The Knicks won their first playoff series in what felt like forever.
They had a star in his prime, a player who bucked recent history by choosing New York and immediately lifted the team’s ceiling.
They had a strong supporting cast, featuring size, strength, athleticism and shooting. They had countless reasons to believe the first breakthrough was just the beginning.
Sound familiar?
In many ways, the current Knicks mirror the 2012-13 team, responsible for the franchise’s lone playoff series win of the past decade before this season’s first-round win over Cleveland.
Carmelo Anthony, then 28, led the league in scoring and finished third in the MVP voting. J.R. Smith was named Sixth Man of the Year. Mike Woodson was third in Coach of the Year voting. The team — also featuring Amar’e Stoudemire, Tyson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Iman Shumpert and Jason Kidd — went 54-28, won the franchise’s only division title since 1994 and seized the No. 2 seed.
After beating the Celtics for their first playoff series win in 13 years, the Knicks entered the second round as a favorite with home-court advantage — sound familiar? — expecting a battle with LeBron James’ Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals.
But a season filled with so many exciting nights and remarkable performances was reduced to a Roy Hibbert block on Anthony’s dunk attempt late in Game 6, swinging momentum to the Pacers, who soon closed out the series at home.
“To get to this point right now where we had a chance to get to the conference finals, we’ll take that,” Anthony said. “It’s a learning curve for us, and we’ll be back better and stronger next year for sure.”
They eventually learned they blew their best opportunity. The future was littered with debris.
Hopes were high the next season. The Knicks even dared to talk title. Instead, they went 37-45, resulting in Anthony’s first missed playoff appearance in 11 years and the first of seven straight years of the Knicks falling short of the postseason.
Now the Knicks are back in the playoffs for the second time in three years, thus far making up for the 2021 first-round flameout against the Hawks. Now they have their greatest opportunity since squaring up with Indiana 10 years ago.
That second-round series opened with the visiting Pacers stealing a game at the Garden. The Knicks responded with a win, before heading out of town for a pivotal Game 3. The Knicks lost back-to-back games in Indiana by double-digits.
On Saturday, the Knicks will attempt to take control of their tied series with the Heat in Game 3 in Miami. It could be years — perhaps, decades — before the Knicks have a better path to the Eastern Conference Finals, which they last reached in 2000 (the third-longest conference finals drought in the NBA).
Instead of facing the top-seeded Bucks and Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Knicks have unexpectedly been matched up with an 8-seed that had the 25th-ranked offense in the NBA, which lost its best shooter (Tyler Herro) to a broken hand in Round 1 and saw its best player (Jimmy Butler) suffer an ankle injury in Round 2, sidelining him for Game 2 in New York.
On the other side of the East bracket, 76ers star Joel Embiid is hobbled and the Celtics — who lost three of four games to the Knicks during the regular season — have been underwhelming.
Anything is possible. It still should feel that way. It still should feel electric, like the first six months of this unexpected ride, featuring the steady brilliance of Jalen Brunson, Julius Randle’s monster nights, Immanuel Quickley’s scoring surges, Josh Hart’s arrival, Mitchell Robinson’s blocks and so much more.
But how this season ends will determine how much of the joy is sapped from these memories. For most of the past two decades, you would’ve signed up for the second round of the playoffs. But the circumstances have changed. Good is no longer good enough. Not with this rare opportunity.
Take advantage and forever win the heart of the best basketball city in the world. Fail to advance out of the second round and risk being remembered for one failed play.
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By the time Justin Verlander’s first start with the Mets was done, he understood what most of the previous nine years were like for Jacob deGrom.
Five weeks behind schedule, the Mets’ replacement ace returned from the injured list and made his long-awaited debut, picking up the loss Thursday after allowing both runs in a 2-0 defeat to the Tigers, who completed an embarrassing three-game sweep. The Mets have now lost nine of their past 11 games and have been shut out six times this season.
After co-ace Max Scherzer was shelled for six runs in less than four innings on Wednesday, Verlander, 40, couldn’t get through the first inning of his two-year, $86.67 million contract — coming off his third Cy Young Award and second World Series ring — without similar damage. Following a leadoff fly out, Riley Greene and Javier Baez took the right-hander deep for back-to-back home runs.
Verlander soon settled down, allowing five hits and one walk while striking out five (79 pitches). The Mets offense wouldn’t bounce back, though, offering the deGrom treatment by recording a total of three hits.
Detroit’s Eduardo Rodriguez threw eight scoreless innings. In case Steve Cohen was wondering, Rodgriguez has a player opt-out in his contract after this season.
Less than two weeks after five NFL players were suspended for violating the league’s gambling policy — the league said that there was “no evidence indicating any inside information was used or that any game was compromised in any way” — Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannon was fired Thursday, following bets on the Crimson Tide that raised red flags and prompted three states (Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania) to halt all betting on the team’s games.
According to ESPN, sportsbook surveillance video showed the person who placed the bets was communicating with Bohannon at the time. Alabama said Bohannon was terminated for “violating the standards, duties and responsibilities expected of University employees,”
Bohannon, 47, who was hired by Alabama in 2017, also was accused by a former player of mistreatment in a lawsuit filed earlier this season for “refusing medical care to a severely injured player.”
The suspicious betting activity reportedly took place last Friday at the BetMGM sports book at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati. Given how little betting action college baseball attracts — especially in late April — authorities were alerted to a large moneyline bet on LSU and another significant bet — featuring the Tigers in a parlay — before it beat Alabama, 8-6. Roughly an hour before the game, Alabama’s starting pitcher Luke Holman was benched in favor of reliever Hagan Banks.
The freezing of all betting on Alabama baseball by three states marked the first time that a specific team had been subject to such action by sportsbooks since the May 2018 Supreme Court ruling, which effectively legalized sports betting, and has led to nearly three dozen states allowing it.
“As many states have acted to legalize sports gambling, we are reminded of the threats gambling may pose on competitive integrity,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said in a statement.
Some of you may never feel comfortable with the marriage between sports leagues and sportsbooks, annoyed or disgusted or uneasy with the gambling advertisements and sponsorships that have become fixtures in every game.
But issues regarding “competitive integrity” remain outliers. And the proliferation of sports gambling didn’t create the fears of games being fixed. They were founded by scandals that happened long ago. The Black Sox. Pete Rose. CCNY. Boston College. Tim Donaghy.
Sports gambling has thrived in Europe for decades without devastating effects to the core product. Professionals remain largely immune from short-sighted cash grabs, making too much money to risk their careers and reputations.
College athletes in high-profile sports are less vulnerable than ever, given their ability to make money off NIL in school. In lower-revenue college sports — i.e., not football or basketball — unprecedented oversight and digital footprints make it easier to spot suspicious activity.
Incidents, such as this one at Alabama, are inevitable. They existed when bookmakers were confined to Las Vegas, offshore and underground.
Alcohol isn’t prohibited — thanks, 21st Amendment — even though an average of one American dies every 45 minutes in a drunk-driving accident. Guns aren’t banned even though the United States is the only nation on Earth with more guns than citizens and a record 48,830 Americans were killed by guns in 2021.
Gambling will create the occasional headache, but the infrastructure of sports — and of athletes and competitors — is too strong to be disrupted. Sports has survived far bigger scandals. Have no fear.