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Do you know what you want your last thought to be? I have waited my whole life for mine.
Most people, I imagine, don’t choose theirs. They arrive at the end and find loved ones’ faces gathered around their bed. Their subconscious gifts them the sound of their child’s laugh, or the memory of their wedding day rises from the dark like a lantern, unbidden. The mind, in its final kindness, selects for them. But I decided long ago that I would not leave that to chance. I decided, the way you decide anything important, deliberately and a little defiantly, the way I have decided most things in my life.
Fatherhood and marriage terrify me. I watched my parents’ marriage collapse when I was six years old. Somewhere in the rubble I made a decision that divorce would end with me. I wanted to live differently. I fought my whole life just to find peace, and I finally found it at 40. I intend to spend whatever years I have holding on to it.
When I think about my last thought, there are no children in the room. There is no spouse. I am alone. One last time, I will glance out the window or follow the ceiling fan into a trance. Then, I will close my eyes and travel back to now, to the New York Knicks winning the NBA championship. I will return to my father. And to our precious Knicks.
In that moment, time will fold in on itself around me like a blanket, giving me my life back in a highlight montage.
I am six years old, and after a turbulent divorce, I have not seen my father in months. Long enough that when his car pulls up outside, I look through the window at the man walking toward the door, and I do not recognize him. My own father is a stranger crossing the distance between the curb and the front door.
I am eight years old, running in my socks across the length of our trailer, all the way into his arms, as he yells “Clash of the Titans” to cheer me towards him.
I am 12 years old, and I watch him from the pool, celebrating with my uncles as Larry Johnson, from my South Dallas neighborhood, hits the four-point play that will live in Knicks history.
I am 19, and it is Game 1 of the 2004 playoffs, my first Knicks playoff series as a fan, and my dad is working as he always was, and the Nets are blowing us out, and I am on the phone doing my best Marv Albert impression, giving him the play-by-play of our destruction.
I am 22 and planning to drive my car into a wall after a mental breakdown, and my dad senses it and calls me to pray for me and tells me it will be OK. He tells me to come watch the Knicks with him. I go to him.
I am 24, and we are both working the same machine shop floor, and our Texan co-workers are mocking us for our Knicks fandom, and I am screaming back because I’ve never known how to let anything go. Neither has he, and we are ridiculous, and we are the same.
I am 28, in the kitchen of a Mexican restaurant in South Dallas, watching my first playoff win against the defending champion Miami Heat in the first round. My father pulls me close: This win is for you, son.
I am 37, and Jalen Brunson has signed with the Knicks, and something bright cracks through my skepticism. I call it “destiny”.
I am 40 years old, and my father and I embrace as the buzzer sounds, just the two of us, as it’s always been. He has always been enough for me. We are finally NBA champions. The Knicks have won. And so have we. This moment is already here. It has always been here, 24 years into the future, waiting for me to arrive.
Every age I have ever been is in this moment. The six-year-old at the window and the 40-year-old with his hand on his father’s shoulder are the same person, in the same moment, which is all moments, which is now.
Even when I entered this fandom, I had a vision of what the end of this story would look like. I chose the Knicks because I wanted to see my dad’s joy for myself, to be a part of it. The reason for it. I had visions of my older self, my hand on my father’s shoulder, the same shoulder I slept on as a small child, the same shoulder I cried on as a young man. I heard Mike Breen’s voice in the background, baptizing us as brethren.
This is the nature of time: it does not pass. It compounds. Like grief. Like love. Every year deposits itself into the next until a single moment can carry the weight of an entire life. The six-year-old at the window and the 40-year-old embracing my pops are the same person in the same moment. Every version of me is here. The one who almost didn’t make it and the one who did. The present moment does not replace the past – it completes it. I know now why I stayed. For myself. For my father. And for our New York Knicks.
When I decided to join my pops as a Knicks fan. I had no idea what I was signing up for. What followed was a two-decade-long purgatory that shadowed my waking life. I survived Scott Layden and the lapse of spiritual faith. I survived Isiah Thomas and alcoholism. I survived Donnie Walsh and sexual debauchery. I survived Glen Grunwald and an addiction to lying. I survived Phil Jackson and financial rot. I survived Steve Mills and unresolved rage.
And then Leon Rose arrived. And my spirit exhaled.
What Rose built was deeply unsexy, which is exactly what 20 years of carnage required. The playoffs arrived, and hot damn, the Knicks flipped a switch in Game 4 in Atlanta and won 13 straight. The basketball gods, mischievous as ever, matched the Knicks against the Spurs in a 1999 finals rematch, giving Jalen Brunson the chance to complete his father’s redemption arc. Rick was a third-string point guard on the Knicks’ ’99 finals team. Brunson is the best player in the NBA now.
Brunson was fueled by his father’s failures. As I am. And my father before me was. We are all sons, carrying what our fathers couldn’t finish, trying to get somewhere they couldn’t reach. This Jalen Brunson doesn’t exist without Rick Brunson losing from the bench in 1999. Just like there’s no me without my father standing in damp swim trunks, double-fisting Modelos, screaming at a small television in 1999.
I chose the Knicks because I wanted something to share with my father. I did not know it would become the thing I held on to when everything else gave way. I was just 17, and I wanted my dad to hug me again like a child, and I wanted something to be excited about together, and so I pledged my heart to the Knicks. I had no idea that I was also, in that moment, choosing to live.
I spoke about our shared familial spiritual gift in the first part of this essay triptych. My father and I share a family gift of vision and feeling. We sense the future. So when the Knicks ended the first half down of Game 4 of the finals down 27 , I checked my gut, and asked my spirit, and it responded with “Yes.” I never wavered. I saw the comeback before it happened. When OG Anunoby hit the game-winning put-back, it came as no surprise. Destiny arrives regardless. And finally, it’s ours.
Pops and I built Knicks routines that outlasted decades – a quarter century of small, faithful acts during games, worn smooth as river stone. We completed every one of them during this final run. Our whole lives had been rehearsal for this moment. Together.
I have my last thought now. It took my entire life to find it, but I have it. All I needed was one chip with Pops. Just one. Now we have it.
English (US) ·