BING BONG
There's a difference between losing and quitting
What a weekend here in New York City.
I’ve lived here for 7 years and never seen the city come together the way it did for the Knicks winning the 2026 NBA championship. A collective joy in the streets, people dancing, watching games on projectors thrown up on the sides of buildings, packing out bars. Something out of a movie, something so distinctly New York.
Bandwagon fans or not, it was nice to see people root together for something. And in a time when we feel more hopeless than ever, to win something and have a little hope.
If you’re a sports fan you know fans more often than not hate the New York teams.
Typically New York’s teams have the biggest budgets, attract the biggest free agent signings, and watching them collapse brings people great joy.
Not these Knicks though.
Something about this team captivated the heart and soul of the city, and the country, with a ton of national media love for this motley crew. On their run to the finals they pulled out improbable win after improbable win, several 20+ point comebacks, breaking modern analytics by winning games they were projected to lose over 99% of the time.
This Knicks team did not quit. And there’s a huge difference between losing and quitting.
Because had the Knicks quit, New Yorkers wouldn’t be hanging off the fuckin’ street signs and dancing on their fire escapes.
Side note: For what it’s worth, I’m not even a Knicks fan, I renounced my fandom back in 2010 to root for DeMarcus Cousins and the Sacramento Kings (he’d drop like 50 points and get ejected it was so electric). The Kings suck and last year fired their head coach Mike Brown, who is now the head coach and champion with the Knicks lmao. Cursed ass organization.
A week ago I wrote about a devastating debut of a year-long project at Tribeca Film Festival. tl;dr a lotta shit broke and it was an embarrassing and long hour.
Coulda rolled over and quit right there, fallen apart, but instead we picked our asses up and rebuilt part of the show and mended the broken pieces in 10 days, and did our second show this morning after the Knicks won the chip last night.
It went super well and the theater was buzzing. People were yelling mid-show they loved it, laughing, sharing their phones with each other. This year long journey had fully manifested for the first time and it was beautiful.
(That or maybe the theater was riding the collective high from the night before)
A lot of times on Escape the Internet I feel like we’re down 20 late in the 3rd quarter.
And, admittedly, that’s not really where you want to be.
But in the words of Jalen Brunson after their historic Game 4 29-point comeback, the largest in NBA Finals history:
"You're allowed to think about the worst possible scenario, but you gotta go out there and do something about it."(Instagram)
Maybe I’m insane for drawing a parallel to this basketball team. But it is really cool to see people come together around them, and it was nice to see it on a way way way way way way way way smaller and intimate scale as people rallied around us today.
I am so tired. The team did a great job. It felt like the culmination of the first part of the journey.
We’re not even after a mountaintop, the journey just continues, more to learn and do, and we’re excited to do it :D
1 Full article from the NYT here
This is weekly post #103 in a row!
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Proud of you dude!!
oh you know BALL