So maybe it really was as simple as the dirty trick you always played on your brother, when, depending on your age, you would be falling helplessly behind on your Atari/Sega/PlayStation/Xbox, and you’d sneak a furtive finger onto the RESET button, and suddenly …
You were back at zero. No harm, no foul (except for the elbow your brother would throw to your jaw).
Maybe that’s all we needed, for the ball to drop on 2014 (and the anvil to fall on 2013) and give us a new set of downs, a fresh 24-second clock, a blank scorecard. Because after suffering through a year in which New York sports took a turn for the surreal and the insipid, you have to say this about the New Year:
2014: Best. Year. EVER.
Well, so far anyway.
And, look: If there was ever a sporting faction that needed that RESET button, it was New York City, where all of our teams left us feeling a little unfulfilled and uninspired in the old year. And on Thursday, the second day of the New Year, the first three area games of 2014 promised to deliver a little more of the same, the schedule makers setting us up for a fresh supply of Band-Aids and surgical tape.
The Islanders (13-21-7) versus the Blackhawks (28-7-7)
The Nets (10-21) at the Thunder (25-6)
The Knicks (9-21) at the Spurs (25-7)
Or, as the old “Batman” show would’ve put it:
KAPOW! BAM! and EEE-YOW!
And … well, a funny thing happened on the way to the ER. Kyle Okposo, snubbed earlier the day before by the U.S. Olympic hockey team, slipped the puck past Chicago’s Corey Crawford 58 seconds into overtime and a remarkably rowdy Nassau Coliseum gathering of 13,618 – most of whom apparently do not get The Weather Channel – broke into a spontaneous chant of “U-S-A!”
Surprising.
Then the Nets — who looked like they were fixing to get run out of Oklahoma City in much the same way they’d been chased out of Indianapolis and San Antonio to end the old year — made a furious 14-0 run late in the fourth quarter, allowed the Thunder to tie, then handed the ball to Ol’ Reliable, Joe Johnson, who canned a step-back rainbow 21-footer at the buzzer to deliver a 95-93 victory.
Stunning.
And then, most remarkably, the Knicks – the dysfunctional, dyspeptic, dismaying Knicks – led the Spurs – the whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-the-parts Spurs, who are supposed represent everything the Knicks aren’t – most of the way, forfeited the lead late, then won the game because Iman Shumpert capped his best game as a pro with a putback, and because Marco Belinelli, who made everything he looked at, finally missed one at the end.
Staggering.
Yes, yes, yes. It’s one day. We are now halfway into the third day of the year, and there is plenty of time left for everyone to regress back to the mean, starting Friday night when the Knicks travel to Houston and the angry Blackhawks cross the Hudson to challenge the Devils and the Rangers venture to Pittsburgh. It can be a plunge back to reality every bit as cold as the sight of a closed-for-business Long Island Expressway in the early morning hours of a frigid, frozen Friday.
But for now, you can forgive the Mets if they wanted to schedule a triple-header on the fly at snowy Citi Field to take advantage of the instant karma filling our sporting skies, or if the Giants and Jets sought a special hometown exemption to the NFL tournament. Can CC Sabathia get warmed up quick? Let’s have a couple of Yankees-Red Sox games as preliminaries for the Stadium Series …
Time’s a-wastin’ to take advantage of the BEST YEAR EVER.