Last night, the New York Knicks https://www.nba.com/news/2026-nba-finals-prove-historically-clutch”; target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>won the NBA Championship, their first in more than half a century. I was not able to watch the game, which took place during the flight, as I had planned. My United Flight had no live TV and nonworking internet. I discovered the result at border control when the local agent there looked at my passport, saw the address and asked, “Did you see the game?”
“No TV on the plane. Did they do it?”
“They won. Jalen Brunson MVP.”
This was in stark contrast to how things used to be. Back in my day, kids, you didn’t have random Londoners giving you American sports results in real time. In fact, you had trouble finding scores even if you searched far and wide for them. Which tunneled my brain directly back just over three decades.
In 1994, I LOVED the Knicks. I followed those early 90s Knicks teams as passionately as I’ve ever followed any sports teams, even though my overall basketball fandom didn’t even approach my love of baseball or American football. As for my horse racing fandom, in 1994 I didn’t know https://www.racingmuseum.org/hall-of-fame/horse/holy-bull-fl”; target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Holy Bull from Red Bull. . .shit, bad example. That hadn’t even come to the U.S. yet. It was a different time. Mobile phones existed, but were still close to cinder-block size, and while you could get on the internet in a computer lab, it wasn’t widely available.
Anyway, back to the Knicks. For whatever reason, and I hope it’s not just that we’re a city of closet frontrunners (I do worry about this), we all loved those Knicks teams. Objectively, they were kind of brutal — an ugly, thuggish, physical style of basketball that was more or less legislated out of existence shortly thereafter. But we were great heels to the Bulls’ babyfaces. They had all that TALENT. Where was the joy in that? We had a legitimate, beautifully flawed Hall of Famer in Ewing, the best enforcer going in Oakley, and then there was the maddeningly streaky John Starks, in many ways a symbol for the city itself (He’s great! Wait, he sucks. He sucks. No, he’s great!)
As a transfer student in college, I didn’t get to do a year abroad. This was and remains a disappointment to me. In lieu of that, I planned a six-week solo trip to Europe for after graduation, figuring I’d bomb around, visit various friends, do the postmodern version of the old Tour. I am proud to rock the cliche and tell you it was one of the best things I ever did in my life, it changed me as a person as much or more so than four years at college.
But part of me regretted the trip the moment I booked it. The one downside of my trip to Europe, you see, was that 1994 was the year the Knicks were gonna win it all. Jordan, our nemesis, was off playing baseball. Surely, we could now beat the Bulls and take our rightful place among the NBA elite, champions at long last. Honestly, we never should have beaten the Bulls, even with Jordan out https://www.mlb.com/milb/history/michael-jordan”; target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>dropping cans-of-corn in Birmingham. The night before I left for London the first time, we ended up squeaking by the Bulls on a call that has become famous for how historically bad it was — https://www.espn.com/nba/playoffs/2009/columns/story?columnist=adande_ja&page=Hollins-090529″; target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Hue Hollins whistled a phantom foul on Scottie Pippen for a touch on Hubert Davis’s follow-through, well after the shot was gone, sending Davis to the line and giving us the game (NOTE: I am not a big fan of using first person plural constructions when describing my relationship to sports teams but those Knicks were US).
The Knicks drew the Pacers in the Conference Finals and as I made my way through London and Scotland and the Lake District, I’d periodically call my brother Steven for results — he was 14 at the time and diligently VHS taped a few of the games for me. I can vividly recall using a key Knicks loss in that series as an excuse to get away from a clingy, stringy German girl in a hostel somewhere near Dove Cottage, I ended up at a bed and breakfast being sexually harassed by a gaggle of septuagenarian ladies from Liverpool. Apparently, I was quite the catch in ‘94. If you were malnourished or over 70.
If not for Steven, I’d have been pretty much hosed in terms of finding results. The local papers didn’t have them. I did manage to find CNN in a couple of places and get some highlights (That’s how I saw news of the https://www.nhl.com/rangers/news/stanley-cup-finals-flashback-june-14-1994/c-493982″; target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Rangers’ Stanley Cup win. As an Islanders fan who didn’t see it for himself, I still like to think it was a hoax. Like how the moon landings took place at a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw”; target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>sound stage in Arizona).
One rainy night I stood in an old school red telephone box on the streets of Oxford, and Steven informed me we had won Game 7 behind https://www.nba.com/news/legendary-moments-history-patrick-ewing-new-york-knicks-finals-1994″; target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Ewing’s 20+ boards and 24 points. I whooped and hollered. Next stop: https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/199406220HOU.html”; target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>the Rockets in the Finals. I stayed in touch with what was going on for the first part of the Series via Steven, and it was tight.
When I ferried over to Normandy (50 years to the day after a different landing there), things got worse. Steven and I stayed in touch for a while but as the series drew to a close, I was having trouble with the payphones for a reason I can no longer recall. It all came down to Game 7. The game had been over for hours, I had no idea what had happened. NBA garb was apparently somewhat fashionable at the time, at least in as much as I saw a couple of French kids wearing Bulls and Lakers merch. I stopped a couple of them asking if they knew who won that critical final game. They had no clue what I was talking about. Finally, after miles of walking around in search of one, I found a paper, an English paper, that looked like it might have the result. After much searching, I found it, buried deep within the far reaches of the sports pages: one line of black agate type that dropped my stomach to the floor and made my soul congeal like gross grease: Houston 90, New York 84.
This is all a VERY long way to contrast that experience with what I experienced this morning. Sometimes, the more things change, the more things change.
I pumped my fist and went to reclaim my bag. I am thrilled for the Knicks and New York, the basketball capital of the world. This is despite not really being able to call myself a Knicks fan any more. You see, back in 2012, a certain other NBA franchise moved to within a 10-minute walk from the Brooklyn Bunker. As a result of some bar world connection, I fluked a ticket to what was supposed to be the first game at the new arena – Knicks vs Nets. In the end, that game was https://nba.nbcsports.com/2012/11/01/postponed-nets-home-opener-against-the-knicks-rescheduled-for-nov-26/”; target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>rescheduled as a result of Hurricane Sandy and didn’t take place until late November.
I showed up to that game not sure who I was cheering for. My love of those 90s Knicks teams had faded but I was still in theory a Knicks fan. I loved Gus Johnson’s radio calls and got as excited as anybody earlier that year about https://www.theringer.com/2022/02/04/nba/jeremy-lin-linsanity-knicks-asian-american-representation-10th-anniversary”; target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Linsanity. But Lin was gone and the Knicks had been feeling for years like a team whose ceiling was a first-round playoff exit.
I got caught up in the excitement. I loved the look of the court, the uniforms, the attention to detail put into the production of the game. The kicker was the fact that I was so close to home. This was the spot the Dodgers were supposed to move before O’Malley – and moreover https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/why-robert-moses-is-to-blame-for-losing-the-brooklyn-dodgers-to-la”; target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Robert Moses – put their knives in the back of Brooklyn sports culture. I cheered for the Nets that night.
It didn’t really take. I went to a number of games over the next few seasons and cheered on the Nets. I became disenchanted with team management and what I saw as many personnel moves that made the team’s ceiling a second-round playoff exit. I still like them, but I also still kinda like the Knicks. When it comes to the NBA, I am a man without a country. Because I know what it’s like to be a real fan, I will confess that I don’t get to share this Knicks win the way I would have back in the day. When I think about how 1994 me would feel today, I regret this particular life choice.
Having admitted that, I am thrilled for the Knicks, pumped for New York, and grateful that sports generally have become so international over these last few decades. It’s the very reason I am here this week to present international racing to an American audience and give a view on the American horses to the international audience.
Thanks for reading, and make sure you check out our Ascot coverage on the site. Catch me on the world feed all week long.
