Despite some painfully remarkable jetlag last night, I'm doing my best to catch up on all the sports news I missed -- (the Browns traded Brady Quinn to Denver? Really?) -- but I think I'm doing an alright job of catching up. Jumping right into the swing of the NCAA Tournament is a sticky wicket, however, and I'm having some trouble getting everything in order. Last night at work I was struggling to stay awake and do my job competently let alone watch the tourney.
Evidently, I lost several games without even realizing it in a second day that appears to have been considerably less exciting than the first. No matter. Let's see how I'm doing.
I finished the first round 22-10, which considering I wasn't in this country for most of the last two weeks isn't awfully surprising. Of course it isn't awfully good either. Also, Barack Obama is kicking my ass. A number of my upset picks didn't come through as Louisville, Siena and Florida State all were unable to knock off higher seeds. Siena, who I had getting through to next weekend in one of my more optimistic cinderella picks was particularly painful, but all in all I'm really not shaping up too badly as far as deep teams are concerned.
Siena and Vanderbilt are my only Sweet Sixteen teams that I didn't get through to the second round and my entire Elite Eight is still alive, so if all breaks right I have the potential to come out looking ok. Or pretty good for someone who had read nothing and was on three hours of sleep when he filled out his bracket anyway.
Today only presents me with one game that really gets my stomach anxious and it's already well underway. Villanova is doing a fantastic job of making me look like a complete fool for putting them in the Final Four as they look flat early against St. Mary's on the heels of their great escape against Robert Morris on Thursday. Hopefully the Wildcats can get their feet under them, but if not this bracket could be in the garbage soon. The rest of Saturday's slate isn't too wearying, though it wouldn't surprise me to see Washington knock New Mexico out of my Sweet Sixteen. Every other game ranges from uninteresting to completely dull, particularly that barnburner-in-waiting between Old Dominion and Baylor.
Oh, but it is the NCAA Tournament. There's plenty of time for the games to prove me wrong. And even if they don't, I'm a sap who's going to spend most of a 72-degree day inside watching anyway.
I'm not sure if all of you managed to survive without my whimsical musings for the last two weeks, but if you did, perhaps you're back reading again. And if that's the case, maybe my readership won't have been as punished as much as I feared it would be. Awesome.
Either way, all of you can rest easy as I am back from a wild 11 days in Israel, where I saw new cities, wild landscapes and very little of the American sports scene. It should be noted, unfortunately, that I was unable to track down an Israeli national team hockey jersey -- I did find a bootleg copy of NHL 2K10 for Wii at a street market in Tel Aviv, however -- but that was hardly enough to bring down the rest of what was an amazing trip. In a visit that provided little in the way of Israeli sports, I was still able to get a feel for how the country feels for soccer and basketball. One night at a bar in Jerusalem I heard an entire street erupt after a major shot in some basketball game. Earlier that evening at our hostel, a number of Israelis were crowded around a TV for Maccabi Tel Aviv's game against Real Madrid.
Basketball would be on my mind, too, though not of the Israeli variety. No, I was primarily concerned with finding some way to learn the field for the 2010 edition of March Madness, and unsurprisingly I wasn't the only one who was anxiously awaiting the release of the NCAA Tournament bracket on Sunday night. It was actually Monday morning for us -- early Monday morning -- as our group woke up at 3 a.m. that day for a sunrise hike to the top of Masada. Because of the scarcity of internet access, keeping up was tricky, though I did see some of the more bizarre stories of the past two weeks. On the dark bus ride to our early morning trek, we hastily got word of the tournament field on one person's international blackberry, and little by little we began to figure out who we'd have in our Final Fours.
It wasn't until later that day in the southern city of Eilat that I finally got access to a pay computer in our hotel lobby and I plopped down 10 shekels to gain access to the internet and plug in my picks. This was easily the most hastily filled out and ill-researched bracket I've ever put together and I don't expect to do particularly well given the limitations, but it didn't stop me from wondering.
For 48 hours after I plugged in my picks I couldn't stop thinking about whether or not I should swap my pick on the first-round showdown between Notre Dame and Old Dominion. Old Dominion, you see, is a pretty solid team. Notre Dame, well, they're not. In fact, the Irish's losses this season include one to my Northwestern Wildcats, who were bounced from the first round of the NIT Wednesday night by Rhode Island.
For some unknown reason, I had taken the Irish anyway and, as you can see in my official picks on the left, that wound up being a mistake as I decided, despite thinking about it more than I'd like to admit, to leave Notre Dame as the pick in my bracket.
Whoops.
Perhaps the only thing that made me feel better this morning as I stepped off El Al Flight 001 from Tel Aviv to JFK this morning was that apparently everybody was wrong. Georgetown, Vanderbilt and Marquette all lost on the first day? Villanova just squeaked by Robert Morris in overtime? Three overtime games? Six games decided by three points or less? Seven low seeds winning?
Did I just sleep on a plane during the greatest opening day in March Madness history?
It looks entirely possible, and after a first day at 9-7 my bracket looks like it is thoroughly in shambles, although my Final Four (Kansas, Kentucky, Pittsburgh, Villanova) is still intact and my Sweet Sixteen has only taken one hit (Vanderbilt). Of course, that probably puts me on par with just about everyone else in America.
It's too early to panic. After all, Cornell is currently winning early in the second half, which could make me look good, and I still look better than whomever is in charge of marketing for the Buffalo Bills ticket office.
As I watch today's tourney games, I'm still trying to get caught up on what has happened in sports since I was gone and life in general. Apparently, I've missed quite a bit, including the Devils completing a season sweep of the Penguins Wednesday night in what could be a huge two points down the stretch. Even huger? The Devils did so in their totally sweet green throwback duds the team wore from 1982-1993.
I'm still going to take the next few days to catch up on everything I've missed, everything from sports to work e-mail to folding laundry to DVRed TV shows, but it was certainly worth it. Aside from the sights, the trip provided me the added bonus of meeting a few partners in crime who might be interested in knocking out some stadiums with me, and that would be a huge help down the road.
As for this blogging space, I'll do my best to get back in the swing of posting regularly and next week the regular departments will be in full swing. I'll have a story up Monday morning and my retro NFL Mailbag up Friday with all the fun in between.
Until then, I've got some jetlag to conquer. Enjoy the Madness in the meantime.
It's entirely possible that there are some people out there reading this on a regular basis who don't actually know me, but I'm highly skeptical. And if my inclinations are, in fact, correct, me pointing out on here that I'm going to Israel for 11 days on Monday is probably unnecessary, but just in case you missed the memo, I am leaving for Israel on Monday.
What does this mean for you?
Well, probably not a whole lot in your day-to-day lives. I think the vast majority of you get by without seeing or speaking to me every 24 hours, but if part of your daily routine involves reading my absolutely phenomenal musings, well you're about to take a break. I'm not sure how much internet access I'm going to have in the holy land over the next two weeks -- I'm expecting it to be almost none -- but the upshot of that is most e-mails won't be answered and it's extremely unlikely that I'll actually be able to post any blog entries.
If I do, consider it a present. From me to you.
If I have the time to post a full story before I head out -- this is looking unlikely -- I will do so Monday morning just so you have one last bit of entertainment before I'm gone.
What this all means for me, however, is that last night I realized that I will be missing perhaps the holiest of holy days on the sports calendar. Due to a massive oversight on my part, I will probably be hiking up Masada or somewhere else in the Negev at the time CBS unveils the 2010 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Bracket.
This is a pretty big issue for me, and while I don't regret missing one Selection Sunday for the opportunity to take a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Middle East, well, it's a tad jarring. Then again, maybe I've been focusing on college basketball too much. After all, as you can see to the left, my religion isn't the one that gets to have any bracket-related fun. But the unveiling of the NCAA Tournament Bracket is one of the cherished moments on the annual sports calendar, up there with Major League Baseball's Opening Day or the Super Bowl. Every single Selection Sunday for at least a decade now, I have sat by the television and waited for the moment that I got to fill out my almost certain to be incorrect predictions for March Madness.
I say certain to be incorrect because the odds of correctly predicting the entire tournament are roughly 1 in 9.22 quintillion. I, clearly, have never done this, though I ought to point out that I did correctly get the entire Final Four in 2001, picking Duke, Maryland, Arizona and Michigan State. Five years later, in the year George Mason shocked the world, I turned an almost more remarkable trick by getting all four of my Final Four teams into the Elite Eight only to see all of them lose. The year before that, I correctly tabbed the first 27 games of the tournament and finished the first round 30-2.
The two teams I missed? Kansas, which I had in the Sweet Sixteen, in an upset loss to Bucknell, and Syracuse, who I had in the Final Four, which lost in its own upset to Vermont. Without two of my deep teams, my bracket was done after one round despite my best first round ever. My hope is that I will get near a computer in enough time to fill out a bracket at some point when I'm in Israel, and Israelis are no strangers to basketball. Maccabi Tel Aviv is a noted Euroleague power, but given that I will be in the desert most of the days after the tournament field is announced I'm skeptical. To boot, I won't be watching the first day of the tournament, another one of the great sports days of the year, because I don't think my trip can afford me the time to find some sports bar in Tel Aviv that will let me watch basketball for 12 hours. Of course, given that, barring an impressive run in the Big Ten Tourney, my Northwestern Wildcats' once-promising hopes of ending their record tournament drought this year are pretty much gone, it may be just as well.
I will also be missing some birthdays while I'm gone, and for those of you who want to know how I could leave you, well, see above.
While we're on the confluence of basketball and religion, I would like to touch on one more incident some of you may have heard about last night, when the Cleveland Cavaliers distributed free snuggies to everyone in attendance at their win over the Detroit Pistons in an effort to set the Guinness World Record for most snuggies worn in one place. The disturbing part about all of this to me is not that some sports team would take advantage of their arena's size to set some remarkably goofy record. I was once part of an effort to set the record for most people crunching on potato chips at one time.
The part of this whole snuggie-related event that made me uncomfortable was that the Cavaliers wear a deep red color that en masse could be misconstrued as some sort of maroon. And the problem that comes with that, as you can see from video of the event, is that it looks like a massive gathering for some sort of doomsday cult. Seriously, what else am I supposed to think when I see 20,000 people wearing robes gathered in one place. It's either a cult preparing for the end of days or a jawa convention.
Tatooine does, however, in some ways look, I assume, like the desert in southern Israel, considering George Lucas filmed those scenes in Tunisia. And so we're back to square one. I hope all of you manage to survive without my irrepressible wit and charm until March 19th. I will try to update at some point from there if I can, but given my remote contact with the American sports scene it could be tricky. In any event, I hope all of you manage to enjoy yourselves without me until I return. Don't worry, I won't be gone too long.
One of the things that makes you feel old is when you sift through your old mail to find indicators of the past. This can take many forms: friends you no longer talk to, relatives who are no longer living, middle school teachers you no longer see for 7th period social studies or, in some peculiar cases, sports franchises that no longer exist.
This brings us to the next team on my 1995 Mail Bag list: The Los Angeles Rams.
The fact that I even have mail from the Los Angeles Rams is pretty remarkable considering when I did this project. The postmark on the envelope is May 8, 1995, which must have been before the Rams pulled up stakes for St. Louis after a protracted legal battle with the NFL, but the Rams did indeed spend that fall in the Gateway City, where they still reside. I'm not sure how I managed to get this lucky, obscure pieces of NFL history are always fun to uncover, and in fact, I had entirely forgotten that the Rams were still in L.A. when I wrote all these letters.
Given that they were moving to St. Louis shortly after, something that made Tania Ganguli and the four other remaining Rams fans in southern California cry, my guess is they were doing their best to get rid of all the remaining stationary. As per wikipedia, the Rams had waned in importance on the L.A. sports scene and were seeking a way to bring value back to the franchise as they were unable to compete in their current home stadium of Anaheim. Interestingly, the Rams' move was blocked by several owners who chalked up their struggles to incompetent management rather than a bad market.
Somehow, I don't buy Frontiere's argument.
After all, it's Los Angeles. There are people there.
The Rams had flourished for nearly 50 years in the City of Angels, but late Rams owner Georgia Frontiere had developed something of a reputation for greed, and she wanted the money. Interestingly, the Rams nearly moved to Baltimore before Frontiere settled on her home city of St. Louis, which agreed to publicly fund a new Stadium. Of course there was a bizarre period before the TWA (now Edward Jones) Dome was built in which the Rams actually played at Busch Stadium, home of the Cardinals.
In any event, the greed of Frontiere doesn't seem all that crazy since the Rams didn't send me very much. Most teams didn't, but the Rams must have been in full conservation mode because all I got was a letter thanking me for my support which informed me that the opposite side had the 1995 Los Angeles Rams Price List, informing me of the great low prices that awaited for that year's merchandise.
To be fair, this may simply be the onslaught of inflation causing me to look retrospectively, but the prices really were pretty cheap. A gameday program was just $5. A team picture? $4. A totally sweet Rams pennant? That's just $3. At this point I would love to have that simply for kitsch value. Not enough that I'm going to go on eBay and buy one, but still, you get the point. There was some pretty fun stuff available, including the 1994 Cheerleader Poster which could be had for just $6. There is a whole treasure trove of 1995 L.A. Rams merchandise that was just waiting for my purchase, though they do note that the 1995 L.A. Rams Yearbook won't be available until October.
Of course, another way to say that is "it won't ever be available because the team will no longer exist".
Yes, I know what you're thinking. "Dave, that can't possibly be real. It's just too ridiculous." Well if you doubt its authenticity, don't worry. There's also a making of video.
Really, that is the only thing missing from this list. I know it was nine years earlier, but they must have had some copies of it buried somewhere in the team's Anaheim offices. Unfortunately, though, I instead would have had to settle for one of the $1 Rams decals. The only thing that seems overpriced really is the annual subscription to official L.A. Rams press releases, which runs a hefty $40. I'm not entirely sure why someone who wasn't already working for a major news organization would have wanted this, but considering that I now pay $20 a year for Time Magazine and $35 a year for Newsweek 15 years later, well, $40 seems a bit high, no? Perhaps more alarming is that anything I ordered, according to the list, would require 4-6 weeks for delivery.
Strangely enough, I think it would take considerably longer than that now.
Yes, I know, considering that David Wright didn't actually play in yesterday's spring training game against the Braves that title doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Apparently there was rain early in the day and every Mets starter is descended from the Wicked Witch of the West so they pulled them all before first pitch. Either way, baseball is back. It may be entirely meaningless, dull, unimportant baseball, but it is still baseball.
And in this case it was winning baseball. Yeah, I was shocked, too, but sure enough here we are. The Mets topped the Braves, 4-2, which, given that it's spring training, doesn't matter at all, but first baseman of the future Ike Davis did go 2 for 3 with an RBI and a run scored. There's that to cling on to. More importantly though, it was just nice to watch some baseball. I missed green grass, the deliberate pace and Mets announcer Gary Cohen's extreme hyperbole when he described the game as a "big win" for the Mets after the final out.
I'm all for painting things in a positive light, but this may have been a wee bit extreme on Cohen's part. After all, it's the first game of spring training. It might be the absolute least important game the team plays all season. Either way it was nice to see someone swinging a bat in a mildly competitive fashion. It would have been nice to get a look at newest Met Jason Bay, but what with that tenacious rain and all, we may have to wait until this afternoon.
Considering most of you out there probably still aren't sold on the NHL, though last night's Sharks-Devils game was a pretty exciting potential Stanley Cup Finals preview, and the NBA regular season is completely inane, baseball may be the most exciting thing you've got going for you, even if it is completely meaningless.
Then again, if the ratings from Sunday's gold medal game are any indication, some of you may actually be more interested in hockey than you let on. Not every game can have the same excitement as that one did, and it was pretty amazing as far as sporting events go, but the ratings were stunning. An average of 27.6 million people watched the game in the United States, while peak viewership in the end of regulation and in overtime was 34.8 million.
In case you're wondering, Canada's entire population is just over 34 million even.
Yes, that is skewing the numbers, I know. Apparently at the moment Sidney Crosby put in the overtime winner, some 80% of the Canadian population was tuned in, but regardless, the U.S. audience was an incredible number. The average viewership was the most for a hockey game in the U.S. since America's gold medal triumph over Finland in the 1980 Lake Placid Games. The only sporting event so far this year with higher ratings, with the obvious exception of the Super Bowl, was the BCS National Championship Game between Texas and Alabama, and the gold medal game had higher ratings than the Grammys, the Rose Bowl, every World Series Game since 2004, every NBA Finals game since 1998 and every NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four game since 1998.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
It remains to be seen if this will create a healthy carryover to the NHL's regular season and postseason, though there seemed to be mostly healthy crowds at the 12 games being played last night, but if my friends are any indication, and that's probably a good enough sample size to extrapolate over a nation of 300 million people, welcome back hockey.
What's even more remarkable to me is that, while this may encourage a large increase in attendance at hockey games down the rest of the regular season, people still seem to be clinging to nationalism in the aftermath of Sunday's game. This became most remarkable to me at last night's Penguins-Sabres game. Unfortunately, we were denied a Sidney Crosby-Ryan Miller rematch by Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff, who wisely decided to give the overworked Miller the night off, but what was most interesting was the Pittsburgh crowd's reaction during the pregame Olympic ceremony. I have no doubt that Sid will always be the tops in that city as far as hockey goes, perhaps with the exception of Mario Lemieux, and while Crosby did get a healthy cheer when he was mentioned during the introductions, the largest ovation went to Miller.
Of course, I'm not naive enough to see the NHL's modest gains in attention as on par with the attention we give to the NBA in this country, even though the run-of-the-mill NBA game can't compete with the run-of-the-mill NHL game in my opinion. That said, I'm not sure the NHL would garner nearly as much attention if Sidney Crosby or Alex Ovechkin chose to change their number, but leave it to Lebron James to get all of ESPN in a tizzy over switching his numerals.
I think if this is a sincere attempt to honor Michael Jordan and not sell a slew of new jerseys, that's all well and good, but I can't help but also think there's a little too much emphasis put on MJ's numbers. Yes, I know Wayne Gretzky's 99 is retired throughout the entire NHL, but Gretzky transcended his sport in a way Jordan never did -- and if you think I'm being ridiculous we'll sit down and have a chat some time -- and furthermore, I wouldn't even oppose Jordan's 23 being retired throughout the NBA in homage, but several teams have taken it upon themselves to do so without a mandate. The Miami Heat for instance have retired Jordan's 23 out of respect for his contributions to the game despite the fact that he's never played for the franchise.
Of course, the Heat have also retired Dan Marino's no. 13 out of respect for his accomplishments despite not actually playing pro basketball. Perhaps they're a bad example.
Either way, the NHL appears to have a long way to go to reach this kind of hysteria over its stars, which really is too bad since it's a phenomenal sport to watch. If Sunday's ratings are any indication, though, maybe it's starting to make the climb.
And if not, there's always spring training baseball for me to take solace in.
The dull box of Brendan Byrne Arena has played a much larger role in my youth as the first home of my New Jersey Devils, and likewise Madison Square Garden for the New York Rangers, but remarkably enough, I had actually made my first visit to the Byrne a month before that fateful loss to Toronto, when I went to see the Devils’ co-tentants, the New Jersey Nets. My first professional basketball game was on November 11, 1995. That morning I was playing in a pee wee football game in Summit, New Jersey, when a parent of one of my teammates offered my father their tickets for that night. I had never been to an NBA game before, so I was fairly excited, but despite that, I remember shockingly little about the game itself.
The Nets were playing the Sacramento Kings, this much I recall, and the Nets won by an 86-84 score as the Kings fired up a three-point shot at the buzzer that bounced off the rim. The more impressionable aspect, however, was the horrific weather that night. The Meadowlands of northern New Jersey are a large flat area where wind can pick up and wreak havoc, which has often been an element of difficulty for punters when the Giants and Jets play across the parking lot. On that particular night, when there was a massive thunderstorm, my father, my friend Matt Nedostup and I sprinted from the arena to our car, at one point on the trip seeking refuge behind a parked 18-wheeler as a break from the swirling winds. By the time we were once again under a roof we were completely soaked.
Much of the in-game experience that night is a total mystery to me. What I remember of the arena itself has long been pounded into my head by my many trips there to see the Devils, and the inside feels fairly similar except the center of the action is wood rather than ice. I’ve only been to a handful of Nets games in my life, though a game in 2003 between the Nets and Pistons does come to mind. The Nets were a double casualty of both only a scant interest in the NBA in my childhood and the fact that when I finally did get sucked into professional basketball, it would be the Knicks that I’d call my team.
This was a bad decision. I first paid attention to the Knicks in 1994 during their seven-game loss in the NBA Finals to Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets. I rooted for them and remember watching Patrick Ewing standing on the scorer’s table and soaking in the cheers after defeating the Indiana Pacers for the Eastern Conference title that year. But I also liked Michael Jordan and the Bulls. How could you not? I wasn’t the most enthusiastic follower -- really I was mostly a fan of the legendary NBA on NBC theme music -- and didn’t really settle myself as a fan of a particular team until 1999. The first half of that season had been cut short by a lockout, one of many monetary squabbles between two different sets of rich men that rarely get any sympathy or understanding from the public.
In reality, collective bargaining agreements do broach a number of serious issues and determining how to divide the pain is no small matter.
By the time the playoffs rolled around for the shortened campaign, the Knicks snuck in as the No. 8 seed, and did so as a fairly different group from the one that made the finals five years earlier. John Starks was gone in favor of the energetic and controversial Latrell Sprewell, likely the biggest difference between the two teams. Sprewell was so deemed controversial because in December 1997 he had been told by P.J. Carlesimo, his coach with the Golden State Warriors, that he needed to “put a little mustard” on his passes.
Sprewell responded by choking Carlesimo.
Sprewell wouldn’t play again for 14 months until the Warriors dealt him to the Knicks at the start of the shortened 1999 season. With Spree, a self-described changed man, providing energy off the bench while Larry Johnson and Allan Houston created from the perimeter, the Knicks stunned the NBA with a remarkable postseason run that saw them get past the top-seeded Heat on a late runner by Houston in Game 5. New York was only the second No. 8 to advance to the second round, after the 1994 Denver Nuggets, but they would be the first to reach the conference finals after a sweep of the No. 4-seeded Atlanta Hawks.
One round later against the infinitely clutch Reggie Miller and the hated Pacers, the Knicks would become the first No. 8 to reach the NBA Finals in a dramatic six-game series that featured Larry Johnson’s miracle four-point play in Game 3 and forever cemented Sprewell’s place in the hearts of Knicks fans. The Knicks would fall in five games to a vastly superior Spurs team that featured the almost unbeatable frontcourt of Tim Duncan and David Robinson, but my mind was made up.
This was my team. I was a Knicks fan.
For the next decade I would wonder how I could have gone so wrong. While the local Nets would trade for future Hall of Fame point guard Jason Kidd, who led them to two straight Finals appearances in 2002 and 2003, the Knicks would wallow in mediocrity until hiring Isiah Thomas to be team President in 2003, a move with longterm consequences so far reaching and so disastrous that by the time he was forced out in 2008, New Yorkers were wishing they were merely wallowing in mediocrity again.
To recount Thomas’ myriad mistakes and poor decisions is an interminably frustrating exercise in masochism. During his tenure, Thomas traded for former Coney Island phenom Stephon Marbury, a man with a long history of being a difficult ball hog as well as a locker room cancer. Marbury’s greatest accomplishment as a Knick might have been providing comic fodder during a sexual harassment lawsuit against Thomas and the front office when he admitted on the stand that he had lured an intern into his truck for sex. Not to be outdone, Thomas also traded two unprotected first-round draft picks to the Chicago Bulls for Eddy Curry, a vastly disappointing high draft pick with a known heart condition. When asked about how Curry could improve his rebounding once, his former coach Scott Skiles said, “Jump.” One wonders how difficult it was for Bulls GM John Paxson to hide his laughter when Thomas first called up to offer the deal.
The Knicks would be horrendously bad during Thomas’ tenure, and moves to add Zach Randolph and sign Jerome James to a five-year $30 million deal only compounded the pain. James is often forgotten when recounting Thomas’ mistakes, but he may supplant Curry as the most awful. James would only play 90 games for the Knicks in three and a half seasons while averaging a whopping 7.72 minutes per game. At one game I attended against the Milwaukee Bucks, the Knicks were being thoroughly handled when James finally made his first appearance late in the fourth quarter. Much of the depleted crowd cheered wildly whenever he touched the ball and completely erupted in cruel mockery when he actually score a basket.
As one fan yelled from behind me during the next possession, “Give it to Jerome! He’s got the hot hand!”
At another game against the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2007, my friend Bert and I attended fully prepared with grocery bags to wear over our heads. Unfortunately, that night was one of those rare instances when the Knicks actually defeated a team vastly superior to themselves, but we still took a picture for our records, and were asked to pose with the bags on for a photo by some visiting Cavs fans to boot.
While my first Knicks game came after their inspiring run to the 1999 Finals, it was actually before the Thomas Circus did everything short of literally burn down Madison Square Garden to ruin the franchise. It came on January 24, 2002, on a night when I clearly shouldn’t have gone. A junior in high school, I had my AP U.S. History midterm waiting for me the next morning, and after settling in for a night of cramming everything from a different Marbury in Marbury v. Madison to McCulloch v. Maryland, I got a phone call from my friend Jon Weg telling me Bert had given him two tickets to that night’s game. Clearly, the more practical option would have been studying for the exam, but who was I to turn down a gift?
To maintain some foolish notion that I was actually studying, I brought my notebook with me as I walked to the train station and met Weg on one of the cars. I assume my mother wouldn’t have allowed this, but fortunately for me she was at some sort of meeting at the time. When Weg and I sat in the car, I distinctly recall him having a terse interaction with the conductor. While Weg is generally something of a provocateur, this all fell on the conductor. The cost of a round trip ticket at the time was $8.50 and Weg handed the conductor $10 and two quarters, expecting to get two dollars back. Instead the conductor gave him back his 50 cents along with the remaining $1.50 in small coins.
“I wanted bills!” Weg told him.
“Well, you can enjoy your quarters.”
Weg drove home his disappointment by loudly reading the conductor’s number off of his hat and saving it to his cell phone. For whatever reason, the conductor seemed undeterred by the threat of a complaint being filed by a 16-year-old, rightfully so perhaps. Weg never did file a complaint, but as he showed me at a Mets game later that year, he kept the conductor’s number saved for months in case the mood struck him.
Unlike the Nets, this game I remember quite thoroughly. Knicks games at Madison Square Garden, when the team isn’t atrocious, are an exciting affair. The Garden and the tenacious fan base create an atmosphere that is difficult to replicate when you combine both the intensity and the intimacy provided by a smaller arena. On this particular night the Knicks were coming off a dominating win over the Toronto Raptors, and responded by giving the fans a tremendously flat first half against the Phoenix Suns. After the second quarter the Knicks trailed by 18 points and the crowd rained down a deluge of boos as the players went to the locker room. My only joy had come from taunting the Suns’ Bo Outlaw because he had such a peculiar free throw shooting form and the Garden PA announcer referred to him by his given name of Charles.
This was far different from the later years when a poor performance might have been expected. The Knicks had made the postseason 15 straight years and were only three seasons removed from a Finals appearance. The Knicks weren’t in the midst of a good season, but this still wasn’t the team I had been used to watching on TV for the past few years. According to the game story the next day, Knicks coach Don Chaney apparently unloaded on the team in the locker room at halftime.
And they responded.
The Knicks came out blazing in the third quarter and turned the tables with lockdown defense that held the Suns to just 33 points in the second half. New York rallied for a 96-91 win much to the excitement of the gathered crowd. Interestingly, this makes the Knicks the only one of my four favorite North American sports teams to win the first game I saw them play in person. Weg, ever the friendly and bubbly sort, was hugging and high-fiving strangers all around him as the final seconds of the clock ticked away. I joined in the fracas while frantically reminding myself not to leave the history notebook I had stashed under my seat.
I came home and did a poor job of forcing myself to study, or at least I think I did. The academic part of the evening is hazy at this point. But I do remember letting it slip to my math teacher, Mr. Fox, that I had shirked my studious responsibilities for the sake of a basketball team that was 10 games under .500 at the time I decided to go. Mr. Fox was a great teacher, a good man and one of the primary reasons I consider myself to have succeeded so well in high school and later college. However, this time we didn’t particularly see eye to eye. You never spoke out of turn in Mr. Fox’s class, nor did you ever show up late or without your homework done. To be fair, he was only expecting the same dedication when it came to academics from his students that he gave to them. And when I told him I had attended a basketball game instead of studying his silent disapproval was a clear sign of how he felt.
But he was also a Rangers fan, so clearly he couldn’t be right on everything. Moreover, I don’t know how I did on that exam, but Dr. Conlon, my history teacher, never knew as far as I know. And that’s probably a good thing since she wrote me a letter of recommendation when I applied to college later that year. As for Mr. Fox, he must have gotten past my irresponsibility. He wrote me a recommendation, too.
I'm sure you all fondly recall Saturday when I stated my big concern with Canada facing the U.S. in today's Gold Medal Game because I didn't think the Americans could knock off a more talented Canadian team on its own soil.
I don't know how exactly to quantify or describe all of the emotions and tensions that came throughout what was, without question, one of the greatest hockey games I've ever watched, but I'm going to try. Sort of.
This game was played with the type of taut atmosphere you find in Stanley Cup Finals and Super Bowls. In fact, Super Bowl XLII was the last time I recalled being as emotionally involved or excited in a sporting event. I spent much of the afternoon gnawing on fingernails and sitting with nervous energy. I was unable to sit near the end of the third period and when Zach Parise tied the game with 24.4 seconds remaining the outburst of joy was not only palpable but loud. Very.
This was a game that created that type of atmosphere and bred that emotion, and what may have been most remarkable about it, was that nearly everyone I knew, for whatever reason, couldn't stop watching despite however high or low their fandom might be. In fact, my friend Jenn, who aside from attending a Bruins-Devils game with me in Boston a year ago, has almost never talked with me about hockey, was mentioned on that bastion of hockey news known as BBC Sport for her opinion on the game (see 1320).
In spite of falling behind by two goals, I was never convinced the U.S. was out of the game, if for no other reason than their consistent, attacking forecheck was bound to break for them at some point. That break happened when Ryan Kesler, who continued to inspire anger amongst the Vancouver faithful, deflected a shot from the point in the second period to make it 2-1.
What followed in the third period was nearly 20 minutes of angst as the Canadians played one of their few strong third periods of the tournament, keeping the U.S. at bay and very nearly breaking the game open on more than one occasion. While Canada didn't pepper Ryan Miller like it did a week ago, were it not for his stellar play -- he would be named tournament MVP afterwards -- this game would have been over far earlier. But Miller kept it close long enough just in time for Parise to force the extra session, and it seems dramatically unfortunate that the one soft goal Miller gave up the entire tournament happened to be the game-winner from Sidney Crosby, who will never have to buy a drink in Canada again.
Hockey's golden boy capped off a legendary game, which, if you must find anything wrong with it, can only come from Crosby getting some help from the referee on the winner because the puck hitting the official's skate set up the play. I do not want to seem bitter -- my teams have benefited by lucky bounces more than once and it's part of the game -- but it's fairly clear the refs skate altered the play.
While the U.S. was expected not to medal according to most prognosticators, one could argue that a guarantee of Silver at worst was already an impressive accomplishment. But to get so close only to is difficult to handle as a fan and clearly as a player. Coach Ron Wilson may have had a point in saying the best teamdoesn't always take gold, and Zach Parise, whose four goals in the elimination rounds may have served as the budding star's coming out party, went so far as to say, "It sucks."
Perhaps to make matters even worse, Barack Obama now has to kowtow to Canadian Prime Minister, and musical genius, Stephen Harper by buying him a case of Molson Canadian beer. As one of my coworkers put it, they should have wagered healthcare. At least that Yuengling will be staying in the U.S. Besides, Harper probably has bigger concerns to worry about.
Despite their unfortunate end for me, the Olympics provided many cool moments, such as fan-inspired art of those totally sweet 1960 U.S. hockey uniforms. Not to be left out of that are those phenomenal pants wore by the Norwegian men's curling team, which, if I ever find myself curling on any sort of regular basis, I will wear. In case you're wondering, you can get them here. Coolest of all, however, was listening to the Canadian crowd sing O Canada after the men triumphed in that gold medal curling match against Norway. No, it's not my country, but few things can create such goosebumps.
Something that created goosebumps for me of a different kind came during the closing ceremonies, when the Russian handoff for the 2014 Games in Sochi brought on an imperialistic and frightening rendition of the Russian national anthem, which, in case you're wondering, was also the anthem of the Soviet Union.
I did enjoy the self-deprecating humor of the ceremony's first moments, and I will admit to being touched when Michael J. Fox came out to speak to the crowd in a somewhat similar moment to when Muhammed Ali lit the torch at the 1996 Atlanta Games, but beyond that, most of the festivities seemed, well, silly.
And with that, the Olympics, almost as quick as they started, are done. While the Canadians did experience some controversy in the first week of the Games amid concerns that their drive to "Own the Podium" was bearing little fruit, Canada wound up breaking the record for gold medals at a single winter games, though the U.S. did take the overall medal count with 37, the largest total in history and the first time the U.S. topped the winter medal count since the 1932 Lake Placid Games.
Then again, when I look back at the Vancouver Games, all I'll really remember is that Canada took the only gold that matters. With this experience in the Americans' back pockets, however, maybe, just maybe, they'll finally take it in Sochi.
