For the First Time in a Long Time, Knicks Have Given Their Fans Reason to Hope
NEW YORK — Early last Saturday night during a preseason matchup against the Brooklyn Nets at Madison Square Garden, the New York Knicks rolled an in-house production video on the arena monitor. It was one of those artistic montages meant to capture the team's training-camp work to date and inspire the crowd. The video builds momentum toward the moment Derrick Rose appears shirtless, coated only in sweat and determination, lifting weights in slow motion and max effort.
In a different market, you can be sure the hometown fans would've filled the arena with roaring support and pure throaty hope that a former NBA MVP will renew his magic for their team.
Knicks fans did not opt for that hope.
Maybe it was because Rose wasn't there. Maybe it was because why he wasn't there—tending to a sexual assault accusation in civil court across the country in Los Angeles instead of keeping his first date with Knicks fans in the preseason home opener.
However you want to look at it, Knicks fans were restrained in their initial embrace of this new-look team. For a night, they were willing to wait. But they'll want a little more this Saturday night against the Boston Celtics. And they're going to want a lot more once the regular season begins Oct. 25 in Cleveland.
It's quite possible they'll get it.
There are objective reasons to believe the Knicks will be good this season.
The mere fact that we can throw out the possibility—and not get laughed out of the league—that the Knicks could be in the Eastern Conference Finals is a testament to Knicks president Phil Jackson's oft-awkward two years of retooling around Carmelo Anthony.
After he was a leader in USA Basketball's gold-medal run, Anthony has shifted his personal paradigm away from the utter and obvious determination to be the biggest star he can toward a commitment to doing whatever works and wins for the Knicks.
Kristaps Porzingis provided the city a much-needed infusion of basketball optimism with his youth, exuberance and skill—he made New York magazine's "Reasons to Love New York" list after mere months in the city—last season. This year easily could bring the leaps in production and efficiency often seen from European big men in their second NBA seasons.
New head coach Jeff Hornacek's shallow voice with minimal inflection fails to offer Big Apple bombast, but it's more dependable and relatable than that of his predecessor, Derek Fisher. Hornacek's commitment to old-school Jerry Sloan-style defensive pride (with unwavering weak-side help) and new-school offensive pace (with Jackson's triangle as the fallback structure) brings a refreshing stability. Fisher was a novice coach; Hornacek is the son of one.
And however the failure of last season felt for New Yorkers, the record shows the team experienced a 15-game improvement from the prior season to gain 32 victories. That tied the Charlotte Hornets for the biggest year-to-year jump in the NBA…and it quietly was the biggest such turnaround in Knicks history.
But this coming 70th season in Knicks history—see the prideful "70" logo on the chest of the jerseys—is positioned to be one that inspires far more than recent times.
And that, even more than the dream of an NBA championship, is what Jackson sought in returning to the franchise.
Few realize that Jackson is among the top five of all-time games played for the Knicks (and just 27 games behind No. 2 Walt Frazier). Jackson wanted to build a team that reconnected with the city's natural sophistication, energy and community that he long experienced.
The fanbase, however, has remained skeptical—understandably so, with no title for 43 years now, plus 12 losing seasons out of the past 15—and that's part of the reason Rose's image on the video board Saturday night was greeted with a quiet comparable to what you hear outside the Knicks' secluded training facility up in Greenburgh, N.Y.
There, 45 minutes away from the big-city buzz via the Henry Hudson Parkway and adjacent to the city of Sleepy Hollow, you can actually hear the sparrows chirping and see them flitting between the Knicks' unmarked building and the giant biopharmaceuticals corporate campus next door.
That calm was pierced by Joakim Noah's pleas the morning of that first home exhibition game Saturday, according to Hornacek: "I want to play! I want to play!" said Noah, who has been sidelined by a sore hamstring.
If you're going to pick one key to everything coming together for the Knicks this season, Noah's unique passion for both the game and the team is the runaway choice.
While Rose was away from the team to deal with unseemly tales of his sex life, Noah joined his teammates Saturday evening to take warm-up shots at halftime despite his injury, and he then stood there with a ball in hand as he high-fived every teammate in the layup line like the team mascot.
And this came after Noah had signed autographs for all those kids in Porzingis jerseys before the game and then sought out a bespectacled boy in a blue Knicks shirt to feed him an entry pass for one of Noah's halftime jumpers.
Noah, 31, is the native son who was in the Garden stands yelling for the Knicks after Larry Johnson's four-point play and during Michael Jordan's 55-point game. More important to this Knicks team, Noah is the kindred spirit of Jackson, who was a glue guy as a player and prioritized Noah's defensive leadership and team consciousness in free agency even though he has been injury-prone and merely a career single-single guy (9.3 points, 9.4 rebounds). Upon signing in July, Noah declared, "I'm ready to be an animal for this city."
But he hasn't had the chance yet. And with the slow starts to the New York careers for Noah and Rose, the New York media is already going negative. It's too bad—and a premature reflexive reaction, especially considering Brandon Jennings and his streetball swagger dominated the first practice Rose missed and then energized the team in both games Rose missed.
For his part, Anthony is sold. He long has been searching for easier offense—the Knicks were last with 8.4 fast-break points per game last season, according to TeamRankings—and he may have an avenue toward that with Rose or Jennings running downhill early in the shot clock.
"It's a big difference," Anthony said. "The pace that we play at is extremely faster."
That, too, will help these Knicks in the mission to match New York's energy.
It has just been so long since this team and this town really danced together that it's hard even to envision just how rhythmic it would be.
Kevin Ding is an NBA senior writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @KevinDing.
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