Gray Lady Down

I read the New York Times for news, and laughs.  This is a newspaper that writes what Knicks’ fans believe, that basketball was perfected if not invented in venues Madison Garden.  Never mind the franchise has all of two NBA titles as opposed to seventeen for the Celtics (and six for the expansion Bulls).  Those Knicks’ teams knew how to play the game—just ask Spike Lee.

On Wednesday, former Knicks’ player Charles Oakley got into some kind of disagreement with security staff during a game and ended up in handcuffs; Knicks’ owner James Dolan has since banished Oakley from attending games at the Garden.  One story in yesterday’s Times described Oakley as a “stalwart member of outstanding Knicks teams from the 1990s.”  Then what were the Bulls, who beat Oakley and company four—count ‘em, four—times in the playoffs back then?  But those outstanding Knicks’ teams knew how to play the game, I bet you.

In an accompanying story, a writer confessed that he thought hiring Phil Jackson as team president was a good idea at the time.  He considered Jackson to be a “brilliant, iconoclastic coach and author who motivated and needled and massaged the prickliest of stars into one-for-all championship runs.”  Here’s what the brilliant author had to say on Twitter a day after the Oakley contretemps:  “I offer this [cute peace-sign emoji] our society is torn with discord.  I’m against it. Let it be.”

Oh, Phil, my guitar gently weeps.  But the rest of me is laughing big time.