Are Knicks New York’s last big sports hope after Nets, Yankees debacles?
With the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Nets on the brink of losing their superstars, it’s fair to ask one question. Are the New York Knicks the best hope for success in New York? Before someone comments on the New York Mets, I’m aware they’re good — but the Mets, not unlike the Knicks, are never New York’s biggest hope for success.
The New York Knicks are actually never the biggest hope for success in anything ever, so — article over? Just kidding, of course, but the truth is, they’re rarely, if ever, the best hope for a championship team.
The mediocre start has a lot of fans shouting that the Knicks are “mid,” as the kids say, and although I am 21, the Knicks have mentally made me 88 years old. The mid label makes sense, though. They’re certainly threatening NBA purgatory.
NBA purgatory is the worst spot to be. You’re nowhere near good enough to succeed but too good to tank and will always end up as a late-draft lottery team or a low-end first-round exit in the playoffs.
Some of New York’s other teams aren’t impressing
Both the Yankees and Mets have their issues. Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner is doing a bang-up job at tarnishing what his dad built as GM Brian Cashman is keeping his puppet in Aaron Boone as the manager, despite Boone being awful at his job. Also, the Yankees will probably lose Aaron Judge to the San Francisco Giants, so there goes the franchise player. The Mets, on the other hand, blew it in marvelous fashion this year in an implosion at the 25th hour, and Jacob DeGrom is a free agent, which does not help.
Ok, now that I’ve promoted every single sports team in NY that we New Yorkers care about… oh wait, we forgot the Knicks’ little brother who lives in mom’s basement, the Brooklyn Nets.
The Nets are a disaster. Kyrie Irving is suspended for the foreseeable future for a reason we all know. There’s no need to go into it more, mainly because it’s a whole can of worms and worms are gross.
The team gutted its entire roster for James Harden, who asked to be traded 13 months after arriving, and now the Nets have essentially traded eight first-round picks for Ben Simmons, Seth Curry, and Royce O’Neal. Also, Kevin Durant is probably playing his final season in Brooklyn, so this is a dumpster fire that’s about to get gasoline thrown all over it.
Where the Knicks are right now is not great, but it is not awful. They’re not a team with one superstar and nothing else. The team is mostly young and will improve with time. The Knicks have young talent and trade assets, and there are guys down the line that they could potentially target and use those trade assets on.
Are the Knicks the best hope for success in New York? Probably not. The New York Jets are super young and already look incredibly dominant. The New York Rangers have shown more success. The Yankees do not rebuild — they reload.
The Knicks have a path to success, but where they are right now is not favorable enough to say they’re New York’s biggest hope. The Knicks can become the biggest hope for a New York championship, but they’re a superstar trade away still.