Steve Popper: The Knicks' window for success has opened, but it can close very fast
SAN ANTONIO
You want to believe it will last forever.
Madison Square Garden bringing the ghosts of the past to life again. The celebrations in the streets. The watch parties bringing together people and for a moment, putting aside the struggles of the real world. The players’ names now known even to the causal fans, from street signs last year to billboards around the city.
The Knicks are back in the NBA Finals for the first time in 27 years and it feels like a Golden Era, the kind that grandparents tell the kids about when Willis Reed and Walt Frazier led a team loaded with future Hall of Famers to two titles in a four-year span.
Now, it is Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns serving as the heads of a deep and talented roster, stars built for this moment and beyond.
And you look at the ages, the contracts that are lined up to keep the core of the team in place for years to come, and it feels like this is just the beginning of a magical era. But as the Knicks prepare for the start of the NBA Finals Wednesday night in San Antonio, I present a cautionary tale, a brief respite before you resume the cheering, before you see stores selling out of the blue and orange merchandise.
Nothing lasts forever.
The Knicks were built for this moment, but also built for a window, a stretch of seasons in which the roster was assembled by team president Leon Rose and his front office with the intention of holding them together. They have resisted the criticism and the questions — and really, never even addressed the questions — and forged ahead with a team that now has reached the place where dreams are made.
But the true lesson is, even if you can imagine this lasting forever, or at least as long as Brunson’s contract, the opportunity that is in front of the Knicks now is one that can’t be wasted.
You win now because there are no promises for tomorrow.
Just look at the teams that have been dismissed from the playoffs while the Knicks and Spurs advanced. Two years ago the Boston Celtics were champions and the measuring stick every team believed they had to jump over to contend.
The Knicks knocked them out in the second round of the playoffs. And in an admission to the reality of the collective bargaining agreement, after Jayson Tatum suffered a torn Achilles in the loss to the Knicks, the Celtics dismantled much of the roster for cost savings, and were knocked out in the first round this season.
In their place last season the Oklahoma City Thunder emerged as champions, bringing to fruition the draft pick- loaded build of a franchise. With a young roster and so many assets, it seemed a fait accompli that they would rule the NBA for years. But a young Spurs squad pushed them aside with a faster than expected rise to contention.
Dynasties are predicted and they seem to fall just as quickly. An injury. Unhappiness. The salary cap. Anything can happen to spoil the best-laid plans.
“I don’t think anybody who has made the Finals would say they don’t feel they can win it,” Towns said.
“And I also think that, of course, you know when you get an opportunity like this, you have to maximize it. You never know if you get another chance. You never know what life has in store for all of us. And you know these opportunities are very far and few between, and you got to make the most of them.”
There is some nostalgia in connecting this matchup to the last time the Knicks were in the Finals and facing the same opponent. But that Knicks squad limped into the Finals with Patrick Ewing sidelined and Larry Johnson hobbling his way onto the floor. They were dispatched in five games and maybe winning a game against that powerhouse Spurs squad was an accomplishment.
This time the Knicks arrive in the Finals somehow an underdog, riding not just an 11-game winning streak but doing it in historic fashion, blowing out the opposition. They are rested with the back-to-back series sweeps while San Antonio was in wars with Minnesota and Oklahoma City to reach this point. The Knicks have experienced players and are healthy, other than Mitchell Robinson, who might serve as a cautionary tale of what can go wrong, being injured outside of games and practice.
When the Knicks lost in the Eastern Conference Finals last season they knew that they would not pick up where they left off, that they are sent back to the start. And that same reality holds now that they moved a step further.
You can see from the play on the floor, from the one-sided wins, the waste-no-moment closeout blowouts in each series, that this group has a maturity and a respect for the moment.
That moment is here now.
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
