Debut Podcast and guest writer Carlos Morales

Extra-curricular activities after Knicks 106-104 season opening win

 Before we get to our guest writer (Carlos Morales), we will introduce today our first podcast.  Although today's is only a 4 minute solo effort by myself, this will be a weekly podcast featuring both Carlos Morales and myself, enjoy and please give us your feedback. 

Click here to hear our first Podcast 

Hope. With the new year around the corner, people are hoping for many different things. Hoping that that 2012 will bring them money, better jobs, a nicer home, or even more money. However, New York Knick fans are starting to hope for other reasons. Not for the firing of an inept GM. Not for players with ridiculous contracts to be traded, retire, or meet their early and sad demise from the world. Not even for James Dolan to sell the team to an owner who knows what he’s doing. We aren’t hoping for any of this. Not anymore. We, however, are hoping for a championship. Yes, title aspirations have come back to New York after what seem to be a lifetime. Last year we hoped to make the playoffs, and we did. Although we got swept by long time, newly renewed rivals of Boston, it was the first step in bringing back the Knicks to where we all want to see them. Down the Canyon of Heroes carrying the Larry O’Brien trophy.

Since the Knicks traded Ewing, there hasn’t been much of “good” hope with this team. What we did have was a lot of “bad” hope though. We hoped that Isaiah Thomas knew what he was doing….he didn’t. We hoped that Stephon Marbury would reinvent himself as a leader……negative. We hoped that Eddy Curry and Jerome James would anchor this team to wins and playoff appearances…….like I said, not much “good” hope for the Knicks that decade. Ten years of losing records, humiliating lawsuits, horrible contracts, ridiculous trades, and an owner more concerned with his Jazz Band than with an NBA franchise. Hope was all but lost on the Knicks and with their fans. We have succumbed to accepting the fact that we were going through the dark ages of the team. Having to deal with being the laughing stock of the league. Even surpassing the Clippers and their laughable owner, Donald Sterling, for this honor.

Then one summer, after the brilliant moves made by now departed GM Donnie Walsch, the Knicks were able to shed those bad contracts and get under the cap. To start courting our savior. The one who will make the Knicks relevant again. Bring us out of out dark times and back to respectability. However, he decided to run away from the bright lights and take his talents elsewhere. So what did we do? We signed a 6’11 power forward with surgically repaired knees and vision problems to a 5 year $100 million contract. This was the new face of the franchise. Knick fans, to say the least, weren’t too hopeful with this acquisition. Anyone who tells you different is full of shit. Then this new superstar we had acquired made a bold statement, “The Knicks are back!” he said. We were hoping he was right, and he was. Alone, leading this team of over achieving rookies and below average role players, he made the Knicks respectable, just not contenders….yet.

Rumors started to boil over all around the league. A Brooklyn born player, raised in West Baltimore, who played for the Orange, wanted out of a Mile High city and join up with that power forward with bad knees and iffy vision. Knick fans were hoping we would get him. Hoping that they would pull the trigger on the trade that would gut our rotation and land another superstar. Yet again, we weren’t foolish in hoping for this to happen. Thankfully David Stern didn’t veto this trade, and we landed our second superstar in Broadway. Playoff hopes ran wild. A playoff series victory would have to wait though. Playoffs lasted just four games. The same amount as the last time the Knicks had made the playoffs.

After a lockout, that dragged on for six months, finally ended, the Knicks made some moves that bring us to today, and the hope that fills every New Yorker. No it wasn’t an all star point guard, but a champion center that made the Knicks have their own “big three.” Literally a big three. Chandler, Stoudemire, and Anthony making up what is arguably the best front line in all of basketball. A 7’1 defensive minded center coming to  New York? When was the last time we saw this? When was the last time there was a buzz like this around the Knicks? If you know the answer to these questions, you know what happened next. Division titles, conference titles, consecutive playoff appearances, and two finals appearances. Now we fell short of seeing those Knick teams have their parade down the Canyon of Heroes, but maybe 2012 will be different. Hopefully.