I’m a proud card-carrying member of my generation, which if you’re a fan of New York professional sports teams is actually a badge of honor of some sort. There are generations coming of age that have spent their entire lives in quest of a title of some sort. When it comes to fans of the Knicks, there are now significant numbers of those also carrying cards issued by the AARP.
It’s going to soon be 53 years since the second of their two NBA titles were achieved in five years, a pace that paralled that of the Mets’ World Series appearances. I do fondly remember those teams, but those memories dim with each turn of the calendar, and it’s getting harder and harder to properly do reunions.
So the fact that the Knicks are competing tonight for the third-ever NBA Emirates Cup on the over-the-top neutral court of Las Vegas’ T Mobile Arena is to a goodly percentage of their fans a big deal. The researcher in me would be damn curious exactly who are the ones who care more–not that the fact that the game’s exclusively airing on Amazon Prime Video isn’t a clue. But in terms of degree of passion, it’s honestly an open question in my book. And apparently that’s also true of the book belonging to THE ATHLETIC’s Chris Branch, which judging by his avatar he’s clearly not from my generation. In this morning’s PULSE newsletter, he took advantage of his far more significant pulpit to amplify the very thought that’s crossing my mind:
Have you heard? Do you care? Is anyone outside of the hardcore basketball fan base following?
The NBA Cup, née the In-Season Tournament, began in 2023 as an earnest effort to solve early-season malaise. The running joke is that most basketball fans don’t start paying attention to the league until Christmas, and the casual fan doesn’t really tune in until the playoffs approach in the spring. It’s a real problem for a sport that has an 82-game season. Thus, commissioner Adam Silver looked across the ocean to the copious amount of in-season soccer tournaments. Champions League, Europa League, Carabao Cup — these are all competitions with real stakes/prize money involved that don’t tie into any specific league’s end-of-season championship. They are a real interest-drivers, particularly the UCL. So the NBA Cup was born. An in-season tournament, complete with fancy court designs and prize money, meant to differentiate a November game from its normal slot in fans’ brains.
(T)he Cup final is tonight in Las Vegas, with the Knicks and Spurs (both 18-7) in a legitimately great regular-season matchup…Joe Vardon wrote this morning that, despite good ratings, the league is reviewing the tournament’s future in Las Vegas. I’m curious how much you care beyond that point. We’ll have some arguments for and against the tournament as a concept tomorrow, but for now, I need your opinion on the NBA Cup via a four-digit scale:
1. I don’t care at all.
2. I might care if my team was in it.
3. It’s better than what we were doing before in November.
4. This rules. Naysayers are dumb.
I’m sort of between 2 and 3 myself, if for no other reason that I recall that these same two teams once met in an actual NBA Finals, though it was very much an asterisk. In 1999, after a labor dispute wiped out not only November games but December and January as well, the league OKd a 50-game sprint that saw the up-and-coming Spurs, at the outset of their eventual five-championship run over the next 15 years, dominate with a 37-13 record that tied for the league’s best with the Utah Jazz–yeah, it was THAT long ago. As for the Knicks–well, let Wikipedia pick up the narrative:
Toward the end of the season, with the team teetering on the brink of making the playoffs, New York fired general manager Ernie Grunfeld.[12] The Knicks barely qualified for the playoffs and received the eighth and final seed in the Eastern Conference.[13] The Knicks faced the Miami Heat, the top Eastern Conference seed, in the first round. When Allan Houston made a shot with 0.8 seconds remaining in Game 5 of that series, the Knicks were victorious and became the second team in NBA history after the 1993-94 Denver Nuggets to win a playoff series as the eighth seed.[14] The Knicks faced the Atlanta Hawks next. Hawks center Dikembe Mutombo guaranteed a victory, but the Knicks prevailed in a four-game sweep to set up a matchup with the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals.[15]Knicks center Patrick Ewing was lost for the series after the first two games against Indiana.[16] In the third game, with 11.9 seconds left and the Knicks trailing 91–88, the Knicks’ Larry Johnson made a three-point shot while being fouled and converted the subsequent free throw for a game-winning four-point play; the victory gave the Knicks a 2–1 lead in the series. The Knicks won Game 6 and prevailed in the series, becoming the first team in North American sports history to reach a championship series as an eighth seed.[17]
The run was eerily similar both in timing and pacing to that of the 1973 Mets, who fell one game short of a second world title in that year’s World Series. The ’86 version more than took care of that disappointment. The ’99 Knicks were a much easier out, dropping the Finals in five games than still extended four days into summer. They haven’t gotten back to a Finals since then.
So I’m willing to place a small side bet that tonight will indeed matter to those more inclined to party in Vegas and indeed place a few wagers of their own. THE SPORTING NEWS’ Shaun Powell sets the stage:
The Knicks are a bit less awed by their presence in the Cup final. They’re an anxious team sitting on the fence of being a championship contender, wondering which way a nudge from the Cup championship game will push them. The Knicks are an Eastern elite, burned from playoff failures of the last few years, now swollen with confidence that This Could Be The One. The Spurs are the upstarts, hoping to earn the moniker of being a contender, pushing their limits here in a season where much has gone their way. The Spurs are up-and-coming, boosted by beating the Oklahoma City Thunder, which was fortified by the return of their alien, Victor Wembanyama. That win generated debate about top-ranked OKC gaining a rival, although Wemby asked for patience. “We’re not quite there yet,” he said, “it’s not like we’re the second seed right now. I don’t think anybody right now can claim to have a rivalry with them in the league. They’re in their own tier. But in the future if we can provide a stage this good and we reach that level, of course it would be great to have a rivalry because if you’re at the top and you have a rivalry, it means you’re in the best position to win titles. I’m very interested by it.”
Wemby is most definitely Gen Zed, and he’s never known a world without the internet, so the fact it will take a connection and at least a shipping subscription to watch it isn’t perhaps as daunting an obstacle to him as it may be for some older-school Knicks fans. But it will air live in his native France–albeit beginning around the times the bistros are having last call–so there’s something to be said for the global significance. If you are one of those older-school Knick fans, you have to at least appreciate that someone somewhere cares as much as you do about tonight’s result. Possibly more so.
Win or lose, the experience will be something to build on. And even in the extremely small sample size, there’s some evidence that this could be a harbinger of something even bigger for the real Finals in the not-too-distant future. The first two losing teams in this tournament just happened to be the teams that contributed to the thrilling seven-game showdown we saw last June, and the Thunder hadn’t stopped making up their loss until perhaps Saturday night, when their regular season record plummeted to 24-2.
Please feel free to voice your own opinion as Branch requested. See if it changes after tonight’s game. See you online.
Courage…