It’s More Fun To Be A Knicks Fan These Days…

If you were a Knicks fan at this time last year, you were probably not a very happy person. The franchise just had a summer where there biggest acquisitions were Samuel Dalembert and Jose Calderon via trade. Therein were two players who were then a decent amount past being relatively good basketball player in the NBA. Calderon and Dalembert were thirty two and thirty three, not the premiere age of players you want to be adding to your team on the offseason. Both of them had their best seasons years ago. Both even last year would have be added to a team just for depth not as a big piece of a rebuilding team.

The trade was mainly meant to help clear out space by getting rid of two of their former starters. Tyson Chandler and Raymond Felton had tumultuous ends in the orange and blue when it was deemed that they had ultimately failed to do what seems to become more and more impossible every year: bring a championship to New York.

It is kind of hard to be excited for a team that is bringing in rental players and trying to sell it as them still trying to be competitive. Last year was a wash and we all knew that going into the season. The Knicks had basically thrown in the towel from day one by making that trade. And it seems to have paid off for now.

The excitement level now in the New York Knicks fan base has greatly increased. In other words it might be a little more fun now to be a Knicks fan. And that should not be taken lightly. For the first time in a long time it looks as if they have a future and the makings of Phil Jackson’s path for the team are starting to come into focus.

He has come away from the draft very wisely picking up two very good pieces for the future. He acquired what some scouts call the prospect with the most potential in the whole draft and what looks like an early steal in Jerian Grant. With these two players alone Phil Jackson has revitalized the franchise. He was not exactly asleep in free agency this season either…

Even though they failed to covet LaMarcus Aldridge, a player I thought they should not have even been interested in anyway, they signed a good starting shooting guard. Make no mistake, Arron Afflalo will definitely be an upgrade at the position over the “I cant make a consistent jumpshot” Iman Shumpert and “I keep finding ways to make you frustrated” J.R. Smith.

Also adding Derrick Williams, Kyle O’Quinn, Robin Lopez and Kevin Seraphin should help them on protecting the interior and rebounding better. The Knicks looked like they did not know how to rebound last season and it was a big part of why they got blown out of so many games early on. All of these moves should prove to yield a much improved team from last year. Although it will be hard to repeat the abysmal performance of what they considered a professional basketball team last year so they should almost just by chance be better. They could even be competing for a playoff spot in an Eastern conference that saw three teams in the playoffs last year with a .500 record or lower.