What is normal?
Later tonight, the New York Knicks pay a visit to the Sacramento Kings. The Kings are bad. Not merely “they lose more than they win” bad, more “cursed by the primordial gods until the sun swallows the Earth” bad. Both bad and seemingly hopeless. Pretty normal, for them. Although pretty recently, life was very different. A few years ago the Kings were a historic offense and, seemingly, a rising power in the West. Then, pretty inexorably, it seemed, they weren’t.
Imagine that around this time last year, the Knicks fired Tom Thibodeau, in a way that made Jalen Brunson feel like he was being scapegoated for it, like the organization left him looking like the bad guy, the reason Thibs got canned. Imagine Brunson then pushed to be traded, that a few weeks later the Knicks obliged, getting back Zach LaVine and a potpourri of San Antonio picks.
Wait, it gets worse.
Imagine Julius Randle were still here, only injured, and wanting out. Not with the feral desperation of James Harden when he wants out, like a cat in a water park. Not Giannis and his insufferable “Do you know what a hero I am not asking for a trade? Because I’m totally not asking for one – even though all I wanna do is win! So, someday I may have to leave. Not that I’d ask. Ever. Unless I had to. Which I wouldn’t, natch” schtick, at least when Antetokounmpo’s not booing his own fans for daring to boo when his team’s down 30. At home. At the half. Imagine that Charmin tissue living and working in NYC!
No, imagine Randle wanted out because 2023’s burgeoning Showtime was by 2026 a shitshow. That Randle was owed $94 million the two years after this one, and not one team in the entire Association was gonna pony up the kind of haul a multiple All-NBA and All-Star selection normally costs. Now, on top of all of that, imagine the Knicks, today, were 10-30.
Wait. It gets worse.
Imagine James Dolan’s son – he’s got six; pick whichever you like – became general manager of the Westchester Knicks a few years ago, despite never having any experience in that line of work. Imagine that son became romantically involved with one of his players – more than one. Frowned upon, yeah? Now, imagine one of those player-lovers kidnapped and murdered someone. Sound like a nightmare? That’s been reality for Kings fans the past three years.
I used the word “kidnapped” because it’s what happened, and because – despite what it likely often looks like – I try to be clear and concise when I write. Oh, I have fun with my little internal rhythms and rhymes (one does want a hint of color), but clarity is the mission, always. Complexity is how lies sneak by unnoticed, in things like “the small print” and those annoying radio ads where someone speedreads through a thousand details they don’t want you hearing.
The more syllables someone uses with you, the harder they’re lying. “The feds are disappearing us” is a rallying cry. “Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched targeted immigration enforcement operations aimed at undocumented migrants” is a silencer.
So what’s normal now? I don’t know how to write about the Knicks while friends everywhere are terrified of staying in this country and terrified of leaving. When I’m checking in with friends in Minnesota to see if they’re “okay,” nearly choking on that newly unwieldy word, now thick and viscous in my mouth, my mind.
What is “okay” to a friend in Minnesota? Not being kidnapped? Trafficked? Killed? That it’s happening, yes, but not to them, not their neighbors, only the neighbors’ neighbors? For now?
What to make of the Knicks? Even in a simpler world, this team would flummox. Since the calendar flipped to 2026, they’ve yet to win consecutive games. They must be struggling, then. They have won two of three, though. So maybe they’ve turned things around? Although they’ve lost four of six. Hmm. Prior to that, they won four of six. Hmmm.
Only five teams have had as few as two losing streaks this season: the Thunder, the Pistons, the Nuggets, the Lakers and the Knicks. With three weeks to go until the trade deadline, the Knicks are second in the East, as close to Orlando in sixth as Detroit atop the conference. There’s time to create some separation. Between now and the All-Star break, the Knicks face the Pistons, Celtics and Raptors, and the 76ers twice; after the break they open at home with the Pistons and the Rockets.
Normally, the stakes couldn’t be higher, we’d agree. If the Knicks win the East and the Thunder don’t win the West, there’s a very real chance the road to the title will go through Madison Square Garden; the Knicks haven’t had homecourt advantage in the Finals since Willis Reed limped into history, four days after the Ohio National Guard shot 13 unarmed students at Kent State. One was paralyzed. Four died.
Normally, sports is an escape. After tonight in Sacramento, the Knicks wrap up their road trip with visits to Golden State and Phoenix. Normally, Knick road trips don’t feature thousands of different people in different places all protesting the same vile entity. Welcome to a new normal.
Portland was one of the first cities this federal government turned into a war zone. After Rachel Good was murdered by ICE’s Jonathan Ross in Minnesota, there’ve been protests in Sacramento. Oakland, too. In Phoenix, people who look and sound like my family are still being kidnapped. All because of a racist backlash, metastasized and amplified by a racist, rapist child sex perv, the cronies for whom the race to the bottom is forever in free fall and the everyday people who want the world to hurt because it didn’t turn out to be what they hoped for.
A GoFundMe has raised more than $600,000 for Ross since he killed Good, or nearly what Karl-Anthony Towns earns per game. “Funds will go to help him,” the GoFundMe reads. Help him what? Ross wasn’t shot. He has yet to be charged with a crime; if he ever even is, there’s already a conga line of the virulently rich waiting to gift him the most shameless lawyers money can buy. Billionaire butthole Bill Ackman already donated $10,000, claiming he’s a “big believer in our legal principal that one is innocent until proven guilty.”
Yet where is Ackman’s rage and disgust for Good’s fate? Where is that same extension of the benefit of the doubt – and dollars – in the name of the one and only unarmed person in the encounter? Charged, convicted and sentenced to death, all with no due process? Odds are – and bet your bottom dollar you can bet on this somewhere – Ross ends up convicted of nothing, and far richer than he ever dared dream before the day he pumped three bullets into a woman’s face.
Why write about this here at Posting & Toasting? Isn’t this your sanctum sanctorum? Your safe space? Your escape? I dunno, man. If you’re in a warm, fluffy bed, I don’t think you get to gripe about your sleep being interrupted by the sound of people being ripped outta theirs.
I guess I write this for reasons similar to why people in Sacramento protested something that happened in Minnesota. “We are a community,” a 39-year-old Sacramentan said. “Even though (Good’s killing) didn’t happen here, we’re all connected . . . what I’m hoping [is] that the power of our community and warmth and togetherness can overcome the darkness.”
We are a community. But only if we look out for one another. Only if enough of us choose to love our neighbors as ourselves. If silence is the voice of complicity, let us make making our voices heard the new normal.
