After celebrating the Liberty’s WNBA championship win last year, New York is back to being Losingville, USA. The clock says it has been 5,000 days since an NY team has won an NFL, NBA, MLB, or NHL championship, and the clock is running….
Why can’t NY be more like Indiana? Yes, Indiana. (I can’t believe I’m writing this.)
The Pacers are coming off an NBA Finals appearance at the Knicks’ expense, and the Fever were a game away from going to the WNBA Finals without Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, Aari McDonald, Sydney Colson, and Chloe Bibby. In the NFL, the Colts are off to a 5-1 start–with our old friend Daniel Jones’ excellent play. Then there’s the Indiana Hoosiers–the 6-0 Hoosiers–coming off an impressive 30-20 road victory over Oregon, a national championship-calibre team
But back here in Losingville, the Yankees underachieved in another playoff series loss, having been eliminated by the Toronto Blue Jays in four games. After a 45-24 start, the Mets finished the season 38-55 in one of the biggest disappointments in this town’s sports history. The Jets are winless and awful. The Giants may be rebounding, but it’s too early to say one way or another.
The Knicks blew an opportunity to go to the NBA Finals by losing to the Pacers in six games of the Eastern Conference Finals. They will be the favorites to go to the Finals this season under first-year head coach Mike Brown, but they are the Knicks after all, and are likely to find a way to disappoint. It’s been 52 years and counting since the team won a championship. The Liberty spent way too much time congratulating themselves for winning the WNBA championship all offseason; they forgot to prepare for the coming season. No doubt injuries hurt them this season, but even then, it seemed like something was amiss from watching them this year. There was no drive to repeat all season. It cost Sandy Brondello her job as head coach.
Meanwhile, the Nets are not worth talking about. They have stunk since moving to Brooklyn from New Jersey. Remarkably, general manager Sean Marks is still in the job despite building awful rosters since being employed. His teams never play defense, and his players have horrible basketball fundamentals. And not only does hockey stink here, but the Devils, Rangers, and Islanders are boring to watch. The best the Devils can do is mediocrity with Jack Hughes. At least, the Islanders have a plan to be an offense-first team as part of Mathieu Darche’s rebuilding project. The Rangers still have that delusion of grandeur that they are a Stanley Cup contender, even though the last few years have shown they are not.
What about college sports? Rutgers football is not worth our time, and Rutgers basketball flamed out with NBA draft picks Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey.. St. John’s underachieved last season by losing to Arkansas in the tournament. Seton Hall has NIL issues, and as a result, it can’t field a team.
This all sums up how bad we are here. We are back in the wilderness, and it sure doesn’t seem like it’s going to get better. Not only are the teams bad, but they are boring.
Woe are we! We’re Loserville.
