SPORT
M.S.G.: Stop Calling it The Basketball Mecca
/ Adam Underhill
03.29.06
I’m in love with New York City, and have adopted it as my true home after living here for some five years. There aren’t many things other cities can boast about that I think New York doesn’t do better, or could do better if it wanted to. However, one area where I’ve remained true to my Wisconsin roots is sports. Like any good sports fan, I stay loyal to the teams I rooted for as a youth, specifically the NFL’s Packers and NBA’s Bucks. Living in the Big Apple has hardly dulled my passion for those teams, although I’ll admit that when baseball season rolls around I’ll casually root for the Yankees (it’s better than whatever passed for baseball in Milwaukee). And it’s hard not to have a soft spot for the Jets and Giants when they’re on television so much, robbing New Yorkers of the NFL’s other big name marquee Sunday matchups.
It’s basketball where I have a tough time showing the love. It’s easy to pile on the thoroughly pathetic Knicks, 27 games under .500 with a payroll that could budget a Peter Jackson blockbuster. Enough ink has been spilled over the redundant backcourt, the boneheaded trades of Isiah Thomas, and the exposing of Larry Brown for what he really is––a good but not great basketball coach who has been around a really long time.
No, the issue at hand is the home of the Knicks, Madison Square Garden. More specifically, I have always been annoyed with the Garden’s blithely tossed-about nickname in relation to hoops as the “basketball mecca.” This sports cliché is practically required parlance by city sports writers like Peter Vescey or Mike Lupica, who may have moved beyond fourth grade, but whose writing styles have not. Likewise it is part of the groupspeak of the ultra-insulated NBA, whose players know better than to say anything original or provocative, lest they show any disrespect. MSG’s web page on the Knicks stops short of using the term ‘Mecca,’ perhaps hoping to avoid violent protests in the Muslim world. However, that doesn’t make its opinion of itself when it comes to roundball any less audacious:
New York is the center of the basketball universe.
Basketball lives on every street, in every playground and in the greatest basketball arena in the world––Madison Square Garden. The New York Knicks are the home team of the center of the basketball universe.
It’s basketball where I have a tough time showing the love. It’s easy to pile on the thoroughly pathetic Knicks, 27 games under .500 with a payroll that could budget a Peter Jackson blockbuster. Enough ink has been spilled over the redundant backcourt, the boneheaded trades of Isiah Thomas, and the exposing of Larry Brown for what he really is––a good but not great basketball coach who has been around a really long time.
No, the issue at hand is the home of the Knicks, Madison Square Garden. More specifically, I have always been annoyed with the Garden’s blithely tossed-about nickname in relation to hoops as the “basketball mecca.” This sports cliché is practically required parlance by city sports writers like Peter Vescey or Mike Lupica, who may have moved beyond fourth grade, but whose writing styles have not. Likewise it is part of the groupspeak of the ultra-insulated NBA, whose players know better than to say anything original or provocative, lest they show any disrespect. MSG’s web page on the Knicks stops short of using the term ‘Mecca,’ perhaps hoping to avoid violent protests in the Muslim world. However, that doesn’t make its opinion of itself when it comes to roundball any less audacious:
New York is the center of the basketball universe.
Basketball lives on every street, in every playground and in the greatest basketball arena in the world––Madison Square Garden. The New York Knicks are the home team of the center of the basketball universe.