Less overreacting

In defense of Knicks fans, this team has not made it easy to grab any coherent thread of its narrative. They began 5-1, fell off a cliff, and are now good again, maybe?

Still, Knicks fans are prone to respond aggressively to potentially meaningless developments. Calls to hang up a banner after a 5-1 start (sorry) or trade Julius Randle after a slow start to the season were frequent and in all likelihood silly. Let’s take a chill pill in 2022 and not take things at face value too quickly.

Retire Bing Bong

It’s unclear who or what killed Bing Bong, but in the context of basketball, the implementation of this phrase into the Knicks domain spelled their doom. Every loss triggered a “Bing Bong” tweet from opposing teams’ social media accounts, and by the time some semblance of winning returned, Bing Bong had infected the rest of social media.

At points this season, these Knicks were far more “we are being held momentarily by the train’s dispatcher, please be patient” than the train’s closing doors chime indicating movement and forward advancement. Maybe it’s best if we let them win something before making them a meme, and retire Bing Bong from our vocabularies.

Appreciate what we’ve got

The Knicks are in a play-in spot with few games separating them from higher postseason seeding. They’re led by Randle, who is a very good All-Star, puts up 20-10-5 on his bad days, and recently signed an extension to stay here because he loves the city and franchise.

Further down the roster is an assortment of exciting young players who will pack the Garden long past this current core’s window: RJ Barrett, Mitchell Robinson, Toppin, Immanuel Quickley, Quentin Grimes and Miles McBride, among others.

Mike Breen and Walt Clyde Frazier are still on the call. Despite the challenges, we’re still able to watch this team compete live at the world’s most famous arena. Rose’s and Little Italy’s may have closed their original locations, but opened up elsewhere close to Penn Station.

Our last New Year’s resolution should be to appreciate what we’ve got. In a wild year off the court, we still had our Knicks on the court.

Popular in the Community