I already had the television unplugged when Jim grabbed my arm.
“You don’t want to do it,” he said aggressively. A real contrast to his usual, relaxed Southern demeanor.
Of course he was right. I didn’t actually want to throw our communal, 19 inch living room television into the middle of Ackerman Avenue, the street where we and two other roommates were living during our junior year at Syracuse University. But it is what I threatened to do if our beloved Orangemen once again exited the NCAA March Madness tournament in the early rounds.
I used to have a much different relationship with sports.
Important Syracuse or Yankees or Jets games were all met with a combination of anticipation, anxiety, religious-like devotion and, most often, disappointment.
But no team got my time, attention and fandom quite as much as the New York Knicks.
As my Dad and I would tune into games I’d prowl around my childhood family room with my “lucky” wiffle ball bat in my hands while watching Patrick Ewing, John Starks and, my all time favorite player, Charles Oakley battle against the Pistons and the Bulls.
As I mentioned, my relationship to sports has changed over the years. Getting married, prioritizing my fitness, opening a business, having a child and not wanting to die of a heart attack every time Bill Laimbeer got away with a hard foul or Jordan hit another buzzer beater to send us packing, have all contributed to me watching less games and much less emotionally invested in games that, quite frankly, don’t impact my quality of life at all.
Sure, I’ll tune into some playoff games and the SuperBowl. My son and I pick a local team to follow during March Madness so we have an underdog to root for. And I’ll check in every once and a while to see where the Yankees are in the standings. But that’s about it. The emotional investment is gone and it’s all at an arms length.
So no one was as surprised as I was when, for a couple of months this Spring, I found myself excitedly rushing to the television after the family was in bed and the dog was walked to watch our New York Knicks battle it out in the playoffs.
It’s not like the Knicks haven’t been promising the last few seasons. They’ve made some deep playoff runs and have been entertaining to watch.
But there was just something about this year. They got hot at the right time, were sweeping other contenders and winning by double digits.
Which was great and fun and, ultimately, not the reason I blew up my bedtime each night cheering for another Knicks win.
It was because I was doing it with the entire City.
New York is in my blood. I’ve lived in or around it my entire life. I’ve worked in Manhattan for the last 30 years. You know how they say that you are the combination of the five people you spend the most time with? New York City is one of those people.
There are a lot of things in the City that aim to divide us. Political affiliations. The rich versus the poor. Which borough you represent. Even our sports teams. Are you Yankees or Mets? Jets or Giants?
But the Knicks, particularly this season’s Knicks, brought us all together.
For a few glorious months it seemed like everyone was wearing blue and orange. Organized and organic “watch parties” where hundreds or thousands of people would show up outside the Garden or in Central Park or on a random side street in Bed-Stuy where someone would project the game on the metal gate of a local shop that was closed for business for the day became joyous communes where our citizens came to cheer and celebrate and high five another Knicks win.
Yes, the Knicks ultimately won. And, yes, there were so many lovely player stories that made cheering them on even easier. Brunson’s relationship with his father. The fact that many of these players played together for a local college team. The architecture of how this team was put together in the first place.
But, much more than that, the big story was the City.
It’s simultaneously the most incredible, diverse, rich and robust place you can ever live while also being the most expensive, the most challenging, the most bureaucratic and the loneliest of all of America’s big cities. And to have a catalyst in the Knicks that unified us, regardless of whether you are from Queens or Staten Island, an immigrant, a transplant, a lifer, rich or struggling was the magic that we didn’t even know we all needed.
What struck me wasn't basketball. It was how hungry people were for a reason to gather. To stand shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers and feel like they belonged to something larger than themselves.
Every membership in our gym starts with a phone call. And I make many of those calls.
And of course we talk about goals and training and scheduling and costs. But it’s the potential members who mention how they are looking for a sense of community, to be around other like-minded individuals who enjoy training or take their fitness and health seriously, those are the ones who I know are going to be an absolute home run for the gym.
When Kyle and I started the gym it wasn’t because we had some new, grandiose ideas about training or even because we wanted to be big shot business men. It was truly because we loved training and knew that it was always better when you did it with the right people.
So we’ve set out to find the right people.
In our little part of the big City, that is our magic.
We thought we were opening a gym.
What we were really building was a place for people to find their team.