Keidel: As A Franchise, The Knicks Are The NBA's Version Of 'The Walking Dead'
By Jason Keidel
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We have a little tradition over here at CBSNewYork. This is the sixth annual epitaph for the New York Knickerbockers, a postseason postmortem that has become a staple of perverse goodwill and galling basketball.
My editors roll out a little cake, with a candle for every season the Knicks have gone without a title. That's 42, to be precise. We wear those cheap, pharmacy party hats with the rubber band snug under our necks, and allow the biggest Knicks basher -- yours truly -- to blow out all the little flames.
We guzzle cups of Haterade, and even breeze out of the office a little early to keep the party sizzling somewhere else.
Actually, none of that really happens.
But the annual eulogy is real, just like the Knicks are really bad. Their ignominious run of wretched basketball is rolling out like a red carpet. And despite their best attempts -- from Allan Houston's swollen contract, to Isiah Thomas's wretched management and sexual harassment lawsuits to Stephon "Starbury" Marbury gulping globs of Vaseline to this season, the most putrid of all, came from the unlikeliest of sources.
Phil Jackson.
Despite the epic reception that awaited him, despite the biblical narrative, despite all the cosmic destiny and combined karma of 13 rings and the cozy narrative of the native son returning home to fix the Knicks back to their halcyon years, 2014-15 has been their worst season ever. The 16-64 Knicks are tumbling to a most historic -- or prehistoric -- halt.
And the best part is Jackson is now being hailed as a genius for doing the opposite of what was expected. Jackson, himself, has said, verbatim, that the experiment, thus far, has "fallen flat on its face." But the Knicks fan is assuring us that the secret savant has taken the back door to prosperity.
No doubt it's been a scenic route to the plethora of ping pong balls. But these aren't the Tim Duncan days, when you could tank and take the best player. The Knicks could go from Jahlil Okafor to Frank Kaminsky with one bad bounce in the lottery.
Knicks fans are either too dumb, jaded, or naive to realize that the Jackson trial balloon burst and is gushing throughout he five boroughs and beyond. Everyone is high on the helium, not focused on the meat-hook realities that the Knicks have been cursed for some time now.
Every since Pat "The Rat" Riley took his tan, coif and Armani to Miami, the Knicks have been sinking in the far more frigid waters of the Atlantic. Indeed, the only thing the Knicks and Heat have shared since Riley is an ocean. And only the Knicks were inept enough to let him leave.
The Knicks are now nearly 200 games below .500 this century, kicking off the millennium with a lovely mark of 512-703. (I'm giving them a loss in Atlanta on Monday night, to the 60-20 Hawks.) The Knicks have a sweet shot at a sub-.200 winning percentage, which is a trap door to a new bottom for a team that dwells in the cellar.
And this historically abominable season alone did something all the other seasons couldn't. It pushed the franchise record well below the .500 watermark. The Knicks were just about a winning franchise entering 2014. But now their overall regular-season record has plunged to 2,668-2,723, and they've made just five playoff appearances over the last 15 years, in a league that hands out playoff passes like tax relief flyers in April.
But we can always be assured of one thing -- an April autopsy on the Knicks, a season ending in the same month, as sure as the Asters popping pink in Central Park.
April, spring, is a time of renewal and revival, of flora and fans and folks walking in the bright colors and clothes they've kept in storage for six months. The murmur of warm weather, walkers and bikers and joggers, couples nuzzling on park benches on cool April nights under a cold white moon. Love is in the air everywhere, but Madison Square Garden, where the World's Most Overrated Arena is yet again a fun house of basketball.
When the best news in New York City is Chris Mullin returning to perform CPR on St. John's, then you're not exactly awash in hardwood hardihood. Meanwhile, the only club that doesn't embarrass the NBA, the Brooklyn Nets, doesn't even exist to the populous, despite being better than the Knicks in every way imaginable.
When you go outside, inhale the fresh spring air, walk a block or two, and notice the smiling swaths of humanity strolling around our fair city. There is nothing like a walk in springtime in Gotham.
The Knicks are walkers all right. but not the kind you see in Central Park. But rather the kind you find in Georgia, on AMC, every Sunday night. The Knicks are the NBA Version of "The Walking Dead." Like Rick Grimes and his band of merry zombies, they are afflicted before their actual expiration, doomed to death.
There's irony. There's paradox. There's complexity to that show. There's nothing complicated about the Knicks, except your relationship with them.
Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel
