WATCH US NOW: The quality of the Eastern Conference finals between Ian Mahinmi’s Pacers and Chris Andersen’s Heat have compelled mourning Knicks fans to stay interested, writes The Post’s Mike Vaccaro. (zuma24.com)
There is an ongoing war I always fight when a game ends, when a season dies, when a championship run — no matter how flighty or fitful — reaches its end. In a lot of ways, it’s more compelling to write about the losing team. The stories are richer, there’s a sense of completion, and agony always makes good sporting copy.
But I also remember one thing.
Before I was a writer for newspapers, I was a reader of newspapers. Except, the day after my team lost — especially after they lost their last game of the year — I never could bring myself to read about it. That was an absolute rule. It was foolish, maybe, and maybe a little silly, but I took solace in knowing most of my friends felt the same way.
“I already know they lost,” we would say. “I don’t need some dope with a typewriter reminding me that they lost.”
Well, I’m the dope with the typewriter now, and it always fascinates me how the most ardent among us return to full consciousness. I suspect it’s harder now to engineer a full-scale news blackout of an elimination, or even an especially difficult regular-season game. You walk the streets, you see scores on top of taxicabs. There always is an update on the radio. There’s Twitter. There’s the Internet, which never lets you fully let go of anything you don’t want to know about.
I find it especially fascinating to think about how Knicks fans view this Heat-Pacers series, which certainly is starting to look like a classic in the making. The preponderance of my email, and chatting with friends, was that most Knicks fans wanted no part of this series right away, that the sting of an unfulfilling year would be enough to keep them from caring too much about the rest of the basketball season, regardless of what happened.
Only a funny thing happened.
The Pacers and Heat played a classic Game 1, and it came down to Pacers coach Frank Vogel deciding to keep Roy Hibbert on the bench, and LeBron James walked to the basket for a game-winning layup and … well, social media exploded. My inbox imploded. People who swore their basketball season was over … well, not so much.
And after Friday night, it was apparent even Knicks fans who couldn’t stomach watching another minute of the season after their team was ushered from it had changed their minds. And what seems even more interesting is this: Half of them seem happy to see the Pacers doing what they’re doing to the Heat because it validates what happened to their own team during the conference semifinals.
And half are even sicker than they were after Game 6 last week.
“Worse,” @MattWaters 28 tweeted late Friday night. “Could have easily been the Knicks. Anthony, Chandler, and Smith all hobbled. Terrible timing.”
Said @plainsimplicity, speaking, I think, for what a majority of the fans seem to feel: “Both. Good ’cuz we lost to a really good team and worse when I think what Knicks could have done against this one-man Heat team.”
That probably is the way it ought to be. Knicks fans are also basketball fans. And basketball fans, as much as any fans I know, care about the game as much as they do the teams, as much as they do the players. And the games have been impossible to click off so far.
Even if watching makes you physically sick. Quite a conundrum.
Whack Back at Vac
Mike Gijanto: Though watching the Mariano Rivera farewell tour has been a real joy, his association with “The Core Four” reminds me of how exclusive of Bernie Williams’ contributions that term really is. That’s a shame because Bernie was as classy a person as any who wore the pinstripes and should not be forgotten.
Vac: That’s why it’s good Bernie still has a New York presence with his guitar, playing the anthem and gigs across town. You’re right. He was as big a factor as anyone.
John Benzinger: These Yankees remind me of those teams of the ’90s. I was thinking that myself the other day: New York sport fans like these types of teams … grinders … that all they care about is trying to win the next game and not counting their money or what they look like on the field (no need to mention names) …
Vac: Regardless of where the team finishes the year I think we can all agree: Watching this team adapt day after day to new departures, no team around here is ever allowed to use injuries as a crutch ever again.
@jbalsamo1: How about “Holiday” as Matt Harvey’s nickname since every day he pitches becomes one?
Vac: Let’s see … enormous talent? Check. … Cover of SI? Check. … SI swimsuit model girlfriend? Check. … Are we sure he didn’t also win Powerball last week?
Tom Clancy: The Knicks’ best bet? Iman Shumpert progresses and Mike Woodson figures out how to use Amar’e instead of looking on him as a burden. Anything’s possible.
Vac: The Knicks do feel like a high school team loaded with sophomores who the coach fervently hopes all get better over the summer.
Vac’s Whacks
The real regret of the Knicks season ending so prematurely is we were denied the death-race struggle to see if Jason Kidd would make a basket before Ike Davis got a base hit.
* The biggest adds for Yankees in the coming weeks may be Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre, just to deal with their seemingly daily triage sessions. One suggestion: Don’t borrow Frank Burns from the Mets.
* Listening to Reggie Miller talk about the Pacers during Pacers games is exactly the kind of hard-hitting commentary you’d have gotten from my mom when she watched me in the seventh-grade talent show.
* Anyone else still a little woozy after last week’s “Mad Men”?