Okay, so this random question just popped into my head while I was, I don’t know, staring at the ceiling I guess: when’s the last time the Knicks actually won a playoff series? Not just scraping into the playoffs, but, like, winning a round and moving on. You hear all the talk about their history, the good old days, and then, well, the less good days. It feels like a lifetime ago, sometimes.
So, what’s a guy to do? I grabbed my phone, of course. That’s my go-to for these kinds of burning questions. I typed in something pretty basic, probably “Knicks last playoff series win” or “when Knicks win playoff round.” Something like that. You know how it is, just throw some keywords at the search bar and hope for the best.
And up popped a whole mess of stuff. Sports websites, fan blogs, Wikipedia pages – the usual digital pile. I started clicking on a few. The first things I saw were all about their championships from way back. You know, the big ones in the early 70s. I definitely saw 1973 mentioned a lot, with Willis Reed and that legendary team beating the Lakers. That was a huge deal, a proper championship. But that wasn’t exactly what I was hunting for. I was thinking about any playoff series win, not necessarily the Finals. Just advancing, you know?
It took a little more sifting, scrolling through articles. Some headlines were a bit misleading, “Knicks Playoff Hopes” or “That Time They Almost Did It.” Yeah, yeah, I know all about the “almosts.” I was looking for a confirmed win. I had to be a bit patient, not just click the first thing that looked right. Sometimes you gotta read a paragraph or two to get the real story, not just the headline.
Then, finally, I landed on a couple of pages that seemed to have the straight dope. The year was there, who they played, the whole deal. It was more recent than the 70s, thank goodness, but still, not exactly fresh in the memory. I cross-referenced it on another site or two, just to make sure it wasn’t some fan dream I’d stumbled upon. You gotta do your due diligence with internet facts, right?
This whole thing actually reminded me of an argument I had with my uncle Tony last Thanksgiving. He’s a lifelong Knicks sufferer, God bless him. We were talking about the current team, and I made some crack like, “They haven’t won a playoff series since I was in diapers!” And he got all red in the face, “No, no, you’re wrong! They won one not that long ago! You kids have no memory!” I just laughed it off at the time, thought he was just being an optimistic old guy. Turns out, he was probably righter than I was. I just had this mental block, I guess, where if it wasn’t a championship, it didn’t really count in my long-term memory of their successes.
It’s wild how your brain just files things away, or doesn’t. I even think I went to a playoff game around the time they last won a series. I remember the atmosphere in the Garden was absolutely insane. Like, the building was physically shaking. Even if they weren’t going all the way, just that taste of winning a round, it meant so much to the city. That’s the kind of energy you don’t forget, even if the specific year gets a bit hazy.
So, yeah. That was my little journey of discovery for the day. Started with a random thought, did a bit of digital digging, and ended up jogging some old memories. It’s good to clear up those little foggy bits of sports history in your head. Keeps you honest, especially when you’re about to talk smack with your uncle.