I'm Rooting for the Knicks and Thunder
AU still has an agenda in these playoffs.
Well, at least I’m still watching. There have been years this decade where the Sixers’ exit from the playoffs has been so dispiriting, so poisonous and so unshakeable that the idea of consuming anything related to the sport of basketball seems unpalatable for months and months to come. So I guess this year, the Sixers’ bow-out must’ve been one of their less soul-crushing defeats, because I am indeed still tuning in for this next round of NBA playoff basketball — not all, but some, the important parts. And I’m even rooting for the team who beat the Sixers.
Don’t worry, this is not gonna be some nihilistic post about embracing the NBA darkness, or some Stockholm-Syndromed plea for grace for our new tormentors — though you may very well still end up hating it anyway. I am not rooting for the Knicks in the Eastern Conference Playoffs in the sense of me wanting good things to happen to them. Nor am I rooting for the Thunder in the West because it will give me any particular joy to see Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Chet Holmgren belting out “What a Pro Wants” at Oklahoma City’s second straight under-attended championship parade. But as Sixers fans and as NBA fans, I just think they kinda owe us.
If the idea of Josh Hart and his refusal to carry his arms normally when he walks strutting to the NBA finals is unacceptable to you, I certainly can’t say I don’t understand. But to me, there’s nothing more annoying in the NBA than being demolished in the playoffs by a suddenly-juggernaut-looking opponent who then turns around and goes out like a punk in the next round. If the Knicks are just a team of destiny this year — at least as far as the Eastern Conference goes; there’s probably no amount of basketball mysticism that’ll give them a chance against whoever comes out of the West — that’s fair-ish enough, I guess. It happens. But if they went out in five in the conference finals, it’d be like... well what the fuck was that even for then? We got blasted to smithereens by these assholes in our own building and they didn’t even have the decency to make the finals after that? It all feels extra disrespectful. It all feels extra pointless.
Now if this was the Celtics who’d just beat us and were now one series from the finals, I’d still be howling at the moon for them to lose in three. Some teams fill me with so much hate to the very core of my essence that all of my other sports fandom platitudes and truisms just go out the 50th-floor window when we’re talking about them. Actually really just one team: the Celtics. Maybe after two playoff series losses and one total beatdown the Knicks are on that level for you; I can’t get there. Hart is really the only one of them I actively loathe, the rest range from minorly annoying to wish we had him. And I can’t even feel the same as Spike about their fans — most of the Knicks fans I know are actually pretty cool. When I was watching Game Four in a bar next to a couple Knicks fans annoying the shit out of me as I was coming to terms with the inevitable, I ended up just sorta laughing with them by the end of it. They were still locked in with the Knicks up 37 in the fourth, annoyed that Tyler Kolek was missing threes to put them up 40. I couldn’t relate, but I understood.
Most importantly, I need them to embarrass the fucking Cavs. The fact that the Cavs, that Donovan Mitchell, made a conference finals before us has been maybe the toughest part of these whole playoffs for me. And it didn’t even really feel like he or they earned it — they needed seven games to beat a mid Raptors squad missing multiple starters, then they needed another seven games to beat a crumbling-after-wildly-overachieving Pistons team. And they didn’t even win because their main guys finally turned the corner: James Harden no-showed in a Game 7 for the millionth time in his career and it just didn’t matter. Donovan Mitchell was fine. The Pistons took the L a lot more than the Cavs took the W. The Sixers and Joel Embiiid coming back from 3-1 against Boston was far more meaningful than the sum total of the Cavs’ accomplishments in this postseason to date. It is shameful that they are still playing in the playoffs while we are not, and I cannot abide another series victory from them. Hell, I’d rather not abide another single-game victory from them.
I don’t even totally remember where my Donovan Mitchell-specific distaste comes from. It started, of course, with the “ROOKIE?” nonsense as he and Ben Simmons were squaring off for Rookie of the Year back in 2017, but as my friend Jonny pointed out on Bluesky Tuesday night, that doesn’t feel like a great reason for continued beef when our collective hatred of Simmons surely clears by this point. It’s fair, and I don’t have great reasoning beyond that: Mitchell seems like an OK guy and teammate and I generally think he’s a very good player. But somewhere along the line I latched onto him being a fraudulent choker and that’s only crescendoed for me in the near-decade since. Maybe because so many of the Sixers’ (and Embiid’s) primary rivals from that era — Jayson Tatum and the Celtics, Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets, Jimmy Butler and the Heat — have gone on to success so far beyond what we can hope to match that they can’t even really be considered rivals anymore, the fact that this one guy has basically remained in our same orbit has laser-focused all my hater energy on him. Whatever the reasoning it barely matters at this point. I can’t have Donovan Mitchell going any further than this.
So yes, I certainly did get a great deal of joy on Tuesday night from the Cavs’ belated succumbing to the Danhausen curse. Not that I really needed more shots of a delirious Timothée Chalamet hugging Tracy Morgan in my life, but it felt like karmic validation that things were Not As They Should Be for Cleveland to not only be in the conference finals, but leading Game 1 by 20-plus points in the fourth quarter, taking early command of a series they do not deserve to be participating in. For the Knicks to have enjoyed one of the great comebacks in NBA playoff history to secure the victory doesn’t necessarily feel right either, but it definitely doesn’t feel so wrong to me. I hope they do it again in Game Two.
As for the Thunder... I don’t feel quite so strongly, but I’m getting there. And this isn’t even really about Jared McCain, who I still do love and want good things for. But it is getting a little annoying to see my timeline fill up with “OH WELL GUESS WE JUST HAD TO GET RID OF HIM FOR NO REASON” self-immolation about his playoff performance anytime he does anything. During the first half of Game One of Spurs-Thunder I saw so many Process Trusters stabbing themselves with rusty forks over McCain that I assumed he must’ve been on a massive heater, and I checked the box score to find out he was 1-2 for two points with zero assists in four minutes. It’s really any time he hits a shot now. I get it but like also... c’mon.
But whatever, this isn’t about McCain, it’s about Victor Wembanyama. I don’t have any real hate for Wembanyama (yet) and I’m not as annoyed with the slobbering over him as Spike Is (yet). I don’t totally know what my feelings are about him in general. But... it’s just too early. We haven’t even seen him in the playoffs before. We need him to hit his head on the ceiling a couple times before he breaks through. If he starts winning now, then I guess that’s just it for basketball for the next decade? Longer? Basketball as a 29-team competition for the silver while the eight-foot guy with the 35-foot range remains unchallenged on the championship podium? I dunno. His takeover is probably inevitable and ultimately I guess that’s fine, but we should still get a couple more years first. Year Three is too early. Let’s be reasonable here.
And then in a Knicks-Thunder finals? Eh. I probably won’t be actively rooting for the building to collapse, but I doubt I’ll care enough about either team to actively pull for one of them to win or lose. I’ll probably be overseas for a lot of it anyway, maybe I’ll just let someone fill me in on how the movie ended when I get back. And honestly being able to not really care about the NBA finals will be a luxury I hope to be able to afford. If I have to spend my June still focusing the sum total of my negative energy on Donovan Mitchell or Victor Wembanyama it’s gonna be a fucking drag. Sparing me from that is truly the least the Knicks and Thunder can do.
Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the ‘If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders’ section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.