June 5, 1994
Game 7. ECF. 34 and a half seconds left. Knicks down one. I’m 15, watching in the living room with my papi. My mother and sisters are elsewhere; they don’t want to deal with our stressing.
Charles Oakley inbounds to John Starks, surprisingly wide-open for the pass given all 19,763 in attendance and the millions watching at home know exactly what’s about to happen: Starks running a pick-and-roll with Patrick Ewing. Starks is as open as he is because his defender, Reggie Miller, made a business decision as he trailed Starks towards an Anthony Mason screen. Miller is alive today because he didn’t test Mase.
Starks dribbles to his right, past the pick. Antonio Davis, Ewing’s defender, hesitates for a split-second, giving Starks all the runway he’d need to take it to the cup. It’s the same action the ‘90s Knicks ran whenever they were in desperate need of a last-second bucket.
Once Ewing slammed home the rebound to put the Knicks up one, Papi and I allowed ourselves the briefest expression of joy, a “yes!” as short and sibilant as airbrakes on a truck. For the next 22.7 seconds, neither of us breathes. Instead we wait. For the other shoe to drop. Or not.
I’d never seen the Knicks advance so far. Papi saw them win two titles, but that was back in ye olden days, the 1970s. This was the mid-‘90s — too late for Hammer Time, too soon for Y2K. The Knicks were thisclose to a championship. The Rangers, too. It was a glorious time.
Not so much for a Knicks/Rangers fan living in western New York. The move from Long Island to Rochester introduced the Mirandas to garbage plates, ice storms, the highest concentration of Confederate flags north of the Mason-Dixon and a particular strain of hate for all things NYC. Western New York has this particular paranoia where many locals believe NYC gets all of the state funding without contributing enough revenue to deserve it. It’s like a small child being pissed that their parents who work 40-50 hours a week “only” give them a weekly allowance and not their whole paycheck.
After the Rangers won their first Stanley Cup in 54 years, a local sportswriter penned a column crying about how insufferable that was in and of itself, and that if the Knicks won, too, life up here in God’s Arctic armpit would suddenly be intolerable.
When we lived on Long Island, my uncle lived around the corner. He was a K9 officer in NYC. When I’d stop over to visit he’d order a whole pizza, just ‘cuz I was there. The day my friend and I were chased by two pit bulls, it was my uncle who shot his gun into the air, bringing the dogs to a stop before loudly yelling to their owners they could either come get their dogs now — alive — or wait until later, when they wouldn’t be.
Upstate cops were different. Anytime I walked around my neighborhood with a Black friend, we’d see people peeking out from their homes, behind curtains. Without fail a cop car would show up within 10 minutes, always wondering what we “were up to.” I called the police once in my entire time in Rochester, when an angry white man with a bat was threatening my Puerto Rican friend’s mother. The police came, ignored me, ignored us, spent 30 minutes talking to the man, then all the white neighbors, the ones who’d come out of their house once the police were there, all telling me, “You’re gonna get it now, spic. Gonna get what you’ve got coming.” Only after all that did the offier approach us. My friend’s mother told me in Spanish not to say anything. The cop asked if I was Puerto Rican. I said yeah. He said, “Do you have a father in the home?”
When the Knicks held on to advance to the Finals, I felt closer to them, to the city. Closer to my papi, who played at the Garden in high school and taught me everything I knew about watching and playing the game (except how to beat him one-on-one; now that he’s in his 70s, I might have a shot — maybe). I was living somewhere that was never home, never right, but I knew I wasn’t alone. Not with my family there. Not with Papi there.
And while the Mets and Jets were trash, and the Rangers had finally done the impossible, the Knicks were just four wins from what I’d waited my whole life as a fan (at that time, “my whole life as a [Knick] fan” equaled four seasons). Once they won, I’d rock my Ewing sneakers, my Knicks shorts, my Knicks T-shirt (featuring Ewing, Starks, Mason, Charles Oakley and Greg Anthony; people forget Greg was highly regarded coming out of UNLV), and the cheap giveaway Knicks hat I’d gotten at a game three years earlier. I’d strut into school, letting all the racists and bigots look upon my wardrobe with despair.
Family was forever. Justice was inevitable. The Knicks would always be there for me.
June 11, 1999
The Knicks advanced to the Finals three hours ago. I didn’t see it. I was in a bar.
I was drinking and drugging a lot. My parents’ relationship was fraying, one sister out of college, the other just started. The house had been sold. I’d set the game to tape, figuring if they won I’d re-watch, if not I wouldn’t.
I spent that night in a pool hall with some friends, where we noted on one of the televisions that the Knicks had won. One was a Laker fan, my best friend since moving upstate. Years later our friendship ended, after he started stealing from me and lying to his wife to support his drug habit. The other, a Celtic fan and fellow socialist, would remain close to me another 20-plus years, until, after buying a nice big house in a pretty suburb for his wife and two kids, he cut all ties as the Black Lives Matter movement was moving, telling me I couldn’t understand “how hard it is to be a Republican under Trump,” and that “property rights matter, too.”
I came home and slipped silently into the living room, the same room I’d seen the Knicks win the East five years prior. I rewound the tape far enough to see late in the fourth quarter. The Garden crowd chanting “JEFF VAN GUN-DY *CLAP* *CLAP* *CLAP CLAP CLAP!* Allan Houston hugging his coach; Latrell Sprewell waving a towel. For the first time in my life as a Knick fan, and only one of two times ever as one, I wept (the other was beating Boston last year).
Suddenly from behind, noises. A blanket being whipped off. A middle-aged man, awakened from a rough night on the living room couch. Papi. Not at all thrilled to have been woken by his 20-year-old oblivious son turning on the TV after midnight. Clearly there’d been another fight between my parents. Even on a night like this, reality wouldn’t stop being real. My drinking all night, getting high, even the Knicks: nothing put a dent in the pain. Whatever tears I’d shed from joy grew hot and fell fast, no longer sparked by wonder, but blunder.
The Knicks had no chance in the Finals; everyone knew. Ewing was out with an Achilles tear. Larry Johnson was injury-compromised. Going up against David Robinson and Tim Duncan, the Knicks’ best big, Marcus Camby, was no thicker than a Fruit Roll-Up. And the thing was, this might be as good as it was gonna get for New York.
The Ewing era was coming to a close. My family was falling apart. The century was coming to an end. The future, long a land I’d longed to live in, now seemed as likely an outcome as me pitching for the Mets.
May 25, 2026
In the city for the first time in a while. I let a few people know I’m there. All respond the same way: “Are you here for the Knicks?
I am not. My father and I have tickets to a Mets game, purchased months before the season started, before David Stearns re-invented a worser wheel by turning Pete Alonso into Jorge Polanco’s DL stay. I’m staying on 36th Street, my father on 37th.
I don’t remember the last time I saw him. Since the divorce he’s married twice, lived in Virginia, Bulgaria, rural Missouri, Puerto Rico, Cape Cod. His old man died when my dad was 19. My old man didn’t die, but by my mid-20s I got used to not seeing him for months or years at a time, the way an amputee gets used to a phantom limb.
Every time I see him, it’s too short. A girlfriend in college tore me a new one once. I had an hour lunch and worked 20 minutes away from her. So I picked up some drive-thru and drove to spend the time we could together. I couldn’t understand her at the time, telling me through tears that she’d rather not see me at all than only see me for a few minutes before I left again. I grew to understand her.
My entire adult life, seeing my father has always sparked joy and anger. Joy at this wonderful, loving, miracle of a man reminding me why I’ve always loved him so much, even when I didn’t want to. And anger over all the years lost, the conversations never shared, the things he could have taught me, the memories we’ll never share.
He’s one street away, but I don’t see him the day he arrives. He’s going to get food from the same restaurant I am, but I end up getting takeout with a friend; he doesn’t ask to eat together, neither do I. Not because I don’t love him. But because I do.
We’re going to the Met game Tuesday, before we leave town Wednesday. Tuesday, right after I finish a call with a Knick fan who runs an animation studio who’s such a lovely dude, I try to call my father. I can’t. My phone’s been suspended. I can’t call or text.
I don’t know where he is. His hotel is far enough from mine (avenues are loooong) that if I walk all the way there and he’s not there, I’ll risk missing any chance of catching the game. I email him, hoping he’ll check it even though he’s retired. I should have known better.
My father has never retired. He can’t. Whether working in education or ministry, he’s never been able to stop. He ran dozens of marathons, up until he was 60. He played high school baseball, was scouted by one or two MLB clubs, then played men’s “senior” baseball from his 30s into his 60s. Of course he checks his email. We connect and meet at an Italian place around the corner, then head to Citi Field.
The meal is delicious and delightful (vodka pie). He was in London the week before, so I’d asked him to bring me back anything relating to Manchester City. When we meet in front of the restaurant, he’s very proud to show me my “surprise.” And it is a surprise — a hat and jersey in the red of Man United. He didn’t realize he’d mixed them up. He feels terrible. I don’t. Laughing, I assure him the story of his mix-up makes the United shirt mean more to me than the City kit ever would’ve.
I tell him about the months of depression. The struggles the past few months. Years. The dreams I’ve let go. Tell him about my new plan, my new purpose. I’m going to save up for a year and move to NYC. It’s the only place I’m happy. The only place where I really ever feel alive. Where I ever really feel me.
On our way to the 7 train, we’re crossing an intersection. It is 80 degrees, the first sunny, nice day of the trip. We’re joking, happy. Everything feels right with the world. Then, without warning, for a moment, I think that I’m floating. It’s not the euphoria.
There’s a maybe two-foot deep hole in the middle of the intersection. New York bedrock being more solid than diamond, I wasn’t on the lookout for any two-foot deep holes. Suddenly I’m flying face-first toward the street. You know it’s bad when it’s 5:00 in Midtown and all the strangers around you stop and gasp as you tumble; these people wouldn’t stop to look if Abraham Lincoln passed by riding on top of Napoleon. My brain races right to chill mode. Get up. Now. Laugh it off. If you’re not bothered, it’s no big deal.
I start to stand, and am shocked to find I’m falling again. My legs are trembling. My father reaches out his hand to help me up, but before I can reach it I’m going down again. My hand lands on his knee, and for a second I let it stay there. More than a second.
I look up, now a middle-aged man myself. There is Papi. Older, grayer, thinner (far thinner than me, goddamnit). But it’s Papi. Lifting me up. Showing me love. Never there when I want him, but always there when I need him.
24 hours earlier, the Knicks clinched their first trip to the Finals since 1999. We did not watch the game together. We didn’t need to. Family is forever. Justice, while slow, is inevitable. And the Knicks will always be there for us.
Kurt Helin
