The most addictive drug in sports isn’t a prescription or a narcotic at all. It’s simpler than that. It’s optimism, cut with hope, laced with a few ounces of faith. Sports fans eat a lot of mud in their lives as sports fans, so this is perfectly understandable; you get a team that offers all three of those ingredients, it’s easy to forfeit your cynical proclivities.
The 2015 Mets were like that. They had an air of invincibility after tearing through the NL East in August and September, after winning a do-or-die game at Dodger Stadium, after ransacking the Cubs. It wasn’t a matter of when there would be a parade, it was how long and how raucous the parade would be. It turned out the Royals had other ideas.
The 2010 Jets were like that. They went on the road and beat Peyton Manning in Indianapolis. They went on the road and beat Tom Brady in New England. It felt like they were exorcising every ghost in their extensive dossier. Except Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers turned out to be flesh-and-blood party poopers on the road to the Canyon of Heroes.
So yes: As much as the Knicks may seem like destiny’s darlings, there are still plenty of impediments on the way toward authoring what would be one of the greatest basketball stories ever told. There’s the Heat, who have to believe that they are every bit the Knicks’ equal in terms of play and providence. After that there would be either the Celtics or the Sixers, the bulwarks of the East. So there’s no point even cracking open a scouting report on the Nuggets, the Suns or the Warriors just yet.
And with all of that said …
This really couldn’t have broken better for the Knicks, because if we are being honest, the road before them is paved with brick after brick of prospect and possibility. The Heat have already done much of the heavy lifting, extracting the top-seeded Bucks from the equation. The Knicks were 3-1 against the Heat this season. They were 3-1 against the Celtics. They were 2-2 against the 76ers.
They don’t only believe they can play with those teams, they know they can.
And there’s more. The Knicks are playing their best basketball right now, and it’s everyone. Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart, who learned so much about winning essential games at Villanova, have thus far seamlessly transferred that subtle gift to these playoffs. RJ Barrett just played three of the best games of his pro career.
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Mitch Robinson, who at 7-feet and 240 pounds sometimes is shockingly forgotten when people talk about the Knicks, utterly dominated the Cavaliers series, reducing the Cavs’ acclaimed duo of Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen to dust, doing just about anything he wanted on both ends of the floor. And even Randle in Game 5 showed the very best of his various contributions until he landed wrong on the ankle.
If Randle misses time in this coming series with Miami that could certainly adjust the prism of how we see the Knicks, but there is also this: The Knicks finished the Cavs off in Game 5 without him for a half, did the same when he was benched in the fourth quarter of Game 4 and ran them out of the building when he was ineffective in Game 3.
Knicks fans, with all their scar tissue, know better than to assume anything, know better than to get too confident or cocky, and do whatever acrobatics are necessary to avoid jinxing a good thing. But facts are facts: It’s a good time to root for the Knicks. It’s a good time to play for the Knicks. And besides: There is always the willingness of Tom Thibodeau to merrily pull a reverse-Temptations, singing about clouds on a sunny day.
“You’ve got to do it again,” Thibs chirped on Wednesday. “Every series is a new challenge and a new start. There’s no carry-over. You have to keep getting after it.”
It’s true, sure. And, yes: We can cite any number of times when we’ve put the parade before both the cart and the horse around here — or else have we forgotten all the discussions about how much this year’s Giants reminded so many of the teams that shocked the world in 2007 and 2011 (two examples of pixie dust actually cashing a winning ticket), a rose-colored glass chalice that was blown to bits when the Eagles broke out to something like a 63-0 lead in the first quarter of their playoff game in January.
So, no: Nothing is guaranteed.
But, damn: It sure does look like a few unexpected miles of inviting road just ahead for the Knicks. It sure does.
