ARE THE KNICKS BECOMING CORNY?

Knicks fandom used to be a relatively punk rock and chaotic endeavor. Now, they've become the establishment. Does this matter?

On the day that Jalen Brunson signed his extension with the New York Knicks, interrupting the bliss that all fans possessed was Mayor Eric Adams with a simple tweet: Tonight, by all accounts, @JalenBrunson not only solidified his legacy with the @nyknicks but in New York City as a whole. But all the legends of the past know legacies aren’t built in contracts and payouts — they’re built with blood, sweat, and your brothers on the court. Now let’s get that title! #NewYorkForever

A man with a notable consideration for himself, with a NBA pedigree to match, Jalen Brunson’s hometown discount is definitely the kind of move that would get recognition from one of the nation’s most moderate politicians. (One could imagine a commercial paid by the Adams administration that has Brunson in it). Player empowerment — the idea that there is a class battle in the NBA and the players are what make this league go, thus should be treated powerfully by the owners — has become the normal labor position in the league now. Hoopers are not simply just employees now; they are men who can control where they want to play with short contracts, trade demands, and backdoor deals for their family or friends to be employed with them. This has mostly, as I wrote when LeBron organized a deal for the Lakers to draft his son in the second round, been fruitful for the players. Despite how annoying it can be when James Harden demands a trade the moment vibes start to trend downward, the players have a right to do that, to hold the owners accountable for their inability to provide them with the team they want to play for. To deny the players of their rights to do that is to be a class traitor. 

Is Jalen Brunson going against player empowerment? The answer is a little more complicated than any of the marxist youth on Twitter is making it out to be. The payday is definitely significant, at 156.5 million, it is more than the original 110 million he signed for. Still, per CBS Sports, he is sacrificing about 37 million over three years compared to what he would have if he had waited until his previous contract was up. He’s definitely doing the Knicks a favor. Leon Rose, the President of the New York Knicks, is considered to be his Godfather. (Rose, a former agent, represented The Knicks’s assistant coach and Jalen’s father, Rick Brunson, when Rick was in the NBA). While Brunson is getting paid handsomely, he’s made this process as quick and drama-free as possible. Contract talks can be contentious. The team’s job is to do everything possible to pay you less than you are usually worth. The player's job is to get the most out of worth. Lines get crossed; statistics and accomplishments get devalued. Despite the familial ties he has to the Knicks (he’s also known Tom Thibodeau since he was a kid), Brunson’s relative lack of need for attention is a welcome surprise to people who have fulminated against the “greed” of athletes. 

The Knicks have changed quite a bit in the past couple of years. Compared to when this decade started, when fans were wearing paper bags over their heads, the New York Knicks are a well-run machine with a passionate and crazed fan base that you see on YouTube. That’s been the double edged sword on this Knicks run: Knicks fandom was once special precisely because of how chaotic the team was. We were cheering on the misfits, in a city that always functions better when the working class is involved in the customs of the city. The Knicks have always been number one in New York, but especially for the working stiff. It’s not like cheering for a machine. Our franchise was breathtakingly vexing, and a team that constantly seemed to be sputtering for no reason other than that there seemed to be no adults in any rooms at MSG. Nobody on the planet, myself included, was content with this — anyone who doesn’t want the Knicks to be good is not a real fan — but we relished the fact that we were rooting for a team that felt like ours, and functioned like we did. This new team is a team that slightly feels like it is for the people who populate neighborhoods with pickleball games than it is for long life fans. It’s a different kind of Knicks team, one that has put their stamp on the league by drafting well, and valuing teamwork. This is no sweat on my back: every team has to get good at some point, and doing what the Knicks have done, is how you achieve greatness. Still, Knicks fandom is fashionable now, something that felt impossible at the start of the decade; I remember when I would get made fun of at school for being unwavering in my support.

Brunson is one of the reasons for the upkick in vibes for the Knicks and their faithful, especially the ones that live in Murray Hill. He has seemed to be made, by his father, by Leon Rose, by Jay Wright, by Tom Thibodeau, for the image of Knicks fans. And, what image it is: Brunson’s an excellent player. A brute with his yoyo-like handle and a dead-eye jumper, Brunson raised his game to an unconscionable level in the regular season last year. Whenever teammates were hurt, he seemed to get better, despite being given increasingly more minutes from Tom Thibodeau. Even after the injury to Julius Randle, his chemistry with Josh Hart, Donte DiVincenzo, and OG Anunoby kept picking up more steam. He picks up on the things that fans love, too: the dedication to play through injuries and not make excuses for it, the love — albeit performative — of New York, and the embracing of former Knicks stars. He seems to make plays that are not built for a six foot one person to make; in spaces that guards should not occupy; he makes shots that would be considered bad ones if taken by other players. Still, there is something sadly normal about his superstardom. If the loss of local youth programs in major cities has rendered the NBA a place for rich biracial kids and nepotism babies, then Brunson, somewhat, is an extension of that. Rick Brunson wasn’t a superstar — most people would not know who he was if he walked down the street — and Jalen was picked in the second round of the draft, but he still had access to all the best scouts, to Leon Rose, and to a NBA background. Brunson’s no Bronny James, he still had to develop his game for three years at Villanova and of course, he did that, but he is not Allen Iverson either. Speculating on someone’s economic freedom is complicated — Black families rise and fall in class level — but perhaps Brunson doesn’t re-sign the contract for less money if he comes from the gutter. A fan — one that isn’t a writer — would say “who truly cares?” And, he or she, wouldn’t be wrong. We cheer these guys on, we don’t know. Yet, to me, sports isn’t just about cheering for the clothes. It’s finding a glimpse into the athlete and how they relate to American culture at that exact moment. It should be noted that not many people are willing to take the responsibility of being a New York athlete — to play in a city that moves magically when you win, and then will reverberate with disappointment when you lose. Brunson’s been more than willing; to love Brunson is to understand that there are players before him who didn’t want this, but yet, he has taken this fanbase onto a ride that they haven’t seen since the 1990’s.

A few weeks before Brunson re-signed with the Knicks, they executed another trade that was widely celebrated. Mikal Bridges, the last of the Villanova four (the others: Brunson, Hart, and DiVincenzo) that wasn’t on the Knicks, was traded to the Knicks in a surprising and wild trade that had the Knicks send five future first round picks for Brooklyn. Even the biggest boosters of the idea of the Nova Knicks could not have envisioned Bridges being a part of it. The Nets making a trade with a rival like the Knicks feels like something that only happens in NBA2K. This is somewhat unprecedented; think about how the Mets and the Yankees never make deals with one another. As soon as the deal was announced, all of the Villanova players seemed ridiculously excited, to the point of parody. Josh Hart tweeted “YO ITS FUCKIN LIT.” Brunson tweeted a picture of a group FaceTime with himself, DiVincenzo, Bridges, and Hart. For any fan that wanted them to complete the move, they haven’t stopped smiling since. For the non-Knicks fans who were annoyed by the “Nova Knicks” and its chintz, they are still audibly groaning.

It’s underrated how much sense this makes for the Knicks. Bridges is now arguably their fourth option on offense — or, third, depending on how you feel about OG Anunoby. Not too bad for a guy who can go get you 23 points a night if you need him to. Bridges is a hell of a player, in the sweetspot between very good and consistent All-Star. He’s a more dynamic offensive player than the outrageously selfless Anunoby, and he’s excellent on defense as well, finishing second in Defensive Player of the Year voting in the 2021-2022 season. Bridges can slash, hit a pull up with ease, and can score in transition well. Like Anunoby, his bag isn’t deep, but he can attack a mismatch better than Anunoby will. There's a reason to be excited. The Knicks now have four legit offensive options in Brunson, Randle, Anunoby, and Bridges. And, you can even tinker with the lineups: the starting five to end a game can be a death lineup of Brunson-Bridges-DDV-Anunoby-Randle. (Thibodeau will never do this; but it is wishful thinking). While I’m not completely sold on Donté as a bench player —  he benefitted from more minutes when the injuries piled up because he was allowed to hoist threes and run around and create havoc — this also means that we are less reliant on Hart and DDV, two awesome players who are not starters on an elite team. (Awesome, nevertheless).

This is to say that it is not like the Knicks made that move for social media. They made it because these dudes are good at basketball — and yes, they have chemistry. Villanova, these guys all went there in case you didn't know, is quite a college basketball program, and Jay Wright was an excellent coach. The Wildcats have almost always been based on excellent guard play, and players who have played together for a while. Hart was a junior when they won their first national title, Bridges, DiVincenzo, and Brunson were juniors when they won the second national title. They’ve played together — in the biggest games imaginable — and get along with one another. Despite the fact that they’re a fraternity that is seconds away from being sponsored by Barstool, this move for Bridges is a natural fit that will be fruitful. This was an obviously good move. 

One will often hear that the NBA has a “cool problem” — that the league became unabashedly corporate and that their embrace of hip-hop and fashion in that corporate structure has rendered the league as a brand, as opposed to what it used to be: a league full of the best and most “polarizing” athletes of the world. This is quite true: it’s painful to see the NBA try to be cool when it isn’t. It was better when David Stern was trying to prevent these guys from being rappers, thus allowing Iverson, Latrell Sprewell, et cetera to become anti-establishment rockstars. Now, the establishment has embraced culture, and now the players feel like robots designed to sell you merch. LeBron raps to bad hip-hop on Instagram; Jayson Tatum doesn’t know how to be himself, so much so that when the Celtics won the NBA, he imitated Kevin Garnett’s famous euphoria. It was a show of bluster in a moment made for sincerity and candor. 

This problem extends to the Knicks. Maybe it is because I didn’t really have the quintessential college experience — I am a dropout; a self-made man who became a professional cultural critic/journalist while blogging for Passion of the Weiss and working at Trader Joe’s —  but I don’t exactly find these guys playing together to be that exciting. It’s a cute story, obviously, but I find their individual talents — the way that Hart doesn’t need the ball to be the biggest x-factor on the court, the way Donté can turn a game into bedlam by making a barrage of threes, the way Brunson can stop on the dime - to be more exciting. It’s calculated, smart, and will be fun to watch on the floor as long as Thibodeau allows himself to be dynamic in his philosophies. Those who are expecting the Knicks to become as fiery and rebellious as the 1990’s teams were will probably be mistaken. They are now in their corporate era; their liberal era; their identity politics era. Normalcy comes for everyone. Maybe it’ll even come for me someday. Still, if they aren’t going to be cutting edge, then I’d like it if they actually won a championship.