New York Knicks: Testing The Depths Of Mediocrity
By Owen Sanborn
It’s easy to make fun of the New York Knicks.
New York is known as “the mecca” of basketball despite its basketball team not winning a championship since 1973.
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Their star player, Carmelo Anthony, demanded a trade to the Big Apple, forcing the team to give up all of their assets when they would have been able to sign him outright during the summer.
Their president, Phil Jackson, spends most of his time on the opposite coast of which his team plays and gets into Twitter battles with former NBA legends turned TV personalities.
Their first year coach, Derek Fisher, often stands emotionless on the sidelines as if he cannot fathom what is unfolding in front of his very eyes. To further enhance the mockery — the guy that was supposed to get the job, Steve Kerr, is coaching a juggernaut out in Golden State.
To tie things all together, their owner is regarded as one of the worst in professional sports, right up there with Daniel Snyder and Donald Sterling (minus the racism). At least he can hang his head high each morning knowing that he was responsible for breaking the record for most kazoos played simultaneously.
Ladies and gentlemen: Mr. James Dolan!
Classic, classic Knicks.
Everybody knew that New York was going to lose on Christmas Day, yet people tuned in to watch exactly how they were going to lose. There was a reason why Jon Barry was the announcer chosen for this game; ESPN probably wasn’t expecting a nail biter.
Witnessing John Wall put the Knicks’ guards on skates and do pirouettes in mid-air was just an added bonus for fans that love to mock New York sports and the Knicks.
Friday night I was on one of my patented scouring the Internet binge sessions and stumbled upon an interesting little nugget of information. It has come to my attention that on the popular coupon service known Groupon, there are now New York Knicks tickets for sale at discount prices.
That’s right, things have gotten so putrid for the franchise that they must resort to a coupon service to find takers for their tickets. To put things into perspective, the only other franchise that I have seen on Groupon is the Miami Marlins and that was two years ago when their owner had a complete fire sale of the team.
Did the Christmas Day drubbing force Dolan to resort to this kind of exposure?
I am not going to call myself a Groupon connoisseur or anything, so there definitely could be other instances when sports teams turn to their service for prospective buyers. It may even be a common thing to do nowadays.
I just found the whole idea of city that is THE MECCA of basketball’s tickets being sold for nearly half price off on a coupon service. I mean, you play in Madison Square Garden, for God’s sake.
So, how do the Knicks go on from here? The short answer is … I couldn’t really tell you. It appears that they have officially hit rock bottom. Carmelo Anthony issued a soliloquy post game on Thursday afternoon that sounded downright dejected:
"“I feel what the fans are feeling. The fans are dying, we’re dying. We’re out there, we’re not producing. We didn’t expect, I didn’t expect to be sitting at 5-26. So as much as I feel for the fans, I feel for us going through it, too. I don’t expect nobody to feel sorry for us, I don’t expect nobody to feel sorry for me.”"
Don’t worry Melo, the fans won’t be down for long. They can come watch you guys play for nearly half price now.
Take it away James! You funky soul you!