TWO Fridays ago, the Knicks made deals that cleared millions in salary-cap room. The next morning, starting with WFAN’s Evan Roberts, and throughout the week, talk show hosts encouraged Knick fans to rejoice because there’s finally “a plan;” happy days will soon be here again.
Taking the prompts, listeners called to rejoice.
Yup, Knick fans should be over the moon. After years of failing to develop good teams any other way, the Knicks simply can now wait until 2010, then buy the best players on other teams. Hooray!
But none of these talk-show talkers, at least those I heard telling Knick fans to celebrate, solicited the opinions of the most financially devoted Knick fans, season-ticket holders. Late last week, I had one cornered. At least he felt cornered.
He’s a subscriber for more than 25 years. His four seats are behind one of the baskets, good seats – for half the game. The Garden charges him $440, $110 per seat per game. He has spent roughly $20,000 on must-buy preseason games, tickets best used as bookmarks.
He’s not entirely sure how to feel about the Knicks’ new plan, but he suspects he should feel like a jerk. After all, he has been paying big money to see a losing team the last six years. And now, it seems clear, the Knicks are surrendering this season and next, thus he must suffer at least two more years of underwriting a losing team.
He used to ease costs by selling some of his tickets to friends. Now, for the rest of this season and likely all of the next, unless friends want to see the other team, he has no shot. No one wants to reach deep to watch the Knicks kill more time.
And then, if he sticks it out, swallows hard to protect his seats, then what? The Knicks buy a superstar, or two, then whammo, the Garden raises ticket prices 25, 30 percent, perhaps even pricing him out of his seats, if not the door, after eight straight years of financing losing teams.
Not that anyone on these talk shows ever thought to ask him, not that they ever see much in terms of out-of-pocket consumerism, but as long as they’ve declared that he should be joyful that the Knicks seem to have a plan in place for 2010-11, perhaps they’d like to trade places with him.
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Q: Which NFL TV analyst provides the following kind of commentary:
“You can’t take silly penalties in big situations, those are costly, drive killers. Smith should know better. Coach Jones can’t be happy with that. But I’m sure no one feels worse about it than Smith.”
“Ya know, talking to him at the hotel yesterday, he doesn’t get caught up in his own stats. When I told him that he averages six tackles, two hurries and 1 ½ sacks – fifth in the NFC – he had no idea. He just goes out there to play, and play hard. Gotta tip your hat to him; he’s a blue-collar, lunch-pail guy.”
A: Almost all of them.
I think we know the answer to this next one, but we’ll ask it anyway: Is there no one at any of the NFL’s networks with the ability, knowledge, inclination and authority to coach broadcasters, to make them better, to insist that they improve?
Take Daryl (Moose) Johnston. Eight years ago, as a Fox rookie, he was a keeper, a fellow who, while new at it, simply and quickly told us what he saw, what we might expect to see next. Perhaps because he didn’t know any better (or worse), he seemed willing to let TV serve as TV, not radio.
Now? Johnston’s indistinguishable from most other analysts in that he gives long, windy and often contradictory speeches, talks himself in silly circles while driving us nuts.
How did that happen? Why is it allowed to happen and then continue? Is there no one at any of these networks who can sit these men down, go through their telecasts and at least encourage them to sound twice as good by saying half as much? The answer is self-evident.
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The NFL’s new, who’d-a-thunkit statistical mystery – West Coast teams (and the Cards) are 0-16, playing games in the East! – is an issue only among those who don’t get it. Such results stand to reason as a matter of mostly mediocre-to-poor teams (Raiders, Seahawks, Chargers, Niners) on the road to play mostly better teams, anywhere at any time.
The 1992 Niners went 4-0 on the East Coast. That’s because they were a very good team (14-2) that played four bad teams, the Giants (6-10), Jets (4-12), Pats (2-14) and Falcons (6-10) on the East Coast. It’s only a mystery to the easily confused.