These are good days for old-school ways and old-school sporting values. We have just completed a splendid run with a hockey team, the Rangers, whose soul really did seem to be forged in the ’40s and ’50s, a one-for-all, all-for-one standard that really did seem to capture the imagination even of peripheral fans.
But hockey is like that, of course. Even if a team happens to be stuffed full of me-first egomaniacs, there’s only so much impact one player can have when he’s constantly shifting on and off the ice. By its very nature, hockey demands esprit de corps. So that’s really nothing new.
But we started to see this new age of team-over star in our own backyard a few months ago, at the Super Bowl, when roughly 93.4 percent of all the pregame attention was affixed on a certain quarterback for the Broncos. Now, in fairness, Peyton Manning isn’t a selfish player. And he isn’t the first quarterback to be given the lion’s share of credit for a team’s success.
But it sure seemed like if there were a marquee out in front of MetLife Stadium last February, it might have borrowed that famous one from the old Madison Square Garden — Geo. Mikan vs. Knicks — and gone with: Pey. Manning vs. Seahawks.
And, well, we know how that went.
Same deal with the NBA Finals. And, again, LeBron James is anything but a selfish player. In truth, it can be safely argued he may well be the most unselfish basketball superstar we’ve seen in some time — a point he hammered home in Game 2 when, rather than take the most important shot of the game himself, he passed off to Chris Bosh, and Bosh drained the 3.
But there is little doubt it is hard to traverse the NBA, or anything having to do with the league, without being inundated by James — by his face, by his likeness, by the products he endorses or the ubiquity of the Heat, of whom he is the team’s face, voice and enduring image.
And then there are the Spurs.
And if many of us have regularly given them their due for all they have accomplished over the past 15 years, they are also a team that is easy to overlook because they have reached the remarkable place where their relentless success almost has become … for lack of a better term, boring.
But watching them in action this past week, watching them move the ball the way we always have heard that the hit-the-open-man Knicks moved the ball, watching every member of the team have a role, and a prominent one … well, it’s hard not to be impressed. Hard not to think of other basketball paragons of virtue — those ’70 Knicks, the ’77 Blazers, the Magic Lakers and the Bird Celtics, teams whose successes were as defined by the program as the players, by selflessness as much as sass.
This is how we want to believe sports are supposed to be of course: the whole over the parts, the better team beating the better player. Sometimes it works out that way, sometimes it doesn’t. Lately, we are seeing the old-school values and the old-time ways carry the day. Good days indeed.
Whack Back at Vac
Chris Freeman: Team basketball is an absolute joy to watch. I was born the last year the Knicks won a championship. Do these Spurs remind you of the ’70 or ’73 squads?
Vac: Unfortunately, my first Knicks memories start in 1974, so I can only go by the same old stories you do. But I sure like to think they’re kindred spirits.
Richard Siegelman: I hope Rory McIlroy has not prematurely mailed out invitations to his personal U.S. Open Championship victory party.
Vac: Not unless he’s hosting on Martin Kaymer’s behalf, anyway.
@2WSMets: When will frustration kick in to all the young Mets pitchers for not having any run support?
@MikeVacc: Maybe it will help if I dust off one of my favorite pieces of Mets trivia: Tom Seaver pitched 395 games for the Mets. In 143 of them — more than 36 percent — the Mets scored two or fewer runs for him. Wait, that doesn’t help?
Jeff Gorlechen: Anyone else think it’s more than coincidence the Knicks were finally able to hire a head coach while James Dolan was busy chasing the butterfly that is the Rangers in the Cup finals?
Vac: I do imagine a spit-take when he was told how much he would be paying his new coach.
Vac’s Whacks
♦ I know this is sacrilege, but all the questions about when David Wright officially is going to regret this long-term marriage to the Mets: At what point does it become fair to turn that question backward?
♦ Honestly, we haven’t had a drop-what-you’re-doing, must-watch starting pitcher like Masahiro Tanaka on the Yankees’ side of the Triborough since Ron Guidry was inventing the two-strike standing O back in the day.
♦ Am I the only one who’s more than a little, um, intrigued to see how Dirty Harry interprets “Jersey Boys”?
♦ To anyone who ever thought Tiger Woods received too much attention even as he was hanging around the periphery of major golf tournaments: How long have you been able to stay awake during the Open this week? Fifteen minutes? Twenty, tops?