The remarkable thing is how many folks are still drawn to the building, like paper clips to a magnet.
Take Artie Francino. He didn’t have tickets to the game Wednesday night that provided the Knicks their 36th loss of the season and offered Houston’s James Harden a platform to score 61 points, tying Kobe Bryant’s Garden record for a visiting player. Francino hasn’t been to a game all year, and he wasn’t making an exception for what was either an excruciating or exhilarating 114-110 Rockets win, depending on your tolerance for losing.
“I’ll let the amateurs enjoy the tanking,” he said.
But he still follows, still watches snippets of every game when he can. He was staying in the city late for dinner, and happened by the Garden as he walked there. He was wearing an old-school, powder-blue Knicks coat.
“Still my go-to jacket every winter,” he said, laughing.
Francino wants to care again. He wants to again go sleepless through nights like this one, when the Knicks could’ve stunned the Rockets, should’ve let Harden ice his numb left arm and ponder one that got away. He wants to choose a Nathan’s and a Bud and a mezzanine seat over Butcher & Banker again.
“I watch Zion as much as I can,” Francino says, “and I try not to think that the best shot we’ll have at him is 14 percent or whatever the lottery odds are now.”
There is a lot of that now. Zion Williamson, the electric freshman at Duke, occupies the attention of a lot of Knicks fans these days. They try to temper their enthusiasm but there are few alternatives. Harden going Roger Maris on the Knicks and their spaghetti-strainer defense was so predictable it was almost predestined.
Nobody said rebuilding was easy, and the Knicks have done an excellent job reminding this city just how true that really is.
“Zion is fun,” Francino said. “Zion allows you to dream.”
Zion was a perfect 9-for-9 in the first half of Duke’s Tuesday-night throttling of Pittsburgh, and he hit a 3, and he spent his usual time on the floor looking like he belongs in a higher league. That higher league beckons. As of Wednesday, the Knicks, Cavaliers and Suns each have that 14 percent shot at him. The Bulls are 12.5, the Hawks 10.
David Fizdale, of course, is weary of such talk.
“My guys come out to compete to win,” the Knicks coach said before the game. “I don’t give a damn what anybody says about that. I know these guys come to work to win. Are they ready to win every night? No. I know one thing: We’re coming out to win every night. However people want to talk about that, it’s on them.”
The Zion love isn’t universal; there have been voices warning he isn’t Shaq in 1992 or LeBron in 2003. ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg’s comments to The Post’s Marc Berman the other day were certainly a splash of cold water.
“He’s fun to watch, explosive and doing things we haven’t seen in a long time, but I grew up watching Dr. J, I don’t get excited about dunks,” said Greenberg, the ex-Virginia Tech coach who grew up in Plainview, L.I. “He’s not going to walk in and take over. Is he going to fix the Knicks? I don’t think so.”
That cynicism isn’t unique to the TV guys. Not even every Knicks fan blindly believes Zion is a cure-all. They have seen a lot of darkness around here, a lot of things that were supposed to be good go sideways.
“I’m really skeptical of Zion at the NBA level,” said Kevin St. Pierre of Rockville Centre, who concedes he has mostly taken a pass on the Knicks season. “Sure, he’s an athletic freak compared to college kids, but is he a freak compared to LeBron or [Giannis Antetokounmpo]? No way. He’s not a great ball-handler, and his outside shooting stinks. I think he’s going to be an NBA bust. A poor man’s Blake Griffin.”
That description is relayed to Francino. “Then we’ll definitely get him,” he laughed.
Still … there is dreaming to be done. Up on the Garden’s eighth floor, a weary Jerry O’Leary was settling into a short concession line for his breakfast of champions.
“Put it this way, if it’s a choice between the Knicks and Duke on TV, I’m watching Zion,” he said. “I set my DVR last night for Duke-Pitt. I don’t set my DVR for the Knicks.”
Knicks fans, it turns out, are still among the smartest ones in town. Even if this one might’ve been worth the space on his DVR.