Welcome to the first volume of the BallHype Spotlight Series: What If... History Weren't. Tortured franchises and athletes surround us. The blogdome's best imagine alternate histories for their rooting interests. We begin with the irrepressible Joey from Straight Bangin' and his re-imagination of life as a Knicks fan. Enjoy.

We Knicks fans would be much better off were the team not in New York. 

For starters, people wouldn't know or care about the Brickers nearly as much as they do now because home games wouldn't take place in the capital of the media universe, and they likely wouldn't be hosted by a building called "The World's Most Famous Arena." In, say, San Diego, the Knicks would be another West Coast team whose games were staged in a building named for some company and covered by only a handful of reporters who mostly had to be there. Marc Stein or Jack McCallum might come if the team were good in a given year. 

Being away from the media would also mean being away from their misleading and injurious presuppositions. The most poisonous? Given that New Yorkers are oftentimes up-tempo, uptight, and upwardly impressed with their own culture, media outlets have collectively created an ever persisting institutional notion that New York fans demand a contending team, even if that supposed competitiveness is largely cosmetic. Sequestered from such an undermining and frustrating fallacy, the culture surrounding the team—the beat reporters, the fan expectations, the inherited values—would perhaps not compel owners, managers, coaches, and players to believe that Knick fans really do just care about the appearance of success to the point of foreclosing any opportunity for actual greatness.

But best of all, playing in a San Diego would mean that the Knicks were not in New York, the kingdom of basketball and the cradle of contemporary society. Other than James Naismith and John Wooden, everything great in basketball is connected to New York, somehow. Red Auerbach is a New Yorker. David Stern is too. UCLA and North Carolina are UCLA and North Carolina thanks to New Yorkers. New Yorkers like Lew Alcindor and Lenny Rosenbluth. And Michael Jordan. Basketball is the city game; it's this city's game. From the Rucker to Tillary to West 4^th Street, you can just feel it. Meanwhile, New York has spawned a generation of cultural, academic, social, and political leaders who all still revere their home and, of course, the teams for which they rooted as children. (Just ask anyone from Brooklyn about whom else is from Brooklyn, for example.) The Yankees, the Dodgers, and of course, "those great Knicks teams of the 70s," are what people carry on about. You know, in case you hadn't heard. 

It is from this noose of cultural relevance and historical significance that the franchise now hangs, the pressure of media, expectation, and past success always choking the Bricks, making the desperation that envelopes the team more and more palpable. To watch this writhing demise is to grow suddenly fond of fish tacos and Sea World. If a 27-point beatdown at the hands of the Pacers happens on the West Coast while no one is awake to watch it, does it really happen?

The questions Knicks fans ask about the team commonly begin with "why"—Why won't it play defense?!— but the better questions are perhaps "how": How did it get to this point? How can this be? The answers are complicated, not without a panoply of opinion concerning the overriding cause. But two indelible moments in recent Knicks history have sadly propelled the team along its downward trajectory more than any others, and both remain excruciating fodder for games of "What if?" 

Have you ever noticed how many highlights happen for other players when they're playing New York? Watch a highlight reel; it's uncanny. New York enjoys this odd heritage of ignominy, and thus, it is sadly appropriate that the Knicks are a cautionary tale for the discipline disinclined. Thanks to the Knicks, everyone who follows the NBA knows that it's a bad thing when players leave their benches during a fight.

We know this, of course, because of one episode that changed the course of recent Knicks history more than any other: PJ Brown flipping Charlie Ward. For those who have forgotten or never knew, Ward was attempting to box out Brown toward the end of Game 5 in the 1997 Knicks-Heat playoff series. Brown didn't like that, and he effectively body slammed Ward. A fight ensued, and several key Knicks who had been on the bench at the time—Patrick Ewing, Allan Houston, and Larry Johnson among them—leapt up to aid their teammate, who, by the way, had just been senselessly attacked. God forbid. Suspensions reigned down upon the Brickers following the incident, and New York went on to lose in the Eastern Conference semifinals after enjoying a 3-1 series edge. I still have not recovered. 

It still burns because 1996-97 was going to be The Year. The frustrations, the near misses, the Jordan effect—all of it would be exceeded by the pleasure of a championship. It was just time.

For a decade, Patrick Ewing had elevated the franchise, making each season during the 90s an exercise in hope: the team was not commonly a prohibitive favorite to win the title, but Ewing and his odd cast of characters had emerged as playoff stalwarts who could accomplish something special if things broke the right way. The 1994 NBA Finals affirmed this, oddly. Of course, John Starks shot away a title in Game 6, but 93-94 was a season when the Knicks demonstrated that they could confront the uncomfortable history and expectations that are as much a part of the franchise as blue and orange. The noose was there, and it was tightened a little more after Game 7, but for much of the year, the Knicks seemed unencumbered by the gallows. 

Following the O.J. Finals—you remember that, right?— a brief haze set in. The following season, the Knicks lost to the Pacers in the Eastern Conference semifinals when Patrick opted for a layup instead of a dunk in Game 7. Pat Riley resigned the next day. The following year, they ran into a machine-like Bulls team that was back to again torment New Yorkers, counting the Knicks among their victims on the way to Michael's historic title.

But 96-97 was different. Jeff Van Gundy was the coach, preaching defense and embracing his outsider status to motivate the team. Allan Houston and Larry Johnson had been imported to give the team more firepower and Ewing more support. The New York pressure that had beaten down so many Knick teams did not defeat those Brickers. The Knicks played unafraid basketball. They won 57 games, and tellingly, they split their season series with the Bulls, winning once in Chicago. This was when no one could win in Chicago. The 96-97 Knicks were going to win a title. And in the process, they were going to rewrite the sad narrative that had plagued a franchise forever inadequately toiling in the shadows cast by Walt Frazier and made even darker by expectation and New York. 

But that was taken from New York when PJ Brown got gully and the Knicks left their bench. The ensuing games in that series were torture, with possibility and promise seated courtside next to the suspended Knicks, taunting Knick fans as the team lost to an inferior opponent that was mentally defeated by the end of Game 5. Even worse, the Ward flip, and the subsequent loss, allowed the suffocating anxiety that had been largely diminished for much of the season to return. The noose again tightened. And with that episode, the Knicks were sent reeling toward the bleak reality of today.

Sure, they held it together on the surface. There were subsequent playoff appearances, and even some faux excitement. Who doesn't remember Allan Houston's improbable shot to beat the Heat? But by that point, Patrick was getting old. And worse, the mounting frustration and playoff disappointments rendered him generally irrelevant. When the Knicks traded Ewing after the 2000 playoffs, people in New York were happy, and people beyond New York shrugged because it was important only to the people who cared about a team that couldn't ever get over the hump. The sting of 1997 forever infused the Knicks' culture with a damning sense of urgency. 1994 was bad enough, but 1997 was the opportunity for redemption, and everyone knew it. From that moment forward, so many decisions were made hastily in a desperate, Faustian fashion whose weight grew ever more unbearable. That mentality made the noose's effect that much worse.

Everyone and everything associated with it 1997 grew tainted. Houston devolved into a cumbersome object lesson. Larry Johnson's routine became showy and substanceless. Ewing was tarred forever. As the team moved forward, the players brought in to reinvent New York basketball inevitably lacked the charm and character of those 1990s teams that provided fleeting hope. And the senseless desperation that informed so many short-sighted decisions alienated a fan base that expected much more.

And so today, the Knicks find themselves at the bottom of the Lig, a discredit to the team's uniforms and heritage. They are owned by an incompetent who is perhaps outdone only by the incompetent who runs and coaches the team. The roster is an odd assemblage of imperfect parts that have collectively brought to life the poor decisions born of 1997's failure. Uglier than the on-court product is the off-court freak show, and more painful than that is the sad knowledge that things could have been different. 

What if? What if Ward hadn't been flipped? What if the Knicks hadn't left the bench? What if the Knicks had won a title that year? What if Ewing had enjoyed a title-fueled happy denouement? What if the culture of New York had changed through success? Unfortunately, we'll never know. Instead, Knick fans must settle for consolations.

What if the noose weren't so tight?

Next in the Spotlight Series: Life without Bartman. Keep up with the Spotlight Series here on BallHype or through your feed reader.