Charles Oakley was in the news this week — you may have heard — which means there were lots of memories about the 1990s-era Knicks floating around the streets outside Madison Square Garden, making their way indoors.
That team is proof you can become a forever team in an exacting city like New York even without putting the finishing touches on a championship. Maybe they aren’t spoken of in the same breath as the ones who do earn the parades — ’96 Yankees, ’86 Mets, ’94 Rangers, ’68 Jets, ’07 Giants, on and on — but that doesn’t mean you can’t leave a permanent mark.
You just have to be unforgettable, in your own way, and lead with your heart. And from there the rest sort of takes care of itself, even if you don’t have a trophy or a plaque to show for it. The ’90s Knicks may be the best example, but they aren’t the only ones.
Here’s a look at our top Near-Miss Favorites, heading backwards in time.
Knicks, 1992-2000
It sounds fanciful now, but each edition of this team won at least one playoff round. Two made the Finals. The ’93 team won 60 games and was probably the best of the bunch, and would have proven it if only they had survived the Bulls. But they didn’t — and part of the reason they’re remembered so fondly are for all the grim days and nights when they stared the Bulls down … and just didn’t have enough to get the job finished.
It helps that many of those Knicks teams had Oakley and Anthony Mason and John Starks, all visceral players who connected directly with fans. Especially this week it was pretty clear: If you could go back there right now, even knowing how star-crossed every year ended, would you? Who says no?
Rangers, 1968-74
Part of the legend that grew around the Rangers during their Stanley Cup drought was just how close they were to not only winning once, but multiple times during this era. Cup finalists in ’72, these teams featured some of the most popular names in franchise history — Giacomin, Gilbert, Hatfield, Ratelle, Park, Tkaczuk, keep going — and in those years never finished worse than 16 games over .500 — at a time when there were still regulation ties. They just kept running into the wrong teams — the Bruins and the Canadiens here, the Blackhawks and Flyers there — and never could seal the deal. But so many fans who enjoyed the payoff in ’94 came of age during this time, it almost feels there should be an honorary banner for them at the Garden.
Giants, 1958-63
Yes, technically, you could say the fact the Giants won the ’56 title at Yankee Stadium over the Bears should bar them from this list. But the fact is, the Giants were achingly close to being one of the game’s great dynasties … except they kept losing the last game. Starting with the famous overtime game against the Colts in 1958, the Giants qualified for five NFL title games in six years … and lost five of them. What the Packers became, the Giants nearly were (and losing twice to Green Bay in that span helped solidify it). Still, those Giants teams were treated like sultans and titans despite their regular unhappy endings.
Dodgers, 1941-53
Maybe if the Dodgers had once — just once — faced someone other than the Yankees in the World Series, it could have all gone differently for Brooklyn’s beloved Bums. But that wasn’t to be. So after losing Fall Classics to the Yankees in 1941, ’47, ’49, ’52 and ’53, “Wait till next year” became something of a local anthem. And so the Boys of Summer were born even before the title ever came to the Borough of Churches, at last, in 1955.
Whack Back at Vac
Scott Kurant: This Charles Oakley craziness is a great diversion from the fact that the team is awful. It also seems as though Jeff Hornacek is getting a full pass. It’s Phil Jackson and the players but not the coach?
Vac: It does seem that the Knicks coach is bemused by the chaos around him, probably because it staves off talk of the 800-pound elephant in the room.
Gabriel Pompe: Yes, the Dolan goon squad should have handled this mess more delicately, but for the shattered fan base to adopt Oakley as a rally point just shows how far off the deep end they are. There are no heroes in this sordid tale, just a church bell that rings on and on and on.
Vac: Of all the things I’ve seen written about the Knicks the last 15 years, that honestly might be the very saddest.
@joec924: I think Dolan is a buffoon. But if Oakley did what they say he did, they did right thing. He doesn’t get a free pass just because he’s Oakley.
@MikeVacc: It is amazing how overlooked the actual incident was. I was there. It was ugly, regardless of what was said or wasn’t said.
Stew Summers: This makes me think of George Steinbrenner and the relationships he maintained with many of his former players such as Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden. Say what you want, but George had a compassionate, forgiving heart under that tough exterior. Something Jim Dolan may never have.
Vac: Dolan says the ban doesn’t have to be forever. We’ll see.
Vac Whacks
Why can’t the Knicks have as good an owner as the Rangers do?
The amazing thing about Bryan Cranston’s career and the overdrive it has been in for a few years is that by the time he is all done, an iconic character like Tim Whatley might actually wind up outside his personal top 10.
Not sure what makes me sadder as a college buckets fan: Watching Duke and Carolina play and knowing that how often they lose it won’t matter in the big picture for the NCAA; or watching Monmouth play and knowing that how often they win it won’t matter in the big picture for the NCAA.
A reminder: Despite it all, Carmelo Anthony still wants to stay here.