Fasten your seat belts!
Fasten your seat belts, Knicks and Rangers fans!
The regular seasons for the NHL and NBA wrapped up just last week, and now it's time to start biting off all of your nails if you're a fan of any of the teams that have made the playoffs in either league.
As you likely know by now, I'm a big fan of the Rangers and Knicks, and for the first time in what seems like forever, there is a good chance that both teams can make deep postseason runs.
The Knicks finished with 50 regular season wins for the first time since 2012-2013, when the team compiled a 54-28 record; the Knicks then spent the next seven seasons playing terrible basketball - a combined 184-374 record - before returning to the playoffs in 2020-2021, the first season under current head coach Tom Thibodeau.
The Rangers completed their 97th regular season with 55 wins and 114 points, both franchise records; last season ended in disappointing fashion, with a Game 7 loss to the Devils in the first round. The year before, the season ended in Game 6 of the conference finals at the hands of the Lightning. (The 'Igor's better!' chant, which Rangers fans were shouting after taking a 2-0 lead in that series, still rings in my head.) The 2013-2014 season was the last time the Rangers made it into the Cup final, which they lost to the Kings in five games.
In the 1993-1994 season, the Rangers won the President's Trophy en route to its first Stanley Cup championship in 54 years, and the Knicks finished second in the East on the way to a Game 7 loss in the NBA Finals; this year, the Rangers won the President's Trophy, and the Knicks finished second in the East. Both teams are off to good starts, with the Knicks taking Game 1 of their first round series against the 76ers and the Rangers defeating the Capitals in the first game of their opening series.
As legendary Mets baseball broadcaster Bob Murphy liked to say in the late stages of a tight game, "Fasten your seat belts!"
Here's hoping that the MSG lights are still on in June.
In other news…
Speaking of legendary baseball broadcasters, John Sterling stepped aside last week after a 35-year run in the Yankees radio booth. Some broadcasters like to take a back seat to the game, and let the players' actions shine through; that was not Sterling. Listening to a Sterling broadcast meant you would get some Broadway theatrics, some great stories, some bombastic home run calls, "Theeeee Yankees Win!", and plenty more. There's only one John Sterling, and he will be missed. WFAN, the flagship station of the Yankees, has some big shoes to fill.
Also last week, Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter was banned from the NBA for life after betting on basketball games through an associate, including one instance where he took out a parlay bet that included his own team to lose. This news comes about a month after baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani allegedly had millions of dollars stolen from him by his interpreter and friend, Ippei Mizuhara, in order to pay off significant sports gambling debts.
It seems like no matter where we get our sports content - online, on TV, in magazines, you name it - we are bombarded with gambling ads. The major American sports leagues have all jumped head first into relationships with gambling organizations, so I hardly find it surprising that these incidents are bubbling up to the surface. Before something extremely bad happens, the leagues need to get out in front of this and prohibit players, their immediate families, and their employees/consultants etc., from being able to place bets on any sports, period. Most leagues allow their players to wager on sports games, except for games in the league they play in, but I don’t think that goes far enough. A whopping $120 billion was spent betting (legally) on sports last year, an all-time record, and chances are each year thereafter will set a new record; the longer these leagues wait to enact stricter rules on athletes and those in their orbits, the harder it will be.
I don't think I can let this blog go without talking about the new City Connect jersey the Mets revealed on Friday. They are, in a word, meh, or perhaps 'mid', as the kids say. I really liked the idea of using the purple found in the logo of the 7 train, which takes subway riders to Citi Field. I thought maybe the Mets would lean into a subway map theme and its colorful palette; instead, we got flecks of purple and the gray of concrete and/or asphalt. There was a nod to the subway map on the inside of the cap, but that’s about it. Several comments on an article from The Athletic likened the jersey to a generic shirt you would find in one of those souvenir shops; I think that's about as accurate an assessment as I've seen. I'll say this, though: It's definitely not the worst City Connect jersey out there, that's for sure. Not by a long shot.
Overall, I'm disappointed at the outset, but chances are the City Connect uniforms will grow on me after a while. For what it's worth, I feel the same way about a certain other thing that was released on Friday…