The Worst Decade in a Century, Part I

Time for a brief interlude away from our heroes on this sunny off day, to contemplate the wreckage of the New York Knickerbockers.

Just the other day, it seems, the Knicks were about to launch their very own super team, anchored by No. 1 draft pick, Zion Williamson—a man with the name for the ages—Kevin Durant, and maybe even Kawhi Leonard and/or Kyrie Irving.

Headline writers fell into a collective swoon.  The K-Line would lead us to Zion, and surely goodness and mercy would dwell at the Garden for the rest of our days.

Well, we all saw how that fell apart.  Which, sadly, we can't even blame on the monstrous owner of the Garden and all that dwells within it, Jimmy Dolan.  (If there's one example to prove that things can always be worse, it's the fact that Dolan came thisclose to grabbing control of the Yankees, too, some 20 years ago.)

But as it was, the Knicks drew a bad number in the draft lottery—what, no frozen envelope this time?—and got the Dukie with a much less fun name (and much less talent).  Dolan balked at picking up KD for the full freight...and frankly, can you blame him?

That is, are the Nets—a team with a less sordid but even sadder history than the Knicks—REALLY going to going to build the New Jerusalem around Irving, a guy who was nearly run out of Boston on a rail, and Durant, who will next be seen at age 32, trying to shake off an ACL and a year of rust?

Which says everything you need to know about this, the 2010s, the worst sports decade in NYC in a hundred years.  Even when one team steals the other's bacon, nobody prospers.

This decade, only the New York Football Giants miracle strike at Lucas Oil Stadium in 2012 kept the city from being without any champion at all, despite 9 New York-area teams in the 4 major sports.

Beyond that, there were only 3 series in which NYC teams even got to fight for a ring or a cup, with losing Stanley Cup finals against L.A. by both the Rangers and the Devils, and the Mets' 2015 World Series effort, which gave us all a good laugh.

You have to go back to the 1910s, when there were only 3 baseball teams in town, to find such poor results (and even then, the baseball Giants and Dodgers managed to lose 5 World Series between them).

What's worse, none of this going to change anytime soon, either.

The Yanks are not going to get a whiff of the Series this year, or any year to come for a long time (more on that later).  The Mets are a real estate racket.  Hockey is hockey.  The Nets' dynasty in the making has all the trimmings of a farce, and the Knicks, going to Plan B...got no Plan B.

By the by, regarding the other big, Dolan-generated excitement in town just now?

As the man who predicted at the time that no one named Krispsnacks Porkrings was ever going to lead the Knicks to glory, I am boldly predicting right now that no one name Kaapo Kakko is ever going to lift the Stanley Cup for the Rangers.

"A rose, by such a name...is just not happening."  Besides, wiki claims that "Kakko is one of few professional players who has both Type 1 diabetes and celiac disease."

What, no bubonic plague?

What is wrong with these people???  How did they get to be in charge of all our sporting entertainment?   And what can we do about it?

Besides suffer, that is.