scott Layden simply would not allow them to cheer anything the man did. I'm serious.

To the players embedded in my heart and mind -- Ewing, Starks, Sprewell, Camby, Allan Houston, Chris Childs, Larry Johnson, Charles Oakley, Anthony Mason, Charlie Ward, Derek Harper, and Xavier McDaniel -- players who gave their blood, sweat and tears for the jersey, the fans, and the organization, and played the silly game of basketball as if their lives depended on it...your foxhole-actions will never be in vain. Not as long as the vampire writers haven't attached their dentals to my skin, it won't.

To many of us, these players signal the true spirit of being a New York Knick. We loved it because in those days, Madison Square Garden was alive, and the game was an intense contest where warriors engaged in battle. It was also during the days of the league where "you had to pack your lunch" to beat the Knicks. Or as famed hip hop artist Jay-Z states, "Your word was everything, so everything you said you do, you did it. Couldn't talk about it if you ain't live it."

Vampire writers will only say that we are foolish to dwell on fond memories about teams that never won one NBA championship. They do not remember the glorious plights of those teams which fought tooth-and-nail for respect in a league where almost every sentence begin with, "The Chicago Bulls..."

These creatures...er, writers, never had to enter into the matrix and passionately defend Jordan during the years when it had become obvious to everyone that he was, in fact, The One. They vaguely remember the shared sentiments of Knick fans thinking, "All we need is a pure shooter," then watching the team sign Allan Houston only to have our hopes and dreams buried into the ground in the 1997 playoffs when the commissioners office stated, "No coming off the bench means no coming off the bench." The Knicks were poised to overthrow the Bulls and spent the entire season counting down the days to when the Knicks versus Bulls playoffs series would begin. As precisely as I can recall, it seems the vampire writers do not remember the plight of the fans. Either that, or they are too busy sucking blood from the lifeless body of Larry Brown.

Then it was over. The Great Depression began. Suddenly, the Knicks seemed to mysteriously fade away. The beloved orange and blue jerseys were somehow washed in Clorox. The character portrayed by Robert Redford in the movie Indecent Proposal was replaced by a harrowing presence as dull as the thick-rimmed pair of eyeglasses that all but personified his vision for the team. And a man who, truth be told, always rooted for the Utah Jazz to win the NBA Finals.

Knick fans looked around us with bloodshot eyes and saw that, in a sense, we had lost our dignity. I remember an infamous thread created on a Internet message board once which seemed to tragically put everything into perspective: Knicks send first rounder to Grizzlies for big man Othella Harrington.

While watching a game, and seeing Allan Houston and Harrington standing side-by-side, I was flabbergasted to see how our shooting guard was clearly the taller player. When they referred to Harrington as a big man, perhaps they were speaking on the abnormity his waistline.

It wasn't exactly that the players no longer fit. Rather, we saw what there was to fit with -- nothing -- and we began to riot, emotionally. We sought answers, but found even more unanswered questions. As heartbroken fans, we even may have called for O.J. Simpson to make a "detour" to MSG in his white Ford Bronco. Okay, I may have been the only person thinking that, but drastic times do call for drastic measures. An ex-relative of mine suddenly "discovered" that with the right-colored dye, his Sprewell jersey could become transformed into a Kobe Bryant jersey -- thus climbing aboard the Lakers bandwagon. Yes, you heard me correctly, an ex-relative. Others, like myself sat and tortured ourselves, playing countless mind games and even voting for Lavor Postell onto NBA All-Star ballots. Having too much time on your hands never felt so good.

The blood drinkers were quickly upon us. We were morose, they said; bipolar. As suffering fans, we acted strangely at the NBA Draft -- sitting silently in corners and watching with noncomittal stares. Mentally, we were a cross between Meryl Streep in the movie Fatal Attraction and Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona -- mentally challenged yet hysterically in love. It didn't occur to them that we just had nothing to say about blood suckers. Vampire writers mean little to fans who have waited in nervous anticipation leading up to the tipoff of the Game 5 contest during the 1999 Eastern Conference Finals versus Miami, while knowing the heartaches and pains that emotionally awaited us in the event of a heartbreaking loss. Feelings that dictated whether or not we would have been able to function for the remainder of that particular day. These writers do not know the feeling; they only attempted to unbelievably bask in our glory after Houston's one-hander caromed off the backboard and fell in the basket.

Once, after the Knicks defeated the Indiana Pacers in the 1999 playoffs to miraculously become the Eastern Conference Champions and earn a trip to the NBA Finals, I was in a sporting goods store looking for a John Starks jersey when I saw a t-shirt that read:

Vampire writers: You don't bleed orange and blue, so shut the eff up.

Maybe, just maybe, as Knick fans we will be able to feel the same feeling I felt at that very moment.