In the morning hours of July 21, 1861, the carriages began to arrive in Centreville, Virginia.
Once a bustling center of trade (before newer roads and railroads diverted the traffic it depended on), it was then home to little more than 100 people.
Whether there was anyone left in the village who owned a carriage is a question for a better historian than I, but you can be almost certain that no one owned any form of transportation as ornately decorated and carved as the beautifully hewn landaus and barouches that were filtering into the town, one by one.
Nattily attired men and women emerged in due time from the interiors of their luxurious conveyances, suits and mustaches neatly brushed, summer dresses pressed and long hair ringleted, with an air of curiosity one might rightly confuse with that of those attending a sporting event.
Washington, D.C.’s wealthy and elite were arriving in force, but to what end?
I imagine word migrated rather quickly around the village. Even in its heyday as a regional thoroughfare, this would have been more than a minor sensation. Senators, and blue-bloods, and servants were milling about the street making inquiries and running errands, and the inquiries were of the strangest sort.
Where might one best view the battle from this location?
The battle? Why would anyone want to watch a battle? A picnic?!
Yes, a picnic. As servants (and those who did not have/bring servants) began to unpack the still-accumulating coaches and buggies, the intent became crystal clear. It was no jest.
Baskets, and bags, and a variety of caddies, canteens, and casks were lowered down or lifted out of traveling storage to be toted off to a predetermined place of best possible spectation.
You see, Centreville had been built on a plateau. And while it had largely been chosen by both Native Americans and English settlers for the various creeks and water sources that flow into Bull Run, and eventually, the Occoquan River — the vista is also outstanding, looking out over what are now multiple national parks, with the Bull Run Mountains in clear view, and the Blue Ridge Mountains just beyond them.
And, most importantly in this instance, an outstanding panoramic view of the rolling plains of Manassas, located just outside of a railroad junction.
That Manassas Junction was located just 100 miles north of the new Confederate capital of Richmond (near another rail connection to the Shenandoah Valley) and a mere 30 miles south of Washington, D.C was a matter of much conversation.
The strategic importance of said junction had been more or less agreed upon by generals of both the Union Army and the Confederacy. Both armies hoped to use the depot to transport their troops for the invasion of the opposition’s capital city and in defense of their own.
And so it was that after just months of training, the two armies found themselves camped on the opposite sides of the river, with nothing but gentle slopes, scattered woods, and grassland between them, preparing for the first real stretch of open battle of the American Civil War.
Which is why the arrival of affluent civilians had been so shocking to the people of Centreville, who with the exit of Union soldiers in the middle of the night had expected nothing beyond further military reserves, much less smartly-dressed spectators toting meals, and blankets, and opera glasses to the edge of the plateau (and even into some of the closer surrounding hills) to conduct a jolly luncheon within sight of the battlefield.
Cannons had already fired, just before dawn. The socialites and congressmen had surely been told that.
And yet there they sat, sandwiches in hand, crusts probably cut off, certain of glorious victory and a dammed good show.
And for most of the week, that’s all I could think about. In almost every online avenue predictions of (relatively) easy victory rang out. Spurs in five! No, in four! No, Knicks in four! Five at worst!
It was a strange sensation to be confronted with. Uneasiness. Apprehension. A vague sense of dread. Whatever you want to call it, it was there, in the pit of my stomach.
It’s the Finals! I should be elated! No one thought this would happen so soon!
But neither group of fans seemed to understand how good the other team was. How hard this was going to be. How so far from assured it was.
Titles are always hard to win, but the postseason pedigree of Spurs fans and the desperation of Knicks fans was combining in a way that felt catastrophic. And it was easy to see the reasoning.
The Knicks had managed to avoid the heavyweights of their conference. And none of those teams had a defensive character resembling that of the Blazers, Timberwolves, or Thunder.
And they are, after all, the Knicks, a team most recently renowned for their (and their owner’s) talent for snatching defeat from the Jaws of victory.
They’re not the Yankees, they’re the Mets, a team that astounds everyone when they’re good (including their own fans) and always seems to become so by near happenstance.
And the Spurs? Well, have you heard of Wemby? You know, the human telephone pole who suppresses shot attempts just by existing?
Yeah, they have that guy. The Knicks haven’t’ faced that guy. Or anyone tough, really. Not like the Spurs have.
Never mind that they’re the youngest Finalists since the ‘77 Trail Blazers. That they have precious little postseason experience. That they’ve been playing beyond their years to such an extent that they can’t possible comprehend what they’ve done, much less be expected to maintain it.
Look, I get it. I’m a Spurs writer, and a Spurs fan. And I desperately wanted to believe that this would be a cakewalk after the seven game hall of horrors that the last series walked us through. But with every breezy prediction, that pit in my stomach seemed to grow.
I was almost angry about it.
What are these people thinking?! Don’t they know the basketball gods are fickle? Have they never read a single Greek myth? Have they never heard of what happens to the mortals who dare to display their hubris so nakedly.
At least I keep all of my hubris inside. Which makes me better than all of them. And also the gods.
And I have to admit, the Knicks are one of the two NBA teams I truly have a soft spot for.
Years ago, in preparation for an article about a Spurs and Knicks regular season contest, I read Harvey Araton’s seminal 1970’s Knicks chronicle When The Garden Was Eden followed by Charley Rosen’s equally enthralling The Pivotal Season (he himself being a lifelong Knicks fans and onetime assistant coach to former Knicks legend Phil Jackson) and I was enthralled by the tales of those New York teams to such an extent that I consider them a spiritual predecessor to the Popovich Spurs, among others.
(Former NBA + Spurs coach and Pop mentor Larry Brown grew up in New York as a massive fan of 70’s Knicks coach Red Holtzman)
Those Knicks teams were great at sharing the ball, and knowing their role, and excelling in the clutch, and were coordinated by a coach so similar in attitude, strategic genius, and career/life arc to San Antonio’s longtime skipper that you’d almost think they were carbon copies.
And all postseason I’ve seen flashes of those teams in these Knicks, and to be perfectly honest, it scares the absolute daylights out of me.
“Spurs in 7”, I predicted shakily before Game 1.
I found myself snorting at my trepidation in the first quarter. Maybe I’d had the wrong end of it after all. Maybe all this writing had made me lose touch with the gut feelings that a fan has.
Maybe I’ve just gotten so in my head that I’m not as connected to the sense of inevitability that I used to get in the regular season and the postseason, when I could feel in my bones that the Spurs were coming home with O’Brien.
And then it stopped being easy. And New York kept slapping away leads like a Victorian orphan. And every Spur seemed to have a case of the butterfingers, while balls that shouldn’t have gone in for the Knicks unerringly found the bottom of the net.
The walls were closing in, and I was right, but boy did being right feel bad. Rarely have I more wanted to be wrong in the moment than last night.
It must have resembled some minute version of how General Winfield Scott felt when Abraham Lincoln insisted that the newly expanded and barely trained Union Army march directly on Richmond.
Or when he received news of retreat after they were handed their first defeat in a war that he must have known would rage on for years, as opposed to the mere months the President had hoped for, and that the populace had expected.
And what a retreat it was. Having failed to take the junction, any progress the Union forces had made was thwarted by the Confederates’ ability to continue bringing in reinforcements by train.
By the late afternoon, they were outnumbered almost 2-1, and their lines broke and withdrew in a mass so chaotic and without leadership that it was dubbed ‘The Great Skedaddle’ by southern journalists of the time.
Leaving behind their arms and equipment, and wagons and artillery, and all manner of supplies, the terrified blue-clad soldiers quite literally headed for the hills, unknowingly aimed directly at the cavalcade of voyeuristic picnickers still seated there.
Slow to realize what was happening, some of the onlookers were still seated when the first of the troops who were on horseback came galloping through. Others, being somewhat more aware, had already scrambled for their carriages and, in their panic, were now clogging the road that the army was trying to use to retreat.
Had the almost equally inexperienced Confederate soldiers been a bit more seasoned, or their commanders a bit more zealous, the war might have ended soon after, with the complete destruction of the retreating forces and a subsequent advance on the U.S. capital.
Thankfully, an overabundance of caution (due to Scott’s prescient insistence that a second force of 18,000 men be stationed near Harper’s Ferry in the event of a rogue Confederate incursion) kept the defeat from resulting in total disaster.
But Winfield Scott was blamed (in addition to commanding General Irvin McDowell) for the catastrophe and resigned shortly after, as Lincoln began to omit him from critical meetings, still determined to advance directly on Richmond rather than adopting Scott’s shrewder (though admittedly, slower) ‘Anaconda Plan’ to surround and divide the Confederate states, and cut off all supply and transportation routes.
The victory was not quite what it seemed, though, for the Confederacy.
It was not just citizens of the Union who had been convinced that the war would be quickly ended. Once news reached the southern populace, they became even more convinced of their military superiority, and so, unfortunately (or rather, fortunately) did many of their political leaders and commanders.
Many historians have since agreed that the one-sided nature of the battle “proved the greatest misfortune that would have befallen the Confederacy” having imbued the South with a false sense of invincibility.
Much more fatally, it removed almost all sense of urgency.
Content with easy victories at the start of the war, due to (among other things) an edge in the quality of their officers, the Confederacy failed to fully exploit their advantage, or recognize its temporary nature.
Yes, the Union Army was green, but for much of the latter two-thirds of the war, it would have the superior numbers, due to population density.
And it would also be better supplied, since the greatly inferior Confederate Navy could neither blockade the North, nor break free of the blockade imposed upon them, even without taking into account that the majority of industry and advantageous transportation (railways) existed north of the Mason-Dixon line.
The South hoped to wage a war of attrition against a deeper, better-supported army, for some reason unable to discern that their disadvantage would only grow as time wore on.
And after last night, there’s a chance that the Knicks (and certainly their fans) may overestimate the nature of their victory and what it signifies.
For Knicks fans, last night was a display of veteran superiority. Of superior execution, outstanding defense, and timely shooting.
For Spurs fans, it was the result of an off-night for the team with the greater Superstar, superior depth, and overall higher ceiling, likely brought on by a youthful reaction to the significance of the moment, and lingering exhaustion from a brutal previous series.
The rest advantage will be less now that the Knicks are back on the court (and getting a little banged-up themselves). The youthful trepidation is unlikely to last.
The longer the series goes on, the more it plays into the favor of the more youthful team (who also have home-court advantage in the event of another Game 7 ), and the more their depth will sustain them.
The Knicks must win as quickly as possible. Their window is small. And that is its own kind of pressure. The Spurs’ window will almost certainly be open for some time.
New York City is a pressure cooker of desperation and a ‘what have you done for me lately’ attitude.
San Antonio offers a comfortable respite for their players.
The greater burden is squarely on the Knicks — to capitalize on their victory.
It’s possible that they haven’t realized that yet, but even if they do/have the series is far from over.
Both civilian populations were convinced that the Civil War could be ended in a single battle. It dragged on for four long years, ending as the once-great General Winfield Scott had anticipated and strategized.
And though it took an intelligent and otherwise unassuming General Ulysses S. Grant to execute it (who, unlike many of Lincoln’s previous selections recognized Scott’s genius, and adapted his own plans to include it), Scott lived to see himself vindicated.
He died a year after the war ended, at the (then) very ripe old age of 79, his legacy secure.
He had sent a copy of his recently completed memoirs to Grant (whom he had advised Lincoln to appoint Commander-in-Chief of the Army in 1862), inscribed with a single sentence of gratitude and humility: “From the oldest General, to the greatest General.”
Spurs in 7. Go, Spurs, Go.
Takeways
- There were several moments in crunch time when no one seemed to be able to hold onto the ball or make the right decision. Everyone except for Devin Vassell, that is. While all of the Spurs have been prone to bouts of inconsistency in the playoffs, even on a meh shooting night, Vassell never stopped giving his best effort and using his head. Particularly critical was a late position, where, noticing that he was boxed in the paint, Vassell recognized that an alley-oop to Victor (who had position and reach) would almost certainly draw a foul due to the way that Wemby was being guarded. Everything started slipping away after that canny bit of improvisation and the ensuing free throws, but it wasn’t Vassell’s fault, who stuck to Jalen Brunson like a rodent trap and was just on the bad side of some shooting luck from Brunson (who he otherwise helped hassle into a 12-31 shooting performance). I know he’s still got some time on his contract, but I wouldn’t hate it if the Spurs tried to early extend him at a (relative) discount. He’s been a coffin-nail for the better part of this incredible run from the Spurs.
- The Spurs wasted another solid shooting performance from Julian Champagnie on a night where their dreaded three-point variance reared its ugly head. We know that the Spurs have really only have two modes when it comes to downtown conversion: unrelenting drought or annihilating flood, but it’s easier to embrace that in the regular season. That they actually shot more threes than the three-happy Knicks almost made it feel like that nightmare of a Game 7 that the Rockets had against the Warriors back in 2018, and it actually wasn’t far off. They took one less bomb than those Rockets, and only made four more shots. So, while the Spurs should definitely drop the attempts a bit, it’s good to know that it took approaching historical misfortune for them to lose the way they did. I wouldn’t bet on that holding up.
- Much has been made of Dylan Harper’s absence in crunch time, but Carter Bryant’s utilization should also be a point of interest, as he got only four minutes of court time and was assigned the far-too-slippery Brunson as an assignment. It might be a better idea to try him on Towns, Anunoby, or even give him some minutes against the bench shooters, who were a thorn in San Antonio’s side every time they tried to pull away. I understand that he’s a rookie, but almost everything has to be on the table at this stage of the postseason, and the Knicks are absolutely going to make adjustments of their own. Hopefully, Mitch Johnson is just keeping Bryant in his back pocket for now.
Playing You Out – The Theme Song of the Evening:
Part of the Plan by Dan Fogelberg
(@bluebeari3) 
