Andrew Unterberger is a Knicks fan.
This was the realization I came to reading his post from earlier this week when he announced that he was cheering for both the Knicks and the Thunder in their respective Conference Finals matchups.
I know this is rich from me considering that in my teens I was an actual Knicks fan, but maybe it takes one to know one. I can assure you that there is not a team or a fanbase that I hate more than the Knicks and their aura farming mouth breathing fans at the moment.
In any case, back to Andrew “Spike Lee” Unterberger. I think he’s an excellent writer. I’m truly honored that he’s such a big part of the Ricky. One of the reasons i know he’s a good writer is that regularly I yell at what he’s written out loud as I’m reading it. This week, I didn’t get past the subject line before gasping.
I am aware it is possible to have a rooting interesting in a series once the Sixers are eliminated. I’m also aware that this could be for a rival, for one reason or another. But I sniffed out more than that with AU. I sniffed out actual fandom, likely due to proximity for an extended period of time.
This happens of course, quite often. There is no doubt that while Mike is primarily a Phillies fan, he is secondarily a Dodgers fan. This is not just in a “makes his wife happy” way, it’s in a real way. I suspect he feels the same way about the Lakers. He may deny this, but you talk to someone about sports for three hours a week for 13 years and you figure some things out. I am not criticizing Mike for this… it happens. He’s been out there for a decade and a half, the Dodgers and the Lakers aren’t like, natural rivals to our teams, and it just kinda happened. As well, I’d say my three years working in New York made me kind of a Yankees fan. We run the Yankees Radio Network up there, they’re not natural Phillies rivals, etc, etc…
This has happened to AU with the Knicks, though he probably won’t admit it. There are a couple key lines in his post that give this way.
I can’t even feel the same as Spike about their fans — most of the Knicks fans I know are actually pretty cool.
LOL, are they? I am not sure how many links I should share here of Knicks fans being decidingly uncool, but we’d probably need to build an entire data center to house them. I’m sure AU did stand next to two unassuming ones for two and a half hours one time, but to say they’re “pretty cool” in light of the evidence to the contrary is honestly Stockholm Syndrome stuff.
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.
Ah yes, our long-standing war with Donovan Mitchell must be held sacred. I mean, he did wear a t-shirt making fun of Ben Simmons once, and we all know we’re very dedicated to defending Simmo the Savage’s honor. Not to mention, was Mitchell totally wrong? Aside from that, I can’t think of one moment where we’d have any issue with him.
What has happened here is AU has lived in New York for too long and has a soft spot for the Knicks. It disgusts me but it’s understandable. I just wish he’d admit it.
All that said, I do feel good about AU’s support of the Thunder largely being about telling everyone to fucking relax with Wemby. Let him earn it. He’s 8 feet tall, he runs like a gazelle, it’s possible he ends up the best player of all time. He should probably make the Finals first though. The Thunder won the title last year, had the best record in the league this year, were 8-0 in the playoffs until that point, and had played six of those games without their second best player. They lost one game in double overtime after a week-long break, and immediately their entire run was being extinguished so we could slurp up Wemby. Relax!
Team Ricky
We did a deep dive on Bob Myers with Ethan-Sherwood Strauss (who covered him for years) and Saam Esfandiari (who has podcasted about him for years).
Here’s AU’s fucking piece of shit column.
Team Non-Ricky
Marcus Hayes has some sources that pretty unsurprisingly say that Josh Harris badly wants Bob Myers to run the Sixers and Bob Myers badly doesn’t want to do it.
Tony Jones says that Jameer Nelson is the real only internal candidate for the POBO job and gives us some other names as well.
A new Sixers Adam Mock Draft roundup on what the Sixers might do with the 22nd pick.
