In the “Back to the Future” movies, there is one thing, and one thing only, that will set off our hero, Marty McFly.
“Nobody,” he tells Biff Tannen, and others, “calls me chicken.”
Call Marty a chicken, and Marty flies off the deep end — almost always, it should be noted, to Marty’s detriment.
It might behoove James L. Dolan to binge-watch all three movies sometime soon, maybe see if he can learn a thing or three from the great McFly. Because Dolan acts, and reacts, the same exact way when he hears the three most egregious words in his personal lexicon:
“Sell the team.”
And, like Marty McFly, what follows rarely covers the CEO of the Madison Square Garden Company in glory. The latest example of that came late in Wednesday night’s Knicks game at the Garden with the Grizzlies. Memphis trounced the Knicks, then seemed to rub it in late, causing a brief little brouhaha.
In happier times at the Garden, what probably would’ve followed would have been an impromptu chant of “Memphis sucks!” Or, if the Garden denizens were feeling especially frisky and profane, perhaps a quick chorus of “Bleep you, Crowder!” referencing Jae Crowder — the visiting player who started the mess by stealing the ball in the final minutes and lofting a long, off-target and unnecessary 3-pointer.
But these aren’t happy times at the Garden. These are, to put it bluntly, as depressing as any days have ever been at this incarnation of the Garden, which dates to 1968, at least on those days and nights when the Knicks are playing. So it wasn’t the Grizzlies who got an earful. It wasn’t Crowder who felt the wrath of 18,768 fans.
It was Dolan, sitting in his usual seat.
“Sell the team!”
“Sell the team!”
“Sell the team!”
And, as he usually does, Dolan went all McFly in his seat. He called security over. He pointed at one nearby teenage fan who was especially loud. Dolan’s picture was snapped, of course, and it made him look terrible, of course, and then he walked off.
And here’s the thing: There are two realities that everyone — Dolan, the fans, literally anyone who still cares enough about the Knicks to form an emotion about them — are going to have to come to terms with, because they both happen to be the truth.
1. Though Dolan has on several occasions hinted he might someday listen to offers to sell either the Knicks or his whole Garden operation, he will never do that based on chants, catcalls or widespread fury. He’ll do it when he’s ready to, and not a second before.
In a terrific story on TheStreet Thursday, Stephen Guilfoyle says of himself, “I am [a] long-suffering New York sports fan, born to a National League family, so I don’t have the Yankees.”
He writes of the many positives to owning the team from a business standpoint but also adds, “I don’t know about you — if I had anything that regularly brought upon me the anger of New York sports fans that I could sell for $5B … sold to you. In a heartbeat. Maybe, that’s the kid under the blanket writing this article … I am still the kid under that blanket.”
Everyone who chants “Sell the team!” is that kid under the blanket.
2. But this is equally important: That fact will never silence Knicks fans, or fans of any New York team that has performed as dreadfully as the Knicks have for so long. And Dolan’s fingerprints have covered this Era of Error — the Knicks last played an NBA Finals game on June 25, 1999. Dolan was officially named MSG’s chairman 129 days later. Fair or not, most Knicks fans don’t see this as a coincidence.
Also, fair or not, Dolan is the boss. It’s his show. The Knicks’ failures are his failures. He needs to own them. Nobody is asking him to make public confessionals, but silently absorbing the slings and arrows of his relentlessly loyal clientele is part of his job description. It’s that way for every owner. You can believe the Wilpons, the Johnsons, the Maras, all of them seethe when they are placed on a public griddle. Only Dolan behaves this way.
And almost all of it stems from those three words: Sell the team. I’ve covered Dolan for every day of his 20-plus years running the Garden. I’ve criticized him, often harshly, on any number of subjects, using any number of adjectives. Only once did I earn a rebuke from him: the day after my annual Christmas carols parody ran this December, where everyone in New York sports takes a good-natured shot or two to the ribs, in song.
I had this line in there, in a “Winter Wonderland” spoof:
“And hey what the hell/James Dolan will sell/In our gleaming sporting wonderland.”
That’s all it took. That’s all it takes. And that really has to change. It’s a terrible look.