Stumbling toward ecstasy: what Sunday’s halftime ceremony tells us about the Knicks
The more some things change at Madison Square Garden, the more others stay the same
Photo credit: Alan Hahn
On December 8, 2024, a date which will live in infamy in Indian Village, Morrisania and much of the Bronx, the New York Mets restored a fundamental order in telling the Yankees their time borrowing Juan Soto is over, signing the new king of Queens to a deal that may well outlast American democracy. Takes on this supposed NYC changing of the guard often neglect to zoom-out a bit and view the larger geologic layers. The city has always been a National League town featuring star outfielders: Carlos Beltrán, Darryl Strawberry, Willie Mays, Mel Ott, Duke Snider. The Mets signing Soto is nature healing.
There will be Yankee fans in crisis today, always hilarious to me having grown up in the ‘80s when the Mets were the varsity. That wasn’t a quirk: for most of their first 30 years of existence, the Mets out-drew the Yanks. The city’s teams are all seeming like their authentic selves these days. The Giants are once again inspiring skies of despair. The Jets haven’t won since Joe Namath was at quarterback and Aaron Rodgers looks more and more like Joe Willie every week, which would be great if Namath weren’t 81. Sunday night we were reminded that while the Knicks have become a model team and front office, at the ownership-level they remain true to their history — which is to say goofily cold.
For weeks the franchise hyped Sunday’s halftime bringing seemingly every living Knick and the families of some who’ve passed together on the Garden floor. The timing couldn’t be better, with the team seemingly stronger than it’s been since Patrick Ewing and Pat Riley were here. The Knicks were celebrating the past Sunday, but also staging a coronation: the big-city baddies high up on their bad ass. Let the Pacers gnash their teeth, the 76ers piss their pants. The Knicks are back. The spotlight was theirs. They’ve waited years. How would they handle it?
This being a halftime ceremony looking to honor 40 players, time was always going to be limited, so having P.A. announcer Mike Walczewski just read through the list was maybe the only way to do it. Besides, lists play well with drama: there’s hierarchy and momentum built in; they invite tension. So while it was confusing when the first person introduced was Greg Anthony, I’ll confess I was so pleasantly excited by the different Knicks I was seeing and the seeming randomness of their order that it wasn’t until three in a row were called that I understood the order of ceremony was neither random nor intelligently designed, and that you can take the Enes Freedom out of the locker room but that doesn’t touch the Alexey Shved in the halls of power.
The eighth name read was Patrick Ewing. That felt early, but the way Walczewski abbreviated the gap between names when announcing Wilson Chandler a split-second after Eddy Curry gave me confidence there was an adult at the wheel. There was certainly a chance some fans would boo Curry. Some men just want to watch the world burn. So don’t give them any air. Fair enough. I figured Ewing would get extra time for the inevitably extra cheers, though I wondered – wasn’t it early in the process to announce Ewing? That’d make sense if they were going alphabetically, but there’s no way they were doing that; that’d require announcing the two greatest living Knicks almost consecutively and pretty early in the ceremony. The World’s Most Famous Arena does dopamine rush 25/8 – there’s no way they’d do that.
No extra time for Ewing’s cheers, not when Al Harrington is waiting in the wings. The next name was Walt Frazier’s, at which point I involuntarily made the sound I do whenever I’m playing a video game and die by falling into a pit and I swear the controller didn’t do what I pressed, a half-scoff, half-moan. Like I really couldn’t. I just couldn’t. No.
Larry Johnson got called after that. Metta World Peace. Tim Thomas. John Wallace. Gerald Wilkins. What kind of showmanship is that? How the hell does that measure up to all the “World’s Most Famous Arena” rosaries? That wasn’t the only non-alphabetical deviation in the pecking order, either. I’m all for breaking the rules for the sake of art or semantics. Saving Ewing and Clyde till the end, for example. Bill Bradley after Marcus Camby and Rory Sparrow after Tim Thomas is not surrealism. It’s goofy.
That any adult on the payroll – and presumably a series of well-compensated adults – would sign-off on a pseudo-alphabetical rundown of this exceptional Knickerbocker family reunion, thereby frontloading its GOATs while going out not with a bang but with Jerome and Herb Williams (props to Herb somehow looking younger today than 30 years ago) is an unpleasant reminder of the organization’s Bizarro years decades. It’s so dumb it’s goofy and so out of touch it rings cold.
It’s also a reminder that mystifyingly inept ownership is as much a part of Knicks history as the blue and the orange. Neither Ewing nor Frazier finished their careers as Knicks, and not because if you get caught between the moon and New York City the best that you can do is Glen Rice or Jim Cleamons. Those weren’t sober, cutthroat sacrifices of feelings for wins. Those trades were short-sighted and callous. The team stunk for years after both.
Willis Reed did end his career as a Knick, though that was hardly an era of good feelings between icon and employer, either. The Garden continues to rake in $40 million or more annually off an unearned tax exemption from a paranoia born from the old world of pay phones and pencil sharpeners. James Dolan punted on the New York Liberty like the Red Sox did with Babe Ruth while giving Isiah Thomas second, third, fourth chances to fail at the Mecca. Comparatively, one poorly designed halftime ceremony doesn’t seem like something anyone will remember.
But it is a reminder: all that Mickey Mouse shit? That Leon Rose and Tom Thibodeau were brought in to get rid of? That they have? That’s one end of things. It’s still on ownership to prove they can keep their end of things running as smoothly, i.e. spending money and making the product look good. And knowing that in no way, anywhere, anyhow, does Al Harrington go between Patrick Ewing and Walt Frazier.
