From Willis Reed to Jalen Brunson: Back on the Knicks Bandwagon

There was a time when I thought being a sports fan was easy.

After all, in 1969, three of my four favorite teams won championships. The New York Mets shocked the world. The New York Jets pulled off one of the biggest upsets in sports history. And the New York Knicks were beginning a magical run that would soon culminate in a championship of their own.

I was nine years old and figured this whole “being a fan” thing was pretty simple.

Think again.

For those who only know me as the baseball guy, or the hockey guy, or the guy who still probably owns way too many old sports magazines and scorecards, there’s a little-known chapter of my sports life that deserves revisiting: before all the years of obsessing over the Mets, Rangers, Jets, baseball cards, and box scores… I absolutely loved the Knicks.

And unlike some modern bandwagon fan hopping aboard after a few playoff wins, I actually have the receipts, as the kids would say.

Somewhere tucked away in my treasured memorabilia is my 6th-grade autograph book, where I proudly listed Willis Reed's “A View From the Rim” as my favorite book. Yes, I spelled it “veiw” instead of “view.” Apparently spell check had not yet been invented in the early 1970s. Either that or my jump shot and spelling ability were on the same developmental curve.

Those Knicks teams were everything New York basketball should be. Willis Reed. Walt Frazier — and yes, of course I owned the blue Puma Clydes. Dave DeBusschere. Bill Bradley. Later came Earl Monroe, “The Pearl,” gliding around the court like basketball poetry in motion.

That team had style, toughness, teamwork, and coolness all wrapped into one. Even the Garden felt different back then. The Knicks weren’t just a basketball team; they were part of the heartbeat of New York.

But life — and sports fandom — evolves.

And honestly, by then I already knew my own basketball career arc had entered the “veteran hanging on too long” phase. When you’re a role bench player on the Wantagh Jewish Center U12 basketball team, it may be time to reevaluate your future in the sport. I wasn’t exactly fighting for minutes with Walt Frazier. I was basically the Jewish version of Hawthorne Wingo — if Hawthorne Wingo were a foot-and-a-half shorter, couldn’t rebound, had no vertical leap, and occasionally got winded tying his sneakers. Baseball became my main focus. Hockey and football took up more and more of my bandwidth too. Then came Julius Erving joining the New York Nets, and suddenly I was captivated all over again.

Dr. J was different.

To this day, I still say I had never seen an athlete quite like him. The grace, the creativity, the hang time — it was like somebody had turned basketball into art. Ironically, I used to give people endless grief for abandoning the Rangers once the New York Islanders arrived on the scene, yet there I was drifting toward the Nets. So yes, I fully acknowledge the hypocrisy. Sports fandom has a funny way of humbling all of us eventually.

Then there was the moment that really pushed me away.

In the first round of the 1989 playoffs, the Knicks matched up against a Philadelphia 76ers team led by Charles Barkley. New York took the first two games at Madison Square Garden, including a wild comeback in Game 2 where the Knicks erased a double-digit deficit in the closing minutes and won on a late Trent Tucker three-pointer. They finished the sweep in Philadelphia with an overtime victory at the Spectrum, advancing to the Eastern Conference semifinals.

What happened afterward stuck with me more than the games themselves. As the celebration started, several Knicks players — Charles Oakley, Mark Jackson, Sidney Green, Johnny Newman, and Eddie Lee Wilkins — grabbed mops and carried them onto the court to celebrate the sweep. Patrick Ewing joined the act for a moment too, turning it into a full-blown swagger parade.

And honestly? It rubbed me the wrong way.

This was a franchise that, since winning the title in 1973, had spent years bouncing between mediocrity and disappointment, winning only a three playoff series along the way. Yet here they were celebrating a first-round sweep like they had just wrapped up a dynasty run worthy of the Celtics or Lakers.

Maybe it was my old-school sports wiring. Maybe I preferred quiet confidence over theatrical chest-thumping. Or maybe I was just a cranky New Yorker who believed you shouldn’t break out the props until you’ve actually won something meaningful. Probably some combination of all three.

From that point on, there was always a little emotional distance between me and the Knicks. I still watched. I still cared. But it never felt the same as it had during the Clyde-and-Reed days or even the brief Dr. J-inspired fascination with the Nets. The connection just wasn’t fully there anymore.

So when the Knicks made their long-awaited run to the NBA Finals in 1994, my attention was being pulled somewhere else entirely. The Rangers were charging toward their first Stanley Cup in 54 years, and in New York that spring, hockey consumed me. Every Matteau goal, every Richter save, every Messier face-off, every nervous third-period lead felt life-or-death.

The Knicks’ run almost happened in the background for me, which probably sounds sacrilegious to diehard fans of that era. And honestly, I never completely connected with the Patrick Ewing teams the way many people did. That’s not to say I didn’t respect what Ewing brought — he was the franchise, the constant, the guy absorbing punishment in the paint year after year while the rest of the league took turns trying to move him off the block.

There were players I gravitated toward more naturally. Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason both tough, physical, no-frills guys who made every possession feel like it came with consequences. Oakley especially felt like the emotional center of that group, the kind of player you trusted to set a tone even if nothing else was going right.

Larry Johnson was another player I just never warmed up to and to this day I still jokingly refer to him as the Temu version of Antonio Cromartie based solely on the ever-expanding family tree.

Still, somewhere deep down, the Knicks never completely left me.

And then came Jalen Brunson.

Slowly but surely, I started watching again. One game became two. Two became checking scores on a more regular basis. Before I knew it, I was emotionally invested all over again.

This year’s playoff run has been pure joy.

The ball movement. The pace. The defense. The toughness. The chemistry. Eleven straight wins in route to the NBA Finals.

What has made this current Knicks team different is the personality of it all. Josh Hart playing like every loose ball is a personal insult. He lives up to the name too — Hart — like it’s not just a his name on the back of his jersey but a mandate.

Miles McBride bringing this nonstop, almost irritating level of energy that never seems to dip. Mitchell Robinson doing the dirty work underneath the rim like it’s a full-time profession with overtime pay. Mikal Bridges defending the perimeter like his life depended on it. Role players turning into folk heroes simply because they refuse to stop running. How can you not love a guy whose nickname is Jose "Grand Theft" Alvarado because of his ball stealing ability.

It feels like a team that has reconnected itself to the city in a way that’s less about branding and more about bruises.

I’ll be honest: I’m not exactly in love with how dominant the three-point game has become. And yet, how can you not appreciate that in the middle of this run, a guy like Landry Shamet has basically turned into Steph Curry, as if he were one of those kids in a 2000s Disney show who somehow ended up with Curry’s three-point shooting talent after slipping into a magical jersey.

OG Anunoby is another guy you have to love. A Knicks forward who’s a Mets fan — despite growing up in Missouri, going to college in Indiana, and starting his NBA career in Toronto, Somehow he grew up watching Carlos Delgado, and he’s mentioned Jose Reyes, Pedro Martínez, and those late-2000s Mets teams as part of his baseball DNA. He even says he watches baseball “all the time.” There’s something immediately likable about that — a guy who didn’t inherit the New York sports fandom but chose it anyway.

And then there is Jalen Brunson who might be the clearest example of how this current Knicks era has quietly rebuilt my connection to the team and maybe the most underrated superstar New York has ever fully embraced. That sounds crazy until you actually watch what he does night after night: no wasted motion, no excess, just control of the game in a way that feels almost old-school in its efficiency and modern in its execution.

What makes it even more interesting is the lineage. His father, Rick Brunson, actually played for the Knicks, which adds a little New York symmetry to the whole thing — like the franchise finally looped back on itself in a way that feels intentional, even if it wasn’t.

But what really separates Jalen is that he doesn’t feel like he’s riding momentum — he is the momentum. When possessions tighten and everything becomes heavy, he’s the one who seems to slow the entire game down to his tempo. In a city that has seen its share of stars who either couldn’t handle the pressure or couldn’t fully elevate under it, Brunson has done the opposite: he’s made it look organized.

And maybe that’s why he’s so easy to overlook nationally. He isn't flashy, he doesn’t play like a highlight reel waiting to happen. He plays like the answer to every problem on the floor. For New York, that’s not just valuable — it’s everything.

And maybe that’s the thread through all of this: a group that feels more like those old Knicks and Nets teams you’d see on grainy MSG footage — not built for branding, not chasing aesthetics, just effort, identity, and a stubborn refusal to care whether it fits neatly into how the modern NBA is supposed to look or what it’s supposed to be.

And maybe that’s what I missed most.

For the first time in decades, these Knicks feel… Knicks-like.

At a time when Mets wins are about as scarce as tankers getting through the Strait of Hormuz these days, and Chris Drury has managed to drain all of the joy out of following the Rangers, and with the Jets continue being, well… the Jets… this Knicks run arrived exactly when I needed it.

The championship drought, by the way, now stands at 53 years since the Knicks last won it all in 1973. Fifty-three years. That’s not a drought anymore; that’s basically basketball archaeology.

And yet here I am again.

Watching.

Yelling at the television.

Believing.

Remembering.

Maybe a little bandwagon-ish? Sure.

But sometimes the best thing about sports is rediscovering a piece of yourself you forgot was still there.