What do you do when you live 3,500 miles away from the action in your favourite sport? You purchase the NBA’s International League Pass Broadband and steel yourself for six months of not getting enough sleep and wandering around at work looking and feeling like a zombie. I know this to be true because I did it for the whole of last season. This time around, though, I’m going to write about it.
Firstly, cards on the table. I’m a New York Knicks fan with additional rooting interest in the Golden State Warriors. While it may seem these choices are the basketball equivalent of crossing a busy road blindfolded or sticking your face your face in a fan, they represent a fundamental truth in sport. I’m from England and we like football (soccer). Over here, you’re born into supporting your team. There’s no room, at least among proper sports fans, for glory hunting. The Knicks and the Warriors are the teams I’ve been (un)lucky enough to see live multiple times on my trips to the States so they are the teams I support. I know they suck. You don’t need to tell me.
The Sports Bloke’s season on the sofa will focus primarily on the Knicks (and my own steadily increasing levels of sleep deprivation) as I stay up past 3am to watch them struggle through all 82 games.
Don’t be taking any of my musings too seriously. There’s more than enough proper writers and stat heads closer to the action without me having to weigh in from half a world away. This is not about serious analysis, it’s about the rollercoaster ride of supporting a sub-standard team from across the Atlantic and hoping against hope that, after almost a decade in the doldrums, they give people something to cheer about.
Season on the sofa archive
- Week 24-25: Knicks in position for Donnie Walsh to deliver
- Week 23: Finally, the Knicks win in the west
- Week 22: Two steps forward, three steps back
- Week 21: Toney Douglas makes his point
- Week 20: When shots drop, the Knicks look top
- Week 19: This is a low
- Week 18: Indefensible defence
- Week 17: A new day is coming
- Week 15 & 16: Raising the white flag
- Week 14: Snubs, squeezes, suffering and shellackings
- Week 13: The full spectrum of losing
- Week 12: Hosted and ghosted, haunted and daunted
- Week 11: Gunning for that number eight spot
- Week 10: The return of Nate the Great
- Week 9: NBA elite breach Fortress MSG
- Week 8: A cold hard dose of reality
- Week 7: A December to remember (so far)
- Week 6: It’s not a kind of Magic
- Week 5: Swept by the best, swept by the rest
- Week 4: New hope and big decisions
- Week 3: Wake up and smell the despair
- Week 2: Barely worth their place in the league
- Week 1: Terrible starts cause a terrible start
