Exits: Twenty years of frustration all barrelling out of us
Writer Alex Shephard on lists, legends, choosing losers, and the Knicks, enduring and thriving despite themselves.
Chris Duhon. Raymond Felton. Toney Douglas. Raymond Felton. Pablo Prigioni. Shane Larkin. Jose Calderon. Derrick Rose. Ramon Sessions. Trey Burke. Alonzo Trier. Elfrid Peyton. Kemba Walker.
I had a poetry professor in college who once said something to the effect that the simplest poem is a list. I have no idea what he was talking about (probably Wallace Stevens or some shit) but that comment often comes back to me when I look at the to-do lists I scrawl in my notebooks: Calls to make; deadlines; random chores; groceries. This professor was, I’m sure, talking about different lists (poetic ones; the kinds that show up in poems; flowers, I don’t know). And he wasn’t a sports fan.
The above list is definitely not a poem. It is, instead, a record of futility. Poems can be accounts of disaster and desperation, but I can’t think of any that comes close to this. Compared to the above list, “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner” is basically about a Carnival cruise. It’s “Skunk Hour” extended over more than a decade.
It is, more specifically, a list of every opening day starting point guard for the New York Knicks from 2009-2021, a period of time that roughly coincides with my adult life. I remember many of these people with a degree of fondness, to be fair. I loved Toney Douglas, even though my college poetry professor was probably about as adept at running an offense (and nearly as tall). I fondly recall my father’s affection for (and stubborn loyalty toward) Chris Duhon. Raymond Felton is a Knicks legend for once dressing the way I did when I had to look nice as an 11 year-old—a plaid blazer and cargo pants, a perfect outfit for first communions and Red Lobster dinners—even if doing so certainly led to something unforgivable (Clyde Frazier crying). Raymond Felton was, until this year, my favorite Knick of the post-Iraq War era.
There are things this list doesn’t capture of course, some of them poetic. Jeremy Lin was a point guard and he provided the unquestionable highlight of this era; not being an opening day starter is the whole deal of Linsanity, more or less. Jason Kidd was closer to a desiccated corpse than he was to his Bush-era peak when he played in a dual point guard lineup with Felton—and he was still would have a case to make as the best opening day starting point guard of this era (even if, strictly speaking, he was closer to a shooting guard). In any case, the list is a synecdoche of sorts, an encapsulation of years of endless futility and waste and general pointlessness. I watched all of these men play basketball a lot, even though I rarely could convince myself that doing so would be a productive or valuable use of my time.
For a decent stretch of this season, I suspected I would feel the same way about this Knicks team. On December 3 of last year, me and my friend Max (subscribe to Hellgate!) watched the Knicks get absolutely demolished by the Mavericks during an afternoon game that was ostensibly a celebration of our birthdays. We—to the bemusement of Max’s wife—spent most of the fourth quarter trying to rile up our section to boo Tom Thibideau and James Dolan. With about 40 seconds to go in the game both of us, in perfect synchronicity and with no pre-planning, shouted “Fire Thibs!” as loud as we could. It was a beautiful moment, borne out of the frustration of knowing that your birthright is a curse—but also of the camaraderie in knowing you’re sharing a poisoned chalice. I love my friend Max for a lot of reasons, but I understand him in large part because he is a Knicks fan.
The Knicks season turned around after that. I have a tendency for overvaluing coincidences and building them up into moments of significance that border on magical realism that I suspect comes from watching the film Sliding Doors at too young an age. And yet. I do truly believe on some level that the Knicks season turned around at that moment. It was an exorcism of sorts, twenty years of frustration all barrelling out of us.
They were also The Knicks in a way that they haven’t been for a long time. I am skeptical of the idea of team DNA, especially in the increasingly homogenous post-analytics era. And yet New York remains stubbornly (and beautifully) wedded to the idea of the ‘90s Knicks. The Knicks are scrappy. They’re brutal. They’re not as talented as other teams, but they make up for it by grinding. The Knicks have not really played like this in a long time and I have only hazy memories of the golden age of Anthony Mason and John Starks. The narrative persists for two reasons, I think. One is that New York has been shorn of much of its griminess in the last two decades and we hold onto the idea of the Knicks as a kind of metaphor: That New York is still New York behind all of the Chase banks. The other is simply the Knicks have just not been good for a long time: No style of basketball has replaced the one chronicled by Chris Herring in Blood In The Garden because the team has mostly sucked shit.
In any case, one of the reasons I loved this post-December 3 Knicks team is that, well, they were The Knicks. They were scrappy. They played hard. They were…. fun? Albeit, of course, in a Knicks-y way.
So much of this comes back to the list I started this piece with. Jalen Brunson is without a doubt my favorite Knick since Latrell Sprewell. He may not be the best Knick since Patrick Ewing—Melo still holds that crown—but he is the best Knick. He is diminutive but he is crafty; he killed the Cavaliers on a bum ankle. He is our guy. Immanuel Quickley, bouncy, truly deserving of his name, seems to have figured everything out. One of my favorite cliches in the sport is “the game slowed down for him,” a Matrixish way of thinking about a sport played at a quick pace: The game slowed down for Quick. He figured it out. The shorts still look great.
Julius Randle remains a source of immense frustration and confusion, but he too is a perfect Knick, even if I mean that in a slightly different way than I would have two seasons ago. He is agonizing in fourth quarters and his limitations as a primary offensive option have been clear for quite a long time. And yet, he too, is a perfect Knick in the fact that he is tough, maybe the second strongest player in the league when LeBron James has enough in the tank to body people in the paint. He is frustrating because he makes silly decisions and bombs three pointers and yet it’s hard not to see him as a victim of his own strengths. The man gets absolutely destroyed so often but it just doesn’t seem like it because he is simply too strong. He will continue to be the scapegoat for this team, which is probably fair, and yet he is, nevertheless, one of us in part because he is so frustrating. And also because he’s really tough. (In important coincidences that I imbue with slightly less significance, the only other Knicks game I attended this season was the one in which Randle turned his ankle into crab meat. Max was there too.)
I love Mitchell Robinson’s cats. I love that Isaiah Hartenstein plays like Mitchell Robinson. Jericho Sims has a name straight out of a Cormac McCarthy novel and I love him for that, too. Quentin Grimes has a name out of a (late but still good) Thomas Pynchon novel. RJ Barrett continues to play basketball and is sometimes good at it.
And then there is Josh Hart, who has become a talisman. There are the Knicks the team (frustrating, abject, bad) and the Knicks the identity (gritty, tough, I’m Walking Here). I can’t think of anyone who embodies the Knicks conceptually as well as Hart. I would walk through a plate glass window for him. It may just be the number, but there were moments when Hart seemed to be channeling the spirit of John Starks. He is a folk hero. Even if he declines his player option (he better not) and goes elsewhere (he better not) he will be a Knicks legend.
The way the season was frustrating. It was also very Knicks-y. I paid more money than I probably should have to watch the Knicks lose in Miami and, after a humiliating security check that nearly cost me my Faulkner House tote bag (I am a deeply embarrassing person), I briefly felt crushed. Watching the Heat play the Knicks, I realized that they were playing as hard… but also much smarter. The Knicks were still doing some Knicks things—grinding, etc.—but the Heat had a plan. And they also had a bunch of guys who were there to be gritty. This seemed unfair, even with all of the 90s stuff excluded because, well, Miami isn’t gritty, even if New York isn’t really either, no matter what Eric Adams says. For months I had been telling people that New York basketball was well and truly back and here was a team—featuring a bunch of guys who had the names of outfielders and outside linebackers (Caleb Martin, Gabe Vincent etc)—who were simply out-hustling us. As I walked into the Kasyea—née FTX—Center, it seemed like Kevin Love’s impossibly handsome face was taunting me.
When the Knicks eventually bowed out, I should have been crushed—or even just disappointed. And yet, for the first time in ages I mostly felt at peace.
A friend once told me that he had come up with a unified theory that explained why I was the way that I am.
“You pursue things that bring you pain,” he told me. “You like suffering.”
He was talking about cultural pursuits—though this theory certainly applied to others as well—and he was right. I have always liked things that require work, where drudgery is high and transcendence is rare. I like fly fishing, Eastern European literature, the music of the Grateful Dead.
All lessons are learned too late. I am, nevertheless, a slow learner. Still, I recently—again, far too late—learned that there is no inherent virtue in suffering. My life has unsurprisingly improved, perhaps dramatically. There is, however, one exception and that exception is sports.
I like to think that’s because I’m stuck. Sports are typically an inheritance, not a choice. I spent my childhood rooting for the New York Knicks, the Oakland Athletics, and the Washington…. Uh, yeah—we don’t talk about that. For the last 12 or so years, I have rooted for the Knicks, the Athletics, the New York Mets, and Liverpool Football Club. In the time that I have been sentient, those teams have won exactly two major championships—Liverpool in 2019 and 2020. Other than that, nothing. I could have presumably chosen to hitch my apple wagon to more successful franchises when I got into soccer or realized that the football team I had grown up supporting was irredeemably fucked up and racist and yet I chose failure. When I moved to New York, Yankee Stadium was just as far away as Citi Field. I chose the losers.
The Knicks are first in my heart and, for most of my life, have been first among the losers. But this year was still different. I was disappointed when they slinked out of the playoffs but for the first time in ages, it didn’t feel like some sort of grand lesson about the general futility of life. The Knicks should still fire Thibs, though.