Knick Knacks.

In all my long years in New York, I've never seen the City like this before. 

I am writing this eight-and-a-half hours before the tip-off of game two of the NBA Finals. That matchup pits the oft-champion and heavily-favored Spurs of San Antonio, against the woe-ful for half-a-century New York Knicks.

The Knicks somehow won game one--going away--in San Antonio. Their crushing defense brought the man they call the "Alien," Victor Wembanyama down to earth. "Wemby" was 6 for 21 for the night and at moments his otherworldly talents looked downright terrestrial.

I've had a theory about sports, having followed them with some acuity for much of my 68 jump balls with the sun. Champions need a superstar on his game, and a few good players having career years. That is, they're performing better than they ever have. 

That amalgam will usually beat a more talented squad because their desire--and their innate sense that this might be their sole chance for gold--outweighs the superior skills of their opponents. Of course, that could be wish fulfillment on my part. As the Knicks, on paper, seem to have little chance of prevailing over the Spurs.

The Knicks haven't won a champeenship (the New York pronunciation) in 53 years--Richard Nixon was amerikkka's disgraced president the last time they won--and for much of those years were woeful, disappointing and enervating, too. Even when they were good--they found a way to lose. Usually disastrously as if they were in the pocket of a latter-day Arnold Rothstein, of Black Sox scandal infamy.

Mr. Rothstein fixed the 1919 World Series and got off Scot-free but not
F. Scott-free. Fitzgerald depicted him in "The Great Gatsby" as "Meyer Wolfsheim."

When the Mets won in 1969, it was even more surprising than the Knicks ascendance this season. But back then (I was just 11--I watched game one of the world series at Scotty Fenton's house. His parents had a black and white set, because his father said, 'the world is in color,' and games were played when baseball should be played--under the sun) back then, merchandising hadn't taken over the world.

If you wanted a "Tom Seaver" t-shirt with the number 41 on its back, you had to make it yourself with a magic marker and the permission of your mother. Today everything and its pupik has an Emirates logo on it. Including, and I find this modern-repellent, the uniforms of the referees. BTW, the United Arab Emirates was a independent country for just one year the last time the Knicks won. Though a country with a short-history they have a long-history of Jewish hate. In 1999, a university banned books by Jews including books that mentioned Jews in their bibliographies. And in 2000, the local Zayed Center published a report that said "Zionists, not Nazis were the people who killed the Jews of Europe."

Of course strides have been made in recent decades. But as has been so often noted, anti-semitism is a light sleeper and in much of the world, it doesn't even nap.

All that having been said, back to New York on the day of the night of game 2.

There's hardly a person--from swaddled babies to swaddled alte-kockers who isn't swaddled in the New York-dissonant orange-and-blue. 

In fact, I don't think I've ever seen the city, in my entire life, so united as it is right now regarding the Knicks. Yankee championships don't count--because the Yankees don't win championships. To New Yorkers they're the Yankee's god-given destiny. And the Mets win as often as a group of fat guys in a competitive bowling league--and they look less good doing it.

Yesterday at lunch, basking in the smiles of New York's improbable game one triumph, I met my good friend Debra for lunch at what the New York Times rated New York's 92nd best restaurant, Barney Greengrass, "the Sturgeon King."

Even I fell into the Knicks frenzy.

It's been hard not to.

Yesterday at Barney Greengrass, I bought three of the sold-out t-shirts, one for my wife, L, one for friend Debra and one for me. This article in The Wall Street Journal got my usually non-acquisitive gears turning.

My wife and Debra are mediums and Barney Greengrass's son, Moe, mentioned above had mediums in stock. However, I needed a large. They had none left, except the one shown here, hanging on display.

However, by the time I got it (the last one) it had a hole in it. Assured that it's extra valuable and I can sell it on eBay as a "one of a kind," I bought it--as they say in the rag trade, "as is."

I'm leaving the tape with the word "Hole" on it on the shirt. There can be no more apt metaphor for New York, the Knicks and our resilience.

Additional shots of the Greengrass Two Kings shirt and other Knicks' mania apparel below.

PS. Game two, Friday night, was a thriller. The Knicks won the contest by a single point, 105-104, after Wemby missed a last second shot. Game three is tonight in the raucous, friendly and intimidating confines of Madison Square Garden. I am back in Connecticut now and so I am missing the crackling energy of the city preparatory to the game. Should the Knicks take the game and then the series, the city will rock to shake tump's cranial merkin off.