These Knicks Prove You Don’t Need a Megastar—Just Good Vibes—to Win

Somewhere permanently lodged in the back of my mind, there’s a rusted, creaking file cabinet. Open up any of the overstuffed drawers and you’ll find it crammed with ex-New York Knicks: Utterly forgettable failed prospects, botched draft picks, bored and surly free agent signings, journeymen nobodies.

The truly remarkable failures are there, too. But these odd spreadsheets are mainly littered with the likes of Chris McNealy, Lou Amundson, Randolph Morris, Quincy Acy, Jerrod Mustaf, Lee Nailon, Sergio Rodriguez, things of that nature.

Fans of any bedraggled and misbegotten franchise probably have a similarly well-worn mental inventory tucked away somewhere. It’s an act of self-preservation, in a way. Or at least it is for me. During the truly execrable Knicks seasons—and there have been so, so many—I’ve found myself frequently thumbing through it, maybe lingering on a two-week period where I thought Alexey Shved could be a rotation-grade NBA player. The present may seem hopeless, sure, and the past just as nightmarish, but maybe that doesn’t matter. Perhaps, I’d tell myself, time spent devoted to a thing that doesn't love you back, that never seemed to care, really, whether you paid attention or not, is in its own way not just admirable, but beautiful.

Read more at The Daily Beast.