The NBA Finals haven’t even begun and already the fixation with the New York Knicks is exhausting.
Did you know this is their first trip to the Finals since 1999? Did you know they haven’t lost in more than a month? Did you know they have the most famous fans in the world? Did you know tickets to games at Madison Square Garden cost more than a car?
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Stahhhhhp.
Fortunately for folks who aren’t Knicks fans, which is pretty much the rest of the country, New York’s opponents in these Finals are the San Antonio Spurs, who might just be the most down-to-earth team in the NBA.
The San Antonio Spurs are America’s team in the NBA Finals
They’re small market and worth about half what the Knicks are. Their nickname does not bring instant recognition. Their arena does not have name recognition in their own state, let alone the whole world. Their most famous fans are nuns, not celebrities.
And while Victor Wembanyama is the undisputed future of the NBA, he’s an unassuming superstar.
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Instead of hanging out with Kardashians, Wemby spent last off-season with monks. While not an actual alien, he is interested in outer space and can talk at length about it. He’s responsible for an uptick in reading in San Antonio, for goodness sake.
The Spurs are what you want in a championship team.
The Knicks are … what New York wants in a championship team.
Knicks are a team only New Yorkers can love
Every sport has at least one team that everyone else loves to hate. The Dallas Cowboys in the NFL. The New York Yankees in Major League Baseball. Duke in men’s basketball.
It’s usually a byproduct of success, a toxic owner or an arrogant fan base. In the Knicks’ case, it’s a little bit of everything. Well, maybe not the success part. Not lately, at least. But the owner and the fan base more than make up for that.
Longtime Knicks owner James Dolan is easily the worst owner in the NBA. With Dan Snyder having sold the Washington Commanders, he can make a case for worst owner in all of sports.
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He’s picked fights with superfan Spike Lee and Knicks legend Charles Oakley. He provided cover for Isiah Thomas after he was the subject of a sexual harassment lawsuit. Dolan treated his WNBA team like something he found on the bottom of his shoe.
Dolan also has reportedly used surveillance technology to track those who are critical of him and ban them from Madison Square Garden in retaliation. Even Knicks fans hate the man.
As for those fans, they’re brash, they’re loud and, let’s be honest, they’re a little arrogant. And that’s just Timothée Chalamet! New Yorkers see New York as the center of the universe and don’t have much use for anything outside the five boroughs.
Maybe New Jersey.
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Maybe.
That kind of smugness is as annoying as a pebble in a shoe to people who aren’t from New York. Since we can’t take our irritation out on the city itself, its teams become the proxy. The Knicks, the Yankees, the Mets, the Rangers — whoever they’re playing becomes everybody else’s second-favorite team.
(Yes, I know I left out the Giants and the Jets. They’re too pathetic to hate.)
And if it’s the post-season? The loathing ratchets up to another level.
San Antonio Spurs are easy to root for
Which brings us back to San Antonio.
The Spurs are an incredibly likeable team on their own. This is the franchise of David Robinson, Tim Duncan and Gregg Popovich. This is the franchise that showed it really is possible for people from all corners of the world to work together. This is the franchise that has Wemby, who is revolutionizing the game in real time while also being an utterly decent human.
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San Antonio’s bandwagon would need extra room regardless of who they were facing in the Finals. That they’re playing the Knicks makes them America’s Team.
C’mon Spurs. Do the rest of the country a solid. The last thing anyone needs is to give New York another reason to brag about itself.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: San Antonio Spurs are America’s Team in NBA Finals. NY fans can have the Knicks
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