Wumbo Wednesday With Weaselo: They Actually Did It.

I got to the LIRR by Apartment Weaselo for the 10:50 train at about 10:48 or 49. It was a 9-point game and I thought to myself, “Eh… not sure.”

I hadn’t even gotten to the ticket kiosk (because I don’t have TrainTime, because my phone has about 100 MB of space on it at any given time because of all the other things on it, mostly pictures off iMessage that I am slowly working my way through) when the train got there.

And I decided not to rush to get a ticket or get on (and pay the additional prices), head back to Apartment Weaselo (after hitting up the pizzeria down the block and got two Sicilians with pepperoni and they gave me two corners, hell yeah) and catch the end of the game at home with my slices, a soda, a watermelon Hi-Chew, and potentially one of the beers left in the fridge.

Somewhere around the Mitch offensive rebound it hit that they were really going to do it. Because let’s be real, for most of my teenage and adult life the Knicks have been dreadful. My first basketball game? Knicks-Pacers in the playoffs, I believe the 1998 East Semis Game 5. The playoff towel has long been lost to confirm it. But regardless, fuck Reggie.

The other game I’ve actually been to (because even when the team’s been shit, tickets are expensive at the Garden—even for the Rangers) I got paid to be at. That’s the famed time I played at halftime, the preface for my famous (okay, really Hermana Weaselo’s famous) Eli Manning story. The Knicks won that game! (After being blown out by like 25 in the home opener a couple days prior.) I found the boxscore and everything! A friend of Padre Weaselo’s was actually there and called afterwards in surprise of seeing me. When we saw Fat Joe making the rounds during these playoffs Hermana Weaselo actually pulled the line one of the other performers’ sister said while he walked by at one point back then, “FAT JOE I LOVE YOU!” Because that’s what we know him originally in terms of being at Knicks games.

Up 50 against the Hawks at the half? Listen, if you managed to take a 50-point lead in the first half, it is hypothetically possible to blow a 50-point lead in the second. So I wasn’t feeling confident until midway through the 3rd quarter or so when it remained in the 50s, ballooning towards 60. “If anyone can do it, it’s the Knicks,” I thought.

But this run was like the Uno reverse card for all of those. Coming back from two losses against Atlanta that were very much self-inflicted but led to adjustments that would fuel the run. Coming back from down big in Game 1 against Cleveland, playing like the argument against rest vs. rust for 3 1/2 quarters until they turned the tables midway through the 4th. Then, doing it in San Antonio Games 1 and 2, coming back from double-digits. Losing Game 3 in part thanks to Agent Orange’s bad juju even outdoing Danhausen’s uncursing (I still have no idea of Danhausen’s in-ring work, just that he’s a wrestler and he curses and uncurses people), before outdoing all that in Game 4, where we were on the bandstand seeing that San Antonio hit an NBA-record 14 3 pointers in the 1st half and thinking “Fuck, chance squandered. Spurs have taken back home-court.” And we’re towards the front of the stage of this bar mitzvah in Williamsburg and the band manager is lovely but justifiably has pet peeves about the optics, including visibly being on our phones. But we hear from the horns behind us that they cut it to 15 after 3, and you think “Okay, it’s a game, that’s all you want.” And then 10, then 7, then 5. Then we finally have a break and check. And they’re UP 1. “No fucking way, they’re WINNING?”

I am sure this is bluer language than any guest in this building will usually hear in English, but then again, this is New York. So we go outside and see the last play and see the app tick to final.

Saturday I’m still nervous. Because if anyone could find a way to falter in a 3-1 series, again, the chances are low but never zero. At least there’s the solace of Game 6 at the Garden, but then that’s basically a must-win game, take care of it as early as possible. And maybe it won’t be 5 on 8, because Game 3 sure was with some of those calls to get KAT into foul trouble like two minutes in.

Which takes us back to the train station, down 9, train for Penn pulling up and me getting to the kiosk at about the same time and thinking, “It’ll be all right. Make me regret this, because then it’ll have been worth it.”

To which I am clapping loudly with my windows open those last two minutes, cheering, but still gnawing at the what-if until that second free throw by OG drops to make it a 4-point game. Don’t foul, don’t even breathe, they’re out of timeouts. 3 by Wemby bricks too strong, OG with the last rebound, and it has happened. And I yell out in triumph “They fucking did it!” And eventually I go outside, because someone is shooting off fireworks (Senorita Weaselo, who lives about a kilometer from me as the crow flies, can hear it too) and I see someone and again, “They did it!” Do I wish there was someone to mob and hug? Oh yeah, but it helps make this place home. The Nocturnes win their chip here, the Knicks win theirs and I’m here.

So, that’s why no boots on the ground for the bedlam that may have been Saturday night in the city. If I wake up early enough, maybe I can get towards about where work is for the parade tomorrow. I will probably see absolutely nothing in the party and will have to leave by about 12:45 to get back in time to drive to work by 3:30. And I imagine it’ll be a blast and I’ll have no voice to teach 4 1/2 hours worth of students.

Love given to those lost on the way for reasons. Of course, those ‘90s Knicks teams get remembered for having the terrible luck to play at the same time as the greatest to ever do it, coming on top of the arch-nemesis Reggie as often as not but not Jordan. Ewing was hurt in ‘99, where maybe they don’t swing a series that ended up being Spurs in 5 (funny how that happens) but at the least it heads back to San Antonio and maybe the 8-seed does the unthinkable.

Love given, of course, to the journey of this wave. In Minnesota, with Julius Randle and Dante DiVincenzo, the Big Free Agent who actually picked the Knicks and the Nova Knick that unfortunately had to be traded for the KAT deal to go through. For Thibs, apparently this generation’s version of Buck Showalter, who built the idea of the defense and the culture. The magic is in the work, and the work doesn’t get done without Thibs. But, like Buck, unable or unwilling to change, in his case the rotations being so, so small at times, and the offense being stuck in the grit and grind old ways all the time instead of some sort of hybrid of slashing to the rim and moving the ball to get that open 3, that did him in. Like Moses, through the wilderness, but his successor the one to take them to the Promised Land.

It may not be in the form of a ring, but they have a city’s thanks.

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Anyway, we’re in the normal fallow summer period where there’s just dog-day baseball, but thankfully it’s the Mundial! Tonight’s action, in music I know involving the countries:

Obwisana (Ghana) vs. the works of William Grant Still (Panamá) (7:00 Eastern in Toronto)

“Okay fine, I’ll just Google something” (Uzbekistan) vs. “Figaro Romero’s tied for the league lead in triples and I put him from Sevilla… Colombia, what’s his plate music again?” (Colombia) (9:00 Central in… what’s Estadio Banorte? Oh, it’s Azteca.)

Enjoy the sounds of sport! Also possibly the English saying “IT’S COMING HOME” if they won over Croatia. Maybe even if they drew.