Frank Broke Knicks Fans.
They Are Finally Recovering.

By W. M. | 16 April 2023 | 5-Minute Read

What is life without a little negativity.

With the New York Knicks having betrayed their true selves and having gone completely off-script by making the playoffs, I, Don Darkness, have admittedly found it difficult to write about the team. These are not my Knicks. I do not recognize them.

I would be remiss if I did not salute Julius Randle for occasionally pushing the toxicity sliders back to respectable levels. But where are my Stephon Marburys, disappearing Derrick Roses, interview-skipping Kristaps Porzingises, and Henny-guzzling JR Smiths? Julius cannot carry this franchise alone. This 2022-23 team is too vanilla for me - it just doesn’t inspire me. Maybe Obi Toppin slapping the selfishness out of RJ Barrett could make me revisit my stance, but this coward won’t do it.

On the court, however, the Knicks have come a long way. Led by two stars in Randle and Jalen Brunson, as well as their flamboyant bench, the Knicks are having their most successful season since 2013 following a decade-long march in the wasteland of irrelevance. Throughout this period, the Knicks oscillated between disappointment and abject failure, while showcasing some of the worst basketball that humankind has ever produced.

One failed trade and one awful free agent signing after another, the Knicks pushed their fans to the brink of agony, losing many in the process. In the twilight of the Melo era, they were desperate to see their team build around young players drafted by the franchise. They got their wish. From 2015 to 2020, the Knicks drafted five players in the top ten of the NBA draft.

The majority of these players failed to meet expectations, to put it diplomatically. Most of them frankly sucked. By NBA standards, yes, as I am well aware that my .100 field goal percentage at the park is unlikely to canonize me in Springfield. But I still have two eyeballs and they don’t lie to me. Besides Traitorzingis, these guys haven’t been good in the Association.

Nevertheless, one of these lottery disappointments did not fail to capture the imagination and steal the hearts of Knicks fans. Puzzling, to fall in love with one’s own misery. Let’s fucking analyze this.

A defensive guard playing for SIG Strasbourg, Frank Ntilikina was selected with the eighth pick of the 2017 draft. Enigmatic and unassuming, the French Prince had this idiomatic and literal je ne sais quoi that evoked a grander style of basketball to his supporters as soon as his NBA career began. He also had his fair share of detractors, as some realized early on that the Knicks had wasted a prime opportunity to draft a star like Donovan Mitchell or Bam Adebayo. As Ntilikina became an increasingly polarizing and toxic topic of conversation within the fanbase, the Frank hive descended into madness.

Frankie Smokes was not just cult hero. He was destined to become the Knicks’ point guard of the future, despite a visible lack of playmaking, ball-handling, and shot-creation skills. The poster boy of a utopia of selfless basketball where isolation scorers burn and the urge to score is an affliction of the depraved and the unholy, Frank reached immortality every time he by gave up the ball, turning passes with two seconds left on the shot clock into a sacred ritual. He could not score, but you did not understand. He was in truth being held back by malevolent teammates and coaches, his game dissected only by the impatient and the ignorant, who could not see as far as he could. The critic did not possess the intellectual sophistication to see value in a game devoid of flair, production, or efficiency, for these are bourgeois concepts. There was no flash, so there had to be substance.

The cognitive dissonance between the faith of his fans and the mounting empirical evidence regularly drove their behavior outside the realms of reason and civility in online discussions. This tension culminated in one of the fanbase’s lowest moments when the Madison Square Garden crowd viciously chanted “We want Frank” while booing Dennis Smith Jr., another struggling young guard. The quintessential bust, yet also one of the most beloved Knicks in the 21st century, Frank ended his four-year career in New York with averages of 5.5 points, 2.7 assists, and 2 rebounds per game.

But being the player to be drafted ahead of Mitchell and Adebayo is not the worst damage Ntilikina inflicted upon this franchise. From Michael Beasley to James Wiseman, even the best franchises draft NBA busts. No, his impact was much more severe.

Amid the cataclysm of the Knicks’ failed 2021-22 campaign, a new hero arose. With Randle emerging as the scapegoat of choice for a frustrated New York fanbase in a spectacular and relatable display of self-sabotage, Barrett, the club’s third overall draft pick in 2019, saw his role expand to the clamor of the fans. He ended the season averaging 20 points per game, and the prophecy of the homegrown franchise cornerstone was finally materializing. In reality, Barrett had just had one of the ten most inefficient 20 points per game seasons relative to league average in the NBA’s last forty years. He did not share the ball, ranking at the bottom of the league in passes and assists per game among high-usage players, and had for long stopped playing team defense. Inefficient, selfish, and disinterested on defense – the holy trinity of ugly basketball and the antithesis of the legacy of the 1970s Knicks.

Yet, the ascent of RJ Da Brickman was celebrated by a majority of Knicks fans. Lost in their elation, the fanbase’s Red Guards displayed some of the same behavioral patterns seen with Frank years earlier: the scapegoating of other players for any individual shortcoming, a glaring disconnect between the narrative and the data, and a constant state of indignation against any critique directed at the favorite child, often in the form of rageful intolerance.

In this player-centric approach, the outside world is perpetually to blame for the faults of the individual identified as the protagonist of the story. Realism, if at odds with this self-righteous sense of optimism, is morally wrong, its conclusions therefore invariably rejected regardless of their accuracy or attempt at rationality. In this arbitrarily dichotomic world view, the critic is not heard, but permanently trapped in a blue and orange Moscow trial. Delusional and obnoxious with a tragicomic persecution complex: Knicks fans have more in common with James Dolan than they are willing to admit.

In a moment of clarity last year, while powerlessly watching them exult over Barrett’s stat-padding, I finally understood that Frank had lowered their standards to the basement. If they can fall in love with Frank, who can they not fall in love with?

Spring tends to bring out this irritating collective sense of shared optimism and renewal. I despise it - it is by far the worst season. “Summer is right around the corner”. Great, unless you have hay fever and you find enjoyment in layering nice winter clothes. However, SS23 may have brought something positive to the Knicks fanbase, along with the excitement of a miraculous playoff appearance: a gradual return to sanity in its valuation of players.

Throughout this current season, with each win further opening the door to the playoffs, Brunson and (admittedly to my surprise) Randle have reminded Knicks fans what high-level NBA basketball actually looks like. Some of the Knicks’ effervescent role players like Josh Hart, Immanuel Quickley, and Mitchell Robinson have also stood out in lesser roles, their positive contributions captured by advanced impact metrics, whereby Barrett ranks last amongst rotation players. A coincidence, no doubt. Some fans still choose to die on that brick-orange hill, in the shade of a leafless maple, and they are free to do so. But as a skeptic, you no longer have to endure struggle sessions for stating the obvious. You now have company.

It is not Ntilikina’s fault that he lacked high-end NBA talent or that he shattered the standards of Knicks fans. He did not select himself with the eighth pick of the draft. Frank could not have become more than what his limited talent allowed, and his Pro A statistics always suggested it wouldn’t amount to much.

And that is ok.

Ntilikina has had a successful basketball career even making it to the NBA, and here’s a toast to hoping he can carve out a long career in the league. The fault always laid at the feet of the organization for drafting him this high, and a portion of the fanbase for building unreasonable expectations around him while hunting down heretics until their own passion waned.

As an NBA player, Frank may not be highly qualified, but no one sucks quite like Knicks fans. In this category, we win the championship every year.