This isn’t all that exciting, but I wrote a brief response to something Bill Simmons, ESPN’s sports guy, said in one of his columns. I’ll put it here for your reading pleasure.

Hey Sports Guy,

Long time listener, first time.. whatever… anyway, I’m writing to help broaden your perspective on the Pat Riley thing. He has bad karma, but not for the reasons you described:

“Pat Riley: Took the Knicks to Game 7 of the Finals in ‘94 and the conference semis in ‘95, then stabbed their entire fan base in the back by jumping ship to their archrival (in especially sleazy, underhanded fashion). Bring up Riley’s name to any diehard Knicks fan — they react like Jennifer Aniston finding out that the Pitt-Jolie kid was born two days before “The Break-Up” came out. They can’t handle him.”

The thing is, when Riley left, we were really about to get totally sick of him and he could smell it. When grind-it-out, knock-em-to-the-floor basketball brings you a chip, you accept it. When it brings two near misses, you begrudge it, greatly. “Ugly game, AND we lost? Might as well see what the Yanks are doing. Oh, they’re good again? Some kid named what? Jeter? Sweet!”

Furthermore, after Riles retired to South Florida, in the true New York spirit, the Knicks OWNED all the playoff Series against Miami. I think there was one we lost, but it was near the end of the road for our core guys. Think about the upsets we pulled, and Allan Houston’s beautiful, worth every penny of a $100mill, bounce-bounce roll-in floater in Game 5 (now known as game 7) of the first round in 99. Talk about crushing a team, a city, and a coach.

Riley’s bad karma is that he ever came back to the Knicks at all. He had such an incredible run with the 80s Lakers that he should’ve taken his titles, retired at 40, and gone on to the celebrity golf circuit, maybe throw in a stint as a Hawaiian Tropic bikini contest judge for good measure.

Yet that’s the paradox. As Knicks fans, we have Riley to thank for the Jeff Van Gundy era, our finest of the last two decades, and the fact that JVG was even a coach at all. Remember, after 60 games of Don Nelson loosening up the playbook, and using a full court run n gun offense with a bunch of creaky and slow dudes, he was history (before he was a genius, again). We had no idea what to expect from the short bald dude who was Riles’ #1 assistant, but he dialed back to what the Knicks, of the day, admittedly specialized in. It’s just he did a few little things to tweak the offense and take advantage of the discipline of guys like Ward and Houston, like, oh, run screens and pass the ball to someone other than Ewing. I love that guy and he, nor Lawrence Frank, would’ve ever been coaches in this league without Riles’ catching the JFK to Miami red eye after 95.

If anything, it’s a little sad for Knicks fans, now that Zo is No and Riley is desperately going after that last ring, henna colored hair and all, especially being that he has almost no chance in hell against Dallas, and it’s just gonna get worse for him next year. Talk about jumping ship– do you see him possibly sticking around as coach with Shaq getting another year on his knees? Unless he pulls off the blockbuster Diop Diaw trade we’ve all been waiting to see, he’s stuck with two creaky centers, more roleplayers in the Brian Grant “useless unless someone points me in the direction of the basket” mold and one superstar. I think Miami loses the finals and falls off a cliff this season, taking a page from Superbowl losers of the past 6 or so years.

Thanks for all your good work and that’s coming from a NY sports fan.

Paul

In short, it’s pretty amazing how wrong one guy can be.