The funny part about that stretch of playoffs when the Knicks took a turn as the most unstoppable team of all time — Game 4 against the Hawks through Game 1 against the Spurs, when the average score of a game was Knicks 121, Opponents 98 — was this:
When you’d talk to a lot of Knicks fans, they were still skittish as cats. They were giddy with each passing blowout, sure, but they were still wary. Still a little struck by disbelief with what they were seeing. I went on Joe Benigno’s radio show right in the middle of it, and the man whose sports agonistas have been part of New York’s complicated sporting fabric for decades made a most reasonable point.
“Bro,” he said, “it makes me nervous. Nothing is ever this easy.”
This is the cost of rooting for teams with baggage. In the Knicks’ case, even as their winning streak reached 13 games and 46 days, the truest believers were always on the lookout for other shoes ready to drop on their heads like anvils from a tall building. Tyrese Haliburton had to be lurking out there in the weeds, or Reggie Miller, or Michael Jordan.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
