Once upon a time, I loved the NBA as much as college basketball. That was due in large part to Patrick Ewing, John Starks, Xavier McDaniel, Charles Oakley, Derek Harper, Charles Smith, and others. They all played the same way: tough, gritty, sometimes pretty, mostly ugly, and above all else: angry. Some of them had the temperment of normal men (Ewing, Smith, Hubert Davis.) Some of them were time bombs, who only went off when provoked (Starks, Harper, Anthony Mason.) Some of them were certifiably insane (McDaniel, Oakley.)
In today's NBA, there are very few great rivalries, where the teams legitmately hate each other. The Lakers and Celtics sprung up again last year after a lengthy abscence. Lakers/Suns, Suns/Spurs, Cavs/Wizards come to mind. A few other mini-feuds exist. This wasn't always the case, though. Back in the 80's and mid-90's, a lot of teams legitimately hated each other, and the Pat Riley-era Knicks were usually in the middle of these rivalries. It made for intense, fun to watch basketball.
Although they were pretty much owned by the Michael Jordan-led Bulls, few teams played them tougher during their reign of dominance. Every playoff game of every playoff series between the teams was an absolute war, and three of the greatest dunks of the decade (Starks over Horace Grant and Jordan, Pippen over Ewing, and Jordan over Ewing) came within a year of each other.
After Pat Riley jumped ship from the Knicks to the hated Miami Heat (between him and Good Ol' Roy, I don't have a real great past with legendary coaches of my favorite teams) a giant can of gasoline was poured on a budding rivalry, and the next few years were spent battling the Heat in the playoffs. Many of the series were marred by bench-clearing brawls and suspensions; in fact, many of the new rules regarding leaving the bench during fights are due to the Knicks and Heat battles of the mid-to-late '90s.
So I guess, if I was being honest with myself, this team did not influence me in a positive way. Don't get me wrong; I don't talk shit unless the other guy starts it first, and I don't go around playing dirty, or sprinting off the bench and throwing punches in the event of a bench-clearing brawl (don't laugh, our city league team almost had one vs. THE REFS last week.) But at the same time, as a few of you can attest, I am not exactly a big basket of cherries out there on the court. Although I enjoy playing the game immensely, you're wouldn't know it by looking at me. You're not going to see me out there smiling very often.
In 1999, the Knicks teased me as an #8 seed in a strike-shortened year and went all the way to the finals before falling apart, in the process giving me a whole new batch of favorite players (Larry Johnson, Allan Houston, Marcus Camby, Charlie Ward, and my illegitimate father Chris Dudley among them.) But besides that one playoff run, it's been pretty much nothing but hard times since 1997 for the Knickerbockers. But don't worry, one of these years, the Knicks franchise will turn around, and before you know it, the Madison Square Garden will be rocking, and Spike Lee will be trash talking opposing players, and the Knicks will be winning playoff series and negatively influencing youngsters again.
