The only living boy in New York

This is the greatest composer ever’s greatest symphony: Beethoven’s 3rd.

It’s known as the Eroica. Originally he dedicated it to Napoleon Bonaparte, believing the ruler to be the tip of a pro-democracy, anti-monarchy sword. When Bonaparte instead declared himself emperor and the head of a military dictatorship, a furious Beethoven ripped off the section of the score dedicating it to Napoleon. Few hurts hit with quite the cyclonic oomph as being duped by a fraud.

Speaking of, the Brooklyn Nets were obliterated 142-118 at MSG on a night when the Knicks were the guillotine and the Nets the necks of the ruling class swine. Pretenders to a throne they never neared, the fraud the Nets perpetuated on their fans as well as Knick loyalists is rife with the stink of the horse they rode in on: gentrification. Brooklyn had a nice little neighborhood going and bulldozed it the instant Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving batted their eyes at them and said they were “cool.” But gentrification is always just a recession away from full-out white flight. Beethoven learned tyrants don’t respect limits; neither did KD and Kyrie. The moment the pawns started thinking they were real people with the right to (some degree of) self-determination, Cool Kev hightailed it to Arizona, the Southwest’s Florida; Kyrie, the self-determined patron saint of bodily autonomy during COVID, was only too happy to jet to Texas, a state that tells 15-year-olds they’re mature enough to decide to have twins but not an abortion.

After Pinky and the Brain’s brief interregnum, the Knicks have again assumed the mantle of supremacy in the Big Apple. Last night’s blowout was no less an astonishing masterpiece than Ludwig Van’s Eroica. And just as Beethoven’s symphony was in part born out of great vengeance and furious anger, there are soooo many parties with Net connections who deserve to eat a dick. May last night be their Waterloo, then, the conclusion of all their folly and falsehoods.

Eat a dick, Nets. You never understood why you can never overtake the Knicks in this town. The Knicks aren’t a record, an ethos, a fanbase or even a building (despite ownership’s fetishization of it). They’re not a culture, not something you can build. The Knicks aren’t a part of the city. The Knicks are the city. They’re in the bloodstream. To think you could ever out-city the Knicks is like thinking you can drown the ocean.    

Eat a dick, every fake-ass fan who gave up on the team in 2019 – or worse. Eat an infinite assembly line of dicks, Michael Rapaport. Choke on ‘em. 

Eat a dick, Nets Twitter, Net Income, Nets Daily, Benjamin Netanyahu, NetZero, Netscape Navigator, Graig Nettles and anything remotely Net-related. Think about how badly the KD/Kyrie experiment blew up. Think about how tiring it was watching the slow dawn of the national media acknowledging the disaster (local media never really cared enough to bother, ‘cuz Nets). Then think about how much bigger alllll that would have been if it happened to the Knicks. That’s how it works when you’re the map and not some podunk outfit looking to get their name on it. 

Every Nets fan who made the same tired “The Knicks gonna raise a banner to the rafters for that?” joke the past three years, eat a dick. Eat a dick for each joke. Which Barclays banner are the Nets most proud of? Their 2002 Atlantic Divison champs banner? The Biggie Smalls one? Any fool can point out the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. But the emperor remains emperor, and the fool a fool.

Put the league on notice: the Knicks are here. They’re not going anywhere, and if you want them out of the way you’re gonna have to make them go. Boston’s already lost twice to New York and could complete the trifecta this weekend. The big bullies from Milwaukee are to be respected, but not feared. You think Philadelphia, with all the pressure on them to win this season, wants anything to do with the Knicks come playoff time? Cleveland lost again and is just a game up on New York in the loss column; you don’t think it’ll add pressure to a young team in a minus market that hasn’t made the postseason together yet to face the team most likely to sign their best player in a couple years? God help Trae Young and the Hawks if they run into this Knicks team in the playoffs.

Napoleon was no revolutionary. He had little man’s complex in a time when he wasn’t really even short, saw someone playing king of the mountain and decided he’d like a turn at the top. The Nets were never a culture change. Their entire approach was what outsiders think NYC is: callous to the point of cruelty, its entire appeal entirely self-referential. Brooklyn decided to open a pizza shop, landed a prime piece of real estate in the pizza capital of the world, tore it down and built a Sbarro’s. The Knicks are enthralling the city with a head coach people look at like he’s Fred Flintstone, one recognized All-Star, one snub and a truss of two-force, two-way terrors. A team of, by and for the people. Real revolution is never about one man, or two. Revolution is a people.