Welcome to Loser City.

 

It was really rather heartwarming, in this time of tumult and chaos, and on the eve of what is about to become a horrific mayoral race, to see the city rally around the Knicks in (yet another) futile, playoff run. Yet in the end, and despite a mind-bending upset of the Boston Celtics, the results were all too predictable: a New York team undone by a younger, faster, more durable bunch from the outlands.

 

For the second year in a row—and the third since 2014—that team was a lower-ranked outfit from Indianapolis. In fact, the Knicks’ loss makes 5 in a row to the Pacers, dating back to the 1990s. 

 

The history is significant. Franchises like Indiana seem able to continually retool and remake themselves into contending teams, over and over again, while our Knicks lurch about—one more heavily subsidized, nepo-run team, slogging on for 25 years between a conference final. 

 

This is sports today in New York, Loser City.

Let’s put aside for a moment yet another, ludicrous charade of a Yankees team getting exposed in L.A. like a cheap, Sunset Strip, well, stripper.

 

Let’s look back, back, all the way back to the halcyon days of yore, at the turn into this century, when our local lads gave us thrills galore. In the 25 years from 1986 to 2011, NYC-area sports teams reached 23 league playoff finals, and won 14 championships—and that’s not even counting Buck Showalter and the Yankees being cruelly deprived of a shot at the World Series, when the 1994 lockout ended the season with the Bombers sporting the best record in the American League. 

 

The Yankees reached 7 World Series and won 5 of them. The Giants took 4, thrilling Super Bowls in 5 attempts. The Rangers won a Stanley Cup so nerve-tingling that my nerves tingle to this day—their first such triumph in 54 years.  The industrious, hard-working Devils, somewhere in the swamps of Jersey, reached 4 Cup finals and won 3 of them. The Nets, wherever they were, reached 2 NBA finals. 

 

Am I forgetting anybody? Oh, right: the Mets won a World Series for the ages, over the hated Carmine Hose, and obligingly lost a pretty good one to our boys.

 

Sure, the Jets and the Islanders didn’t reach a final, but let’s not expect blood to pour from statues or planes to take off from Newark.

On top of those famous victories and even wrenching, oh-so-close defeats, our boys contended year after year, in everything. Sports in New York was a veritable merry-go-round of thrills, chills, and tickertape parades.

 

We rewarded our local heroes with attention, adoration—and big checks, usually for publicly subsidized stadium. Their bosses smiled, thanked us, deposited said checks, sat back on their laurels—and fell asleep.

 

Since 2011, all of three New York teams—the Yankees, Rangers, and Mets—have made the finals in their sports. Each one of them managed to win exactly one game in those extravaganzas, while disgracing themselves in new and exotic ways.

 

That’s it: 9 teams, 14 years…3 wins in the finals.

 

Nor is there much hope in sight.  The Yanks are visibly aging, the franchise lagging further and further behind dynamic, risk-taking leadership in places like Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Philadelphia. It’s only a matter of time—maybe the second half of this season—before young, rebuilding teams in places like Detroit, K.C., and Seattle, topple them from their shaky throne.

 

The Giants are rebuilding—again. The Jets are currently leading all professional sports in consecutive seasons not making the playoffs. They will extend that lead this fall.

 

Knicksmania obscured what was another, wretched winter and spring for the locals. The NBA and the NHL, in their infinite generosity, allot a combined 30 playoff spots to their 62 teams. But of the 5 local squads, only the Knicks and the Devils even made the postseason—the Rangers most notably failing to do so despite running up the best record in the NHL the previous campaign. 

 

The Devils won a single, overtime game in their only playoff series. And the Knicks…well, the Knicks. We can only console ourselves with our schadenfreude for those high, NBA mucky-mucks, contemplating the ratings for a final between the 33^rd and 42^nd largest metropolitan areas in America.

 

All of which leaves…what? Yes, that. 

Welcome to the Ages of the Mets, the only team here with an owner interested in winning it all.