Fans of the Knicks and Nets are holding onto their hoop dreams as basketball season jumps off this week.
Like many New York City sports fans, they have high hopes and ironclad stomachs coming off last season when both teams posted dismal records. The Knicks’ 29-53 record left them in 11th place in the Eastern Conference. The Nets fared even worse, going 28-54.
This year doesn’t look much better, with the future of injured Knicks star Kristaps Porzingis up in the air.
But there are some changes coming this season that could pave the way for success.
The Knicks announced Monday the team is exercising its third-year option on Frank Ntilikina, a 20-year-old guard from France. New coach David Fizdale is replacing Jeff Hornacek, and rookies Kevin Knox and Mitchell Robinson are new to the roster.
“I’m trying to keep it positive but — the Lakers, Golden State — those Western Conference teams can come in and beat us by 40 points any day,” said Lashar Williams, 44, a Knicks fan from Brownsville. “We have some rookies, but watching the young guys on the Lakers play, they can ball.”
With Porzingis out, Williams lamented the lack of firepower to keep up with other playoff contenders.
“The best players we’ve got are Porzingis — he’s out — and then Tim Hardaway Jr., and he ain’t all that,” Williams said, lamenting the four-year, $71 million contract the Knicks doled out to Hardaway last year. “I don’t know how he got all that money, but God bless him.”
Tony Ramirez, 48, wearing a Miami Heat hat outside of Madison Square Garden on Monday, said he gave up on the Knicks when “ Ewing finger-rolled instead of dunking” during the tragic last seconds of the 1995 Eastern Conference semifinals against the Indiana Pacers and has been dismayed by leadership at the organization ever since.
But he was warm on the Fizdale hiring and the Knicks’ trio of rookies — Knox, Robinson and Allonzo Trier — who each showed glimmers of promise during the preseason. And, as every October rolls around, even the most pessimistic of Knicks fans could envision a playoff berth.
“Trier is unbelievable — so is Knox. My cousin calls Knox the next Tracy McGrady,” said Ramirez, of Washington Heights.
“I could see them getting into the playoffs, especially if Porzingis gets back,” he continued. “If they could hold on and maybe stay at around .500 and Porzingis comes back later in the season, it could happen.”
Nets fans may already be looking to the 2019-20 season when salary cap money will be freed up to attract some well-known talent to the team.
“They need to invest more, get a good team,” Daison Alladin, a 34-year-old Nets fan from Brooklyn said while walking by Barclays Center. “It takes years to build a good basketball team. I watch the games sometimes on TV and then here sometimes.”
Phil Watson, a site expert for fan website nothingbutnets.com, said he is hopeful even if the team is not a title contender this year.
“With [general manager] Sean Marks running the front office, what fans do have is hope for the future,” said Watson. “The Nets have their own draft picks coming up, to go with a ton of salary cap space next summer. Plus, the talent level of what is currently there has been upgraded tremendously from two years ago. Rebuilding is a process that can’t be rushed, but for the first time in what feels like a very long time, fans can see brighter days ahead — and not too far ahead — for the Nets.”
Lee Ramble, a Knicks fan from the Lower East Side, cautioned New Yorkers to be patient with Fizdale and the new-look Knicks, that they’ll need at least a year to find a rhythm.
As he slipped into a new Lakers jacket just purchased from a sporting goods store around the block from the Garden, Ramble said he was more invested in watching how the league’s stars perform on their new teams, like LeBron James in Los Angeles; Carmelo Anthony in Houston and Kawhi Leonard starting fresh in Toronto.
But even he couldn’t resist the idea of a late-season playoff run.
“Maybe next year they’ll be much better,” Ramble said. “But, hey, they could make the playoffs.”
