OP, is this the game you are talking about. They don't look special to me at all. Please show us vid of Knicks fans being schpecial. <script src="http://player.espn.com/player.js?pcode=1kNG061cgaoolOncv54OAO1ceO-I&width=576&height=324&externalId=espn:11970960"></script> I guess you are talking about when they threw out the Nets #1 fan for "shouting." Oh, let's not shout.
I think those fans are a bunch of suckers. The Knicks organization keeps putting out crummy teams and they lose a lot of games with really not a lot of hope in sight, and fans still come and pay some of the highest ticket prices in the country and cheer about it? The pre-Chris-Paul Clippers fans were the biggest suckers in the country, but generally I have a hard time respecting fans who will pay no matter how incompetent a franchise is at putting together a team. I'm not talking about bad rosters that lose a lot of games, because a team will have bad seasons when they have young stars and there's still some cause for hope and a reason to cheer. But teams like the Knicks with big-dollar veteran stars who still can't win -- they have neither a story of winning nor a story of growth. What is there to cheer about? They're suckers.
Yeah its true, Knick fans hate the Knicks more than anyone else. They constantly b*tch and make jokes about their pathetic team, yet continue to watch every game, and go to their games. Yesterday the Knicks and Nets were set to play. At work, someone mentioned about the "battle of the toilets". We had a good laugh. But they will still watch the game. I don't know.. Personally I prefer this over a city like, let's say Atlanta, who by the way has the worst fans in sports. Fair-weather/bandwagon/front-runner fans are the worst in my opinion, not the mention the least knowledgeable about the sport. You see this in playoffs for every sport. Hordes of people coming out supporting their team, when they have no idea who's playing on the roster, and sometimes don't even know the rules to the sport. They are pretty much like LOFs, except for a city. Getting caught up with the buzz in the city, blindly cheering for a team in a sport they have no clue about.
Aren't half of Atlanta's fans just player only bandwagoners? At one point someone on the Hawks openly criticized the fans that attend the games. EDIT: Can't find the article, maybe it was another team.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>LESS BASKETBALL MORE OF THIS <a href="https://t.co/3kAtOwHZHD">https://t.co/3kAtOwHZHD</a></p>— Seth Rosenthal (@seth_rosenthal) <a href="https://twitter.com/seth_rosenthal/status/539959493308981248">December 3, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> It was a game against Brooklyn so of course the fans were crazy, but these dogs probably got louder cheers.
Oklahoma would never have the Thunder without Hurricane Katrina. In reality, the NBA could have just moved New Orleans franchise to Oklahoma and then they never would have pissed and shat all over a great NBA city.
I personally think Miami has worse fans but Atlanta certainly is in the conversation. Here are some articles about it from the past. http://espn.go.com/new-york/nfl/story/_/id/7429623/the-city-atlanta-worst-sports-town-america http://grantland.com/the-triangle/standing-up-for-atlanta-sports-fans/ Rembert Browne just argues that people treat sports in Atlanta solely for entertainment. They'd rather have a Michael Vick who would entertain week in week out than a boring winner. And he says you can see it in their music, all those southern rappers are all about entertaining. Interesting.
Perhaps, but its way more impressive to me to see fans come out, pay high prices for a losing team than a fanbase that has a good team, and nobody shows up or those that do hardly make a peep. By the way, I have to ask, there were Clippers fans before Blake Griffin showed up? Show me the proof!
Well, because of those great fans, Knicks are going to be bad for another five or ten years. I predict that Knicks are going to nowhere with the Melo and Jackson combination. Smart fans do not waste time and money to support a team with the bad management.
Locking into Melo was a mistake. I think Jackson can make them competitive but not contender. They just have the worse mix of players. I think the only two guys I like on their team are Calderon and Shumpert has been playing well this year too (I think he'd be a great role player on a championship squad, not the 2nd or 3rd scoring option on a bad team). Once Amare and Barghani are off the books though the best they can hope for is above average.
I'm not defending disinterested fans or fair weather fans either. I think if management is good and they're making progress on their roadmap, fans should come out even when the team is bad. But the fan should also have enough discernment to recognize when a franchise is wasting their time. The one exception I'd make for supporting bad teams are tankers. I'm pro-tanking, I think the 76ers are doing the best thing for them, they are making "progress" on their tanking roadmap -- but people shouldn't be giving them money to see a roster built to lose. The Sixers should be supported by the league but punished by the customer. And they do have low attendance, but there's still 10,000 people a game who should know better.
To me, teams like the 08-12 Rockets should be supported by fans even though they were stuck in the #14 spot. Those teams were competitive, played hard, and the management did their best to improve the team without tanking. They were mediocre not because they didn't try or because they were dumb. They were unlucky with two damaged stars with a FO that insisted against tanking. They were not trying to cheat their customers through hard times. I was actually appalled by some fans here who expressed losing interest of the team during those years.
Heck, one of the few times that keeping a team name and mascot would make sense. All they'd have to do is change the team colors (blue/green/silver).
I would argue they're not progressing at all. I think there might be 3-4 guys on that team who will be in the NBA in 2 years. And the one guy who is showing promise (McDaniels) will bounce out of Philly so quickly after this year.
I didn't see anyone post the NBA.com game highlights. That's the vid I posted. You can see they aren't really cheering at the end of the game.
