Fans of NY presents: Danny Ourian’s Knicks Fandom
My first memory was watching Patrick Ewing sweat buckets while on the free throw line during a 1989-1990 game against the Detroit Pistons. I had never seen another human sweat that much! I was definitely inspired by Pat as well as the heart of John Starks as well as coach Jeff Van Gundy. I came up in the "glory years" of 1990's Knicks smash mouth basketball. Got to the top of the mountain but couldn't get over the hump!
My best friend growing up had season tickets for four, up in the nose bleeds: him, his mother and father, and a rotation from our friend group would get to join whenever they went. Man, we were lucky! These seats were all the way up but center court, giving you that bird's eye view where you might need binoculars to see the front row but you could see the players moving like chess pieces on the board. A future coach, Knicks fanatic and a hoop lifer (me) was in heaven whenever we went. So here we were, it's mid-June, the Knicks are in the 1994 Finals for the first time in forever, and we are knotted up at two games apiece with Hakeem Olajuwon’s Houston Rockets. You might call this a big moment in Knick fandom history.
So things are nip and tuck, back and forth, one of those games where one of the teams has that 5-8 point cushion most of the game. That team happened to be ours this time. So we're up, things are looking good, and then I look over at one of the TV sets in the Skybox that was adjacent to our section. Back then, the corporate suites were all up top and they had TV sets showing the telecast of the game hanging in those Skyboxes as well. I look over and instead of showing the telecast, there is a white Bronco being chased on a highway. Now, this was pre-internet (for the most part). Definitely pre-smart phones and the instantaneous spread of information we're in now. So we have no idea what in the world is going on there on that TV and how it could supersede what was happening here in the Garden. I just thanked my lucky stars that I was physically at this game and not at home, unable to watch because of some car chase. How is that more important?!?
No matter. I was in the Garden and our ‘Bockers were winning. We do so, going up 3-2 in the series, heading to Houston for two chances to get one win and bring a title back to NYC, the first in 21 years! This was certainly the last game that season at MSG, and ending it on a win going up 3-2 was as good a way to end the season as we could have mustered. Now if only Hakeem's fingers weren't so long....
I was also in attendance for Larry Johnson's 4 point play — it was a thing of beauty. Imagine an arena with 19,763 fans in it in complete silence while a ball is in flight for what seemed like an eternity; you could hear a pin drop! Contrast that to the shot going through, the most deafening roaring explosion of sound in response. After the game, everyone was throwing up their "Ls" to each other on the escalators and the train ride home.
Nearly two decades apart, my lowest low as a Knicks fan is a tie: trading Patrick Ewing for $0.45 on the dollar and trading Kristaps Porzingis for the same amount in 2019. These days being a Knicks fan has me feeling tortured, beleaguered, jaded, cranky, irate, and other terms that represent prolonged severe dissatisfaction. And hopeful! Fandom always entails some level of reasonable or unreasonable hope. And that’s why it takes mild delusion mixed with the right amount of defiance to be a Knicks fan.