2019 is a year which will live in infamy for New York Knicks fan. That spring, despite having slogged to the league\u2019s worst record, the Knicks were forsaken by the basketball gods, who blessed New Orleans and Memphis with lottery leaps while dropping New York to third. Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving were long rumored to sign with them that summer. Instead of Zion, KD and Kyrie, the Knicks ended up with RJ Barrett, Julius Randle and Marcus Morris. Yet the building blocks for a title were in place: RJ, JR and IQ (via the Morris trade) landed the Knicks the second and first runners-up for 2026 Finals MVP, i.e. OG Anunoby and Karl-Anthony Towns.<\/p>\n
2019 was a memorable year for the NBA. LeBron James left Cleveland after four straight Finals to take his talents to south California. The Warriors reached their fifth consecutive Finals, the first and only other team to do so since the 1960s Celtics. Kawhi Leonard made an audaciously aspirational series-winning buzzer-beater that bounced on the rim for nearly as long as the investigation into his links with Aspiration, eventually leading Toronto over Golden State to win the title. Do you remember what happened in Game 3 of those Finals?<\/p>\n
Mark Stevens shoved Kyle Lowry after the Raptor dove into the first row to save a ball from going out of bounds. Lowry said Stevens also told him \u201cGo fuck yourself\u201d multiple times. Stevens, a Warriors minority owner who estimated his net worth at $10.5 billion last year, was suspended for a year and fined $500,000.<\/p>\n
In Game 1 of this year\u2019s Finals, a fan ran onto the court in San Antonio to try and take a selfie with Victor Wembanyama, making it all the way to the Spurs star before being dragged off by security.<\/p>\n
He actually got all the way to the Spur star before being dragged off by security. No one was hurt (though someone could have been). The fan showed neither malice nor aggression. The fan was suspended from attending an NBA game for the rest of his life. So was a second fan, one who never set foot on the court. Stevens, who laid hands on a player and cursed him out, was suspended a year and fined $500,000, equivalent to fining someone who makes $100,000 a year five dollars.<\/p>\n
But even immunity isn\u2019t enough for the gilded rage. Impunity or GTFO \u2014 and the calls aren\u2019t even coming from inside the house. After the attempted Wemby selfie, Yahoo Sports broadcasters Caroline Fenton and Jason Fitz called for blood. Below is the transcript from their episode<\/a>; the original doesn\u2019t offer quotation marks, so I\u2019m not sure between Fenton and Fitz who said what:<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to be calling him a dumbass, and we need to stop supporting this behavior entirely. If likening a fan trying to take a selfie with a star athlete to an act of premeditated violence that killed thousands of people feels like a stretch, that\u2019s \u2018cuz it is. Ye old slippery slope fallacy, gone but never forgotten. Yet if a broken clock is right every now and then, it follows to reason that sometimes taking the wrong turn down the wrong road really is all it takes to end in tragedy. But which way is right, and which is wrong?<\/p>\n Six weeks ago, the morning of the Knicks\u2019 championship parade, James Dolan claimed the White House had already reached out to the NBA champs. \u201cWe just did receive an invitation from the White House,\u201d he told WFAN, \u201cwhich we accepted. We still have to figure out the details.\u201d<\/p>\n On Monday, Variety published an interview with Jalen Brunson. In it, Brunson says<\/a>, \u201c[Visiting the White House is] something that we actually haven\u2019t discussed as a team. And so obviously people are making assumptions and saying everything, but together we haven\u2019t discussed it yet, and so we\u2019ll cross that bridge when we get to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Whenever I write something that ties the Knicks in any way to the larger world, some readers thank me. Some are repulsed, even insulting. Sometimes I get death threats. Lotta \u201cI read about sports to read about sports and only sports. Keep your commie nose outta my sports, missy\u201d from dudes kicking back with their \u201cnon-woke\u201d beer and getting half a chub-on from the national anthem, military members furling flags and weapons of mass destruction flying overhead. Wanna talk sports instead? Okay. Let\u2019s.<\/p>\n Do you love Jose Alvarado?<\/p>\n Rhetorical question. Who doesn\u2019t? The grand thefting; the clutch 3s; a level of shithousery that\u2019d fit right in with Argentina\u2019s men\u2019s World Cup squad. It\u2019s why we kept seeing features like this throughout the postseason and after. Hometown kid comes home, makes good, makes history. Not everybody *is* a Knick from day one. Anthony Mason was. Josh Hart. Ditto Alvarado.<\/p>\n Riddle me this, sports fans: whaddya think woulda happened during Games 3 and 4 of the Finals \u2014 or any Knicks playoff game at MSG \u2014 if someone in the crowd heckled Alvarado by yelling that, as a Puerto Rican, he descends from a people who comprise \u201ca floating pile of garbage<\/a>\u201d? What if it happened within earshot of Dolan? Care to guess?<\/p>\n
It took tragedy for us to have metal detectors.
They didn\u2019t even have metal detectors in, in airports pre-9\/11.
It\u2019s gonna take one person running out onto the court that has a plastic shiv because he got it through the metal detectors because it\u2019s plastic, that decides he wants to change the outcome of a series, and then we\u2019re all gonna sit there and say, \u2018How the hell did we let this happen?\u2019
Why do we need to be reactive?
Let\u2019s be proactive.
I don\u2019t think that\u2019s enough punishment.
I want mandatory prison sentencing.
Put him in a good old federal prison and let him explain what life is like for the next five years while he runs through federal prison for it.
I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a punishment that can be big enough because it takes one moron that has nefarious things on his mind, that has lost his cool, that goes out onto the court and changes everybody\u2019s life forever.\u201d<\/p>\n