It's time to take it easy. It's time to have fun. For NBA fans, late July is the time to catch summer league games in Las Vegas, make predictions about final training camp rosters, replay your favorite games from the previous year on YouTube, and let the baseball part of your sports soul take all the stress away.
For Knicks fans, that means an early look at Cam Payne's inimitable jump shot — and how it was incredibly numerous late in last year's series against the Sixers — and daily progress reports from Tyler Kollek (it'll only be a matter of time before we start calling him “Jalen Jr.” around here) and Pacome Dadiette.
Certainly, that meant reading Steph Bondy's report in Wednesday's Post that Isaiah Hartenstein was seriously considering the possibility of taking a pay cut to stay with the Knicks and maybe even cursing all things Oklahoma…
(Try this:
“Ohhhh! Klahoma…”
“Where the Thunder got Hartenstein
“And their shaking deer
“The 5S was fluid.
“And there were holes all over the Knicks' front line…”
But mainly, it's a time to speculate. A time to dream. That's the fun of the NBA Power Ratings, which you'll also find in this paper. The ratings have the Knicks in fourth place, which seems to be pretty consistent with many of the preseason odds. The consensus is that the Celtics are the favorites to win, and rightly so. The Thunder are right around the corner, along with the Nuggets and Timberwolves in the West. The 60s and 70s are in a virtual battle for the fourth spot.
With most oddsmakers currently priced at +800 or +825, this would be the Knicks' most favorable preseason numbers since 2001, when they were consensus top-four at +700 (a season in which they won 48 games, lost to the Raptors in the first round of the playoffs, and then ended in a near 25-year dark age).
It doesn't matter if you never bet a cent or curse every single BetFanKings365 ad that floods your TV screen. It's proof that the optimism surrounding the Knicks isn't just parochial. It's not just here that the addition of Mikal Bridges is being celebrated, Jalen Brunson's signing is being praised, and OG Anunoby's retention and Julius Randle's return are dominating basketball conversations in the middle of baseball season.
The Knicks are a team that is being talked about nationally.
Going back a really long time ago, that That wasn't the case in the late '90s and early 2000s. Carmelo Anthony's extraordinary 54-win season took place in the deepest shadow of the Heat's mini-dynasty (and the Spurs' actual dynasty), and even looking back at the Patrick Ewing-led teams of the early-to-mid '90s, those teams felt like unwilling stand-ins for TV networks that quickly grew tired of the 81-76 series and were eager for Michael Jordan to return.
And if you start going back, it doesn't stop until about 1974. The championship team ran out of fuel, beat the Bullets out of the playoffs out of habit and muscle memory, and got swept by the Celtics. Willis Reed and Dave DeBusschere retired soon after. The rest of the lineup soon joined them. And the Knicks have been mostly an opening band ever since.
Again, it is I never have Not so around here, where the Knicks remain a singular factor for most fans in a city whose fanbase is divided along the lines of Yankees/Mets, Giants/Jets and Rangers/Islanders/Devils.
(No, this is not a pointless criticism of the Nets, just a factual statement.)
Soon this situation will get more complicated. The Knicks will be out before we know it. You'll be worrying about injuries right away and this guy complaining about the minutes and that guy complaining about the touches. Some of you might wait until November to call for Tom Thibodeau to be fired. It's going to happen soon.
For now, you can relax. You can tell yourself that a big three of Brunson/Randle/Bridges is better than Embiid/Maxey/George. You can fantasize about OG, healthy, taking turns guarding Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Kristaps Porzingis on a cold winter's night. You can tell yourself that Jericho Sims will show up to training camp looking like 85 percent of what Hartenstein looked like. That's certainly the best-case scenario.
Good. Now is the time to imagine the best-case scenario. This is the time to not stress about a losing streak. This is the time to relax if you're a Knicks fan. This is the time to have fun.
