We interrupt this deep dive of New York baseball teams into the sludge to bring you...

 ...basketball. Or at least the reasonable facsimile of it known as the New York Knickerbockers.

The player featured here is, of course, OG Anunoby, the power forward whose acquisition has made the Knicks (something of) a contender for the last three seasons. I don't know much about basketball, but I do know that Anunoby can be an absolute force on the court, offense and defense. 

And as the Knicks prepare to head into a postseason full of the highest of hopes, he is...injured. Of course. 

Anunoby, great as he is, gets hurt a lot, maybe because his play is so passionate and unrestrained. Hey, I ain't knockin' it. He is a joy to watch on the court.

But since the Knicks are a New York team, their big acquisition must have some fatal flaw. And it will be fatal. At least, that's what the 146 NBA players asked to pick which team—aside from their own—will win the championship this spring.

Not a one picked the New York Knicks. More picked their first-round opponent, the Atlanta Hawks, who have not won a championship, I think, since they played in St. Louis.

So it goes for the Knicks, 53 years now and counting. 

Remember when they had another can't-miss, big man? Yep. Ol' Kristaps Porzingis, the Latvian Lummox. He got hurt, too. Though as it turned out, he WAS "can't miss"...just for the Boston Celtics, the Knicks' great rival.

The Celtics, it seemed, figured out something that no present New York team cares to learn, which is that you need to build an entire championship team, complete with players who boast different skills and can fill in and take over when the one, random superstar you've signed merely to fill seats, goes down.

Sigh...

This is how the spring playoff season is playing out here in Loser City, once again. The other basketball team in town, the Brooklyn Nets, had a 62-loss season and failed to make the playoffs for the third year in a row. In 50 tries, they have NEVER won an NBA title.

That's a combined, 0-103 basketball titles for NYC since 1973—and 2-130—for those of you keeping score at home.

Meanwhile, in an NHL where half the teams make the playoffs...no local hockey team did. That's the first time that's happened since the o.g. Colorado Rockies came east and got stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey. 

First time in 44 years no local hockey team has made the playoffs. 

Of course, how much good did all those playoff appearances do? The New York Rangers have won 1 Stanley Cup in the last 86 years. The Islanders have not won in 43 years. The rechristened New Jersey Devils—is "rechristened" the right word for a team named the Devils? Maybe the anti-Christ in the White House could tell us—after some initial success, have now gone 23 years without sipping from the cup of busted teeth and answered prayers.

(The Rangers, of course, have their own wonderfully-monikered, can't-miss stars every few years. I think the last was young Kaapo Kakko, who of course was not going to be a star in New York with a name like that. He now plays for the Kraken, naturally, a team where all those Ks feel at home.) 

Meanwhile, both local football squads are looking to a draft that will get them back into the playoffs—someday. Been 15 years without a postseason spot for the Jets, which makes them the leader in all North American sports at present, not to mention the 57 years since they won a championship.  

And then there's our baseball, which I will spare you anymore analysis thereof.

More than coincidence???

I don't think so.  

As a great man once said, "Luck is the residue of design," and the design of our local teams is to make money, hand-over-fist. They are enabled in this always by our local politicians, who freely shower them with tax and rent breaks, largely free stadia, and other, unearned benefits. 

All because—we're told—that if they don't get what they want, our sporting idols will leave the largest and richest market in the country for...where, exactly? The West Coast, like our renegade Dodgers and Giants, 58 years ago? 

Those venues are full. So is pretty much everywhere else the runaway grifts known as modern pro sports teams might wish to abscond to. 

It is time to stop subsidizing failure. It is time to call their collected bluff. Go if you want to. We will replace you. 

We now return you to our regularly scheduled Yankees loss.