I'm going to post what this season means to me. Anyone wants to join in, please do.



Basketball season is back.

How do I feel about that? Well I'm a Knick fan so that's a complicated question. My team is owned by a man who, according even the most supportive of Knick fans, is not the sharpest tool in the shed. My team has spent the past 7 years languishing in mediocrity, and the off-season was full of non-basketball-related madness. The management team have been outed as, once again even according to the most ardent fan, phenominally niave. According to most accounts, the people running the Knicks sound more like a 50 cent groupie party then a professional team.

And now comes the basketball. Its fair to say that, regardless of whether you believe he may in the future, Isiah Thomas has certainly not succeeded to date. Four straight years sub .500 says to me charlatans rather then champions.

Last year was more of the same. Winter evenings in New York would find countless Knick fans stumbling home, clutching their coats tight to try and hide the retro Starks jerset beneath, hoping beyond hope not to meet their Nets-loving friend, who would just make the evening that much more unbearable. How many times did I see Jamal Crawford go 2-18, or Eddy Curry foul out in 11 minutes? For every David Lee buzzer-beater, there were five or six double-figure home losses to our most hated rivals.

Yet I return. Why? Because they're not just the New York Knicks to me. They're MY New York Knicks. Every fleeting victory was a leap of joy in my heart, and all those soul-numbing defeats, a dagger through my chest. I stood in Madison Square Garden (not as often as I wished, but whenever I could) and I screamed and cheered with every Marbury bounce-pass, every Jamal to Eddy alley-oop. And I slumped wearily back in my seat every time a second-rate point guard busted out for 30 points against the non-existent defense. Every step taken on the court by a player wearing the Knicks uniform is a step taken in tandem with me, and thousands of other Knick fans as well. Sitting in the stands at the Garden is a sign to those players that we, the fans, are there with them. When they laugh, we laugh too. When they cry, we shed tears with them. When they triumph, their victory is ours as well, and when they face defeat, they do so in spite of our best efforts.

It is a great responsibilty being an athlete, for they carry our hopes and dreams with their actions. When I show disapproval, that is my right and I do so to urge them to heights as yet unscaled. To earn our support and happiness in the good times, they must be prepared to accept our anger when we feel the effort is lacking.

Silence would be a far worse response then our boos. There is a fine line between love and hate, but apathy, mere disinterest is the fate of the truly irrelevent.

And so, I stand here at the start of a new season and once again I turn my face to the five men standing on the court and I say to them "Take my hopes and aspirations and show me where this year will take us". To quote Yeats "But I, being poor, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams"

They are my New York Knicks. And they are yours too.

Yours,

Firefly

hater

So in other words Nixluva, you were a hater during the last Layden year.

I honestly may not watch more than a few Knicks games this year. I'll read the paper and stuff, but I'm in school in New Orleans and it is hard to justify a minimum of a $25 bar tab to watch some terrible basketball.

I'm interested in what's going on with the team, but my expectations are so low I refuse to spend the money on drinking and being miserable. I vastly prefer drinking and skirt-chasing.

Posted by Bippity10:

So in other words Nixluva, you were a hater during the last Layden year.

If you want to say that I guess you could. i wouldn't say that I was a hater. I was dispondent more than hatful towards the team and I couldn't see a way out of the situation. It seemed like Layden would never be fired and we'd be stuck with his style of managing. I never made it a practice to bash the team if I felt that they were giving their all. I may not have thought much of the team, but I was still behind them. H2O was my favorite player and I enjoyed watching him play, but that team was so old and boring. I was LIVID that we lost Camby and Spree. Man I still have my 1999 Finals T Shirt. It's old and faded but I'm never getting rid of it.

Posted by nixluva:

Posted by Bippity10:

So in other words Nixluva, you were a hater during the last Layden year.

If you want to say that I guess you could. i wouldn't say that I was a hater. I was dispondent more than hatful towards the team and I couldn't see a way out of the situation. It seemed like Layden would never be fired and we'd be stuck with his style of managing. I never made it a practice to bash the team if I felt that they were giving their all. I may not have thought much of the team, but I was still behind them. H2O was my favorite player and I enjoyed watching him play, but that team was so old and boring. I was LIVID that we lost Camby and Spree. Man I still have my 1999 Finals T Shirt. It's old and faded but I'm never getting rid of it.

So you weren't a hater, you were a dispondenter. That's worse!