The anticipation was 25 years in the making.
Matthew Converse, a New York Knicks fan his entire life, had only heard about the glory days. He never experienced them. Stories of the teams from the 1970s, when New York was on top of the basketball world, were passed down from his father. The Patrick Ewing-era Knicks of the 1990s were celebrated more than a decade after the window closed and Converse was born.
Converse wanted to feel what those fans felt, what his father often described. This year, in Converse’s mind, was the first time he believed it could happen, that he and his father, Floyd, would be able to share the success of their favorite team together.
“I was really excited for this season,” Converse said.
Last season, New York captured its first 50-win season in over 10 years. A gritty, no-nonsense squad that captured the essence of New York City was one of the NBA’s juggernauts before injuries caught up to them and their season ended in the second round at the hands of the Indiana Pacers. Then the summer came, and the Knicks made a big trade for Mikal Bridges and then another for Karl-Anthony Towns.
Converse went into the season believing he’d see his team do things that it had never done in his lifetime. A year later, with the regular season now complete and New York’s quest to end a 25-year Eastern Conference finals drought beginning, Converse’s tune has changed a little bit.
“Does anyone on this call think we can beat the Celtics in a seven-game series?” Floyd Converse asked.
“No,” Matthew Converse, now 26, said with a laugh.
Before the start of the most anticipated season in 20 years, The Athletic spoke with multiple people about their journey through Knicks fandom and why excitement has heightened. With the regular season closing, we reached back out to those same fans to gauge the sentiments around New York now that 82 games are in the books.
The belief in this team and organization has shifted, but not all is lost. After all, it’s hard to simply dismiss what the Knicks have done this year. Winning 50-plus games for back-to-back seasons, and 47 the year before that, is a far cry from the days when this organization was posting 17-win seasons, twice, in the previous decade. Head coach Tom Thibodeau has helped flip the culture of a franchise whose city name has kept the team relevant for most of the last 20 years. However, with the success over the last two years and New York relinquishing most of its meaningful assets this summer to add Bridges and Towns to a core of Jalen Brunson, OG Anunoby and Josh Hart, the Knicks have gone from a cool story to a team with expectations.
And when that transition happens, when a team is no longer a surprise and has seriously invested in its lofty goals, the mood changes. Things aren’t, well, as cute.
“It’s definitely been a very up-and-down year,” Matthew Converse said. “I don’t think this team has lived up to the expectations, at least right now. We’ll see what happens in the playoffs. I was thinking we’d be a little bit stronger, especially defensively. We see games where we can’t guard anybody. The offensive rebounding, which is how we won games last year, we really don’t see anymore. I’m disappointed in these two categories. And I feel like we’re missing an edge, as well, that we had last year with guys like Donte (DiVincenzo) and (Isaiah) Hartenstein. But, like I said, nothing really matters until the playoffs.”
In talking with Floyd and Matthew Converse, one of the letdowns in their minds this season is that this team isn’t as easy to latch onto as last season’s squad. It’s more talented, without question. However, the ruggedness that the team of a year ago carried isn’t as present. This year’s Knicks team was one of the best offenses in basketball, finishing with the fifth-best offensive rating. However, on nights when shots couldn’t fall or they went up against premier defenses, their inconsistent defense wasn’t always able to carry them to victory against the good teams, and never against the great teams in the league. New York finished 13th in defensive rating this year after ranking ninth at this time last year. The team from a season ago was one of the best defenses in basketball and won in a multitude of ways.
“I feel like last year’s team captured the New York spirit so well,” Matthew Converse said. “No matter how much adversity we dealt with, that team never gave up. They fought. Every game felt like a war almost. The games were physical. Effort was always at max level. We’d win games purely by grit and effort because we were missing guys and were rarely the most talented team on the floor. I think that’s the reason why everyone fell in love with that team. This team is probably more talented than ever before, but doesn’t really have the grit and toughness last year’s team had.”
The other concern for the father-son duo is that the front office emptied most of its asset cupboard last offseason to, potentially, get only as far as last year’s team got. Assuming the Knicks get out of the first round, they’ll likely face the Boston Celtics, a team they lost to four times during the regular season, including two wins by 20-plus points. New York went 0-10 against Boston, Cleveland and Oklahoma City (need to update Friday night), the top-three teams during the regular season.
Yet, they’re still diehard fans and, because of that, there’s hope.
“If we can split in Boston and play two games in New York …,” Floyd Converse said. “If we can win one of those two first games in Boston, then I’m all-in.”
Back in 2017, when his Knicks’ fandom was at an all-time high, 46-year-old Jason D’Angelo and his friend, Barry, started doing a podcast together called, “It’s a Hard Knicks Life.” It was initially a safe haven for the two to vent about the Knicks’ troubles and then the mood transitioned more positively in 2021 as New York made the playoffs for the first time in eight years.
The two friends religiously recorded the podcast this season. D’Angelo has enjoyed watching this Knicks team but admits it hasn’t always been easy.
“For me, I’m both happy and disappointed in the season,” D’Angelo said. “I think most people came out of last season thinking this year was Eastern-Conference-finals-or-bust. If not for the injuries last year, we should have been playing Boston last year. At this point now, my expectations are not the Eastern Conference finals. I don’t think we’re getting out of the second round. I just don’t see it happening. We knew Boston was going to be an issue, and we knew that Cleveland was good, but no one thought Cleveland would be this good. Obviously, the way that we’ve played those top teams this year, it’s really tempered the enthusiasm.”
Knicks superfan Jason D’Angelo started his podcast “It’s a Hard Knicks Life,” to vent about the team’s ups and downs (Courtesy of Jason D’Angelo).
D’Angelo’s fandom has been rejuvenated recently because he believes that the front office is competent, which is what he felt was missing in his fandom during most of his adult life.
With that said, D’Angelo, in hindsight, hasn’t loved both of the big moves the team made last season. D’Angelo still likes the trade for Towns, saying it was good value given the team’s situation with Julius Randle and his contract. Towns, in D’Angelo’s mind, has come as advertised.
As for Bridges, D’Angelo has felt underwhelmed with the addition of the swingman, who New York got for five first-round picks, a pick swap, a second-round pick and Bojan Bogdanović.
“Do I think he was worth all those first-round picks? No,” D’Angelo said. “They have decisions to make because he has an extension this offseason. I’ve been disappointed with his play. I’m not ready to say it’s a failure or anything because picks are just air. I don’t really care, but I’m definitely not happy with the season he’s had. I was expecting more. I’d say that.
“I do think a lot of people longed for what Donte brought to the table because Mikal doesn’t seem to have the same attitude or whatever. Bridges is in a tough spot. He’s defending perimeter players, he’s constantly running through screens and he’s not a big dude. He’s not the focus of the offense. I definitely think that there are people who feel a nostalgia for last year’s team, but that just might be because people expected more from this year’s team and it hasn’t gone the way that we thought.”
A hot-button topic this season has been the minutes played by the starters. Bridges led the league in total minutes (3,036) for the third time in his career, with Hart being right behind him and Anunoby not far behind.
D’Angelo, though, doesn’t see that as a Thibodeau problem like some do.
“I think if there’s anything that you can say negative about the front office, it’s the thinness of the bench, which I think has been an issue through the course of the year,” D’Angelo said. “Listen, no one expected Mitch (Robinson) to not come back until he did. Reports were that he’d be back by the end of November, then December then pushed back. I think that obviously impacted them. There’s the minutes police and I know people like to talk a lot about Thibs and playing (his starters), but he really doesn’t have, or didn’t have, too many other options.”
Overall, while D’Angelo doesn’t have a good feeling about the Knicks finally getting past the second round, he’s been able to enjoy winning Knicks basketball. There was a large portion of his life when that wasn’t even a given.
“It’s been fun,” he said. “They do have a tendency, at times, to play down, or play with their food. I think they can kick it into high gear when they need to. There’s been times when their offense has been unstoppable. It’s even very exciting basketball. Is it disappointing at times? Yeah, there are games that are maddening. Sometimes they can’t buy a basket and times the defense has been atrocious. Overall, though, they’re a fun team to watch.”
Much like D’Angelo, Ray McConville’s belief in the franchise’s direction was reinvigorated by the front office, a group he called “smart dorks, respectfully.”
The longtime season-ticket holder was invested this season and, for the most part, enjoyed watching the Knicks continue to play winning basketball. With that said, though, he thinks the honeymoon stage is over.
“Up to that point, the last offseason, it was the first time the front office made risky moves,” McConville said. “Everything they had done up to that point was extremely low risk with high upside, with a combination of shrewdness and luck. The Brunson signing was a very low-risk move. People want to act like they were taking a flyer on him. It was obvious at the time he was a really good starting point guard and the money they paid him was fair for a really good starting point guard. Then he blossomed into the star that he has become.
“Every other move they made, they didn’t really give up major assets for. Last summer was the first time they gave up major assets and started to take real chances.”
Ray McConville and his wife at a Knicks game in 2022 (Courtesy of Ray McConville).
Like the other fans The Athletic spoke to for this story, McConville doesn’t believe New York will get past the second round. However, he doesn’t believe this is a one-year thing. He sees the Knicks as being set up for the next several years, with a chance to always be in the conversation, but believes New York’s failures this season against the top teams have been disappointing.
“I’m still optimistic about the mid-to-long-term future, but am I optimistic that they’re going to contend for a title or even get out of the second round this year? I’m not optimistic about that,” he said. They don’t play defense well enough, and the Celtics and Cavs are clearly in a different class than the rest of the conference.”
New York will have financial restraints this offseason, making it difficult to add to the roster in a meaningful way without giving up a high-salary player. McConville doesn’t believe the Knicks need to make major changes to the roster and, in fact, have used this season to identify what might take them to the next level.
“Their biggest weakness is rim protection and depth,” McConville said. “You can improve that without having a treasure trove of assets to move. Maybe there will be some organic improvement, as well, as they get used to playing with one another, and I’m not sure that will be the case because it is a bunch of veterans who are who they are at this point. If they go down meekly in the second round or even get upset in the first round, which is possible, I don’t think there should be a panic trade for, like, Kevin Durant. I think they should stick to their plan and continue to make smart improvements and not panic into making this home-run move again, which they don’t really have assets for again.
“How they react to the likely early exit from the playoffs will be telling. The owner always looms over all of this.”
McConville is OK if this season ends the same way last year did. Would he like it to go differently? Of course. But the scars from his fandom are still present. Who the Knicks have become is enough for him … for now.
“I had hopes that it would have clicked more than it has, but not necessarily an expectation,” he said. “I can’t say I’m disappointed. They’ve cruised to a No. 3 seed and likely will win more games than last year. If that’s a disappointment to you, you have a very short memory of what has happened over the last 20 years.”
(Photo: Sarah Stier /Getty Images)