Hmm! Let’s See How Many Ways Knicks Fans Can Compare Wednesday Night’s Game to 9/11
The first game of the Eastern Conference Finals felt a little too familiar for Knicks fans, who are no strangers to human tragedy and unforeseen explosions...
Photo: Getty Images Latest
After the second round of this year’s NBA playoffs, I made a solemn vow to stop trying to predict what would happen for the rest of the playoffs… and possibly, stop trying to predict anything ever again. I watched Luka Doncic of the Los Angeles Lakers (still feels very weird to say that!!!!) get gentleman swept (that is, losing a series in five games) to the lower-seeded Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round—when I, for whatever reason, predicted the Lakers would go to the NBA Finals. I then watched the reigning champion Boston Celtics blow 20-point leads not once but twice on home court, to be handily defeated in six games by the New York Knicks (who I maintain are not Very Good). Watching those series in succession of each other really prompts one to reckon with the fundamental unknowability of the universe.
And the first game of the Eastern Conference Finals between the Knicks and Indiana Pacers on Wednesday has only made my vow to stop making predictions seem even wiser in the light of day.
I knew this would be a wild series: The Pacers defeated the top-seed, 64-win Cleveland Cavaliers in a brisk five games to advance to the ECF, and the Knicks defeated the reigning champions. Any reasonable person would have predicted the ECF would be between the Celtics and the Cavs, which is precisely why I’ve given up trying to predict anything—I’m tired of looking stupid!!!!
Speaking of looking stupid, at least I didn’t blow a nine-point lead in 50 seconds last night—which brings me back to the Pacers-Knicks opening game at Madison Square Garden, a brisk four-ish miles from the 9/11 Memorial and fallen Twin Towers. Most of the game was fairly close… until, midway through the fourth quarter, the Knicks went on a run and took a 17-point lead. The Pacers closed that gap down to nine points in the final 52 seconds of the fourth quarter thanks to the heroics of Aaron Nesmith, rumored to have invented the game of basketball, but still… down nine points with less than a minute on the clock, things obviously weren’t looking great for the Pacers. And yet, if you’ve watched quite literally any of their other games in the last couple weeks, you’d know that as the Basketball Gods’ favorite team, the Pacers somehow still had a chance. This play-off run alone, they’ve overcome 20-point deficits on numerous occasions and managed to win several games after trailing with just seconds left on the clock.
The only way to make sense of those final 52 seconds, followed by a five-minute overtime period thanks to Tyrese Haliburton, who hit perhaps the most jaw-dropping game-tying shot I’ve seen in my storied career as a lifetime NBA-watcher, is to recall the Vladimir Lenin quote: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” In basketball, at least, there are 52 seconds where nothing happens—and then there are 52 seconds when Tyrese Haliburton hits a far-away two-point shot that first bounces three feet in the air off the rim, then still somehow goes in, and triggers an additional five minutes of basketball.
Knicks fans are… not taking things very well. It doesn’t help that, for a moment there, it looked like Haliburton’s shot didn’t go in, leading some fans to prematurely celebrate. To then lose in overtime after being up 17 points, is a fate I would not wish on my worst enemies—who actually happen to be Knicks fans. My sincere condolences, you guys.
In any case, because—as I’ve previously documented here—NBA Twitter is the most psychotic corner of the internet, in no small part because of the, err, passion of Knicks fans, the fun was only getting started after that cinematic masterpiece of a game. I’ve followed the eccentricities and unhinged enthusiasm of online NBA fandom for a very, very long time, and I have to say, Wednesday night produced some of the most creative comparisons and references to 9/11 I’ve ever seen.
The game was, as one user put it, “like 9/11 for New Yorkers”—something that previously hadn’t happened in our city:
This is like 9/11 for New Yorkers