Wonder City.

 

Sorry I'm overdue on this, but I owe it to Doug K., especially.

So finally, when it comes to sports, at least, New York went from the City of Losers to the City of Wonder.

Having been a Knicks fan since 1968, I was true overwhelmed. What a season! What a series of comebacks! What a run!

And what a truly likable team, despite its awful bridge troll of an owner.

Is this good for New York in the long run? 

I doubt it. Now Dolan will never let his odious MSG incarnation be budged from where it squats like a poisonous toad above what could and should be a fabulous train station. 

The local minions of the Vampire-in-Chief are already moving in to tear the neighborhood apart and no doubt make untold billions with sweetheart federal contracts of one sort of another.

Is this good for the Knicks in the long run?

Again, I doubt it. This will undoubtedly give Dolan—already someone who has been ripping off the taxpayers for decades—carte blanche to pump as little money as possible into his teams, while jacking prices up even more. 

For what you can reasonably expect...look at the Garden's other tenant, after the Rangers finally snapped an even longer championship drought—54 years—and since have gone on a new streak of 32 more seasons of futility.

Is this good for your New York Yankees?

Nope. Unlike any other, red-blooded American male, HAL will not feel in the least envious of the adulation poured down upon Dolan and the Knicks, or likely to spend another dime trying to match their achievement.

And the Knicks' season no doubt makes Brian Cashman feel absolutely justified in all his inane statements about how the postseason is just a crapshoot. The Knicks had an up-and-down regular season, finished second in their division and third in their conference...then managed to avoid, thanks to luck and attrition, all of the teams (Boston, Detroit, OK City) that seemed most likely to beat them in the playoffs.

If the Yanks can just get Judge back in time for October...and Fried, and Stanton, and Cole rounds into shape (again), and some young gun emerges in the bullpen, and The Martian is for real, and SOMEBODY can catch and hit .220, and...and...and...

No, not gonna happen. Baseball is not basketball. Among other things, any team in the MLB postseason that manages to get up 5-10 runs in game after game—the equivalent of the leads the Spurs had—will not, cannot simply give it up by playing like idiots (even, ahem, if our boys did just that in the Infamous Fifth Inning of the Fifth Game).

But hey—all of that is the long run, and as the great Harry Hopkins once said, in the long run we are all dead. 

Better, in our precarious age, to celebrate the unexpected gift the Knicks have given us, their incredible

heart and smarts and abilities, their coach and their general manager, their insistence on being...unwavering.

Thanks to them, our city is looking pretty good just now.