In 1985 I bought season tickets for the New York Knicks when they drafted Patrick Ewing in the first pick of the draft. I got two tickets for $12 a seat for 40 home games plus two exhibitions. All in all it cost about a grand. I kept buying the tickets for 17 seasons as they got more expensive and the Knicks failed to win over and over again.
On that early team they had a good little player named Gerald Wilkins. He played shooting guard or small forward. Not much of an outside shot but he was very athletic and could go to the hole. Nowhere as good as his brother Dominique but still he was a very serviceable player and a fan favorite. The reason he was a favorite was because he was a happy guy. Always smiling and happy on the court he was great when he met the fans. I met him a couple of times at team functions that I got invited to as a season ticket holder. All in all I liked him a lot.
Now basketball has abandoned me. Filled as the game is with hatred towards white people and our country the league is not for me and I have haven't seen a game in five years. I don't know one player on the Knicks roster. Gerald Wilkins has fallen even more than my regard for the game.
"Former New York Knicks guard Gerald Wilkins was reportedly arrested on assault charges Tuesday after a string of arrests over separate incidents earlier this spring.
Wilkins, the younger brother of NBA legend Dominique Wilkins, faces two counts of battery after he was arrested in Cobb County, Georgia, TMZ reported Wednesday.
The second-round pick has had numerous run-ins with the law lately and was cuffed three times in 10 days over late May and early June."
The Gerald Wilkens I knew is long gone. The game of basketball as well. I never thought I would despise the game and its players so much. But it is par for the course. I never thought I would despise Brooklyn the way I do. I can't even bring myself to talk about the Yankees I am so distraught.
You can only go on and try to carry on and drop the things that have changed beyond redemption. Nothing ever gets resolved. Nothing ever gets better. The dystopian horror that I read about in so many science fiction stories seems to be upon us. Nothing anyone is doing seems to make it betterr.
It's like putting out fires with gasoline.
3 comments:
I too used to love the NBA. Went to the KC/OMAHA Kings games in the 70's/80's. You could always get decent seats, there were good bars and steak houses around Kemper Arena, located in the stockyards. Good winter entertainment. As were the KC Scouts. I went to Blackhawk and Bulls games when we moved to Chicago in 1981. Left when Jordan got drafted. Never saw him play. Chicago Stadium was the BEST place to watch a hockey game. The loudest venue in sports.
It's sad and disheartening to lose what we love. Grievous even. And every loss, regardless of size, deserves an appropriate season of grieving.
After which follows an opportunity to live with the awareness that Order, Disorder, Reorder has been the way of the world since time began, evidenced in the Birth, Death, New Life cycle that yearly takes place as the earth turns.
It's also what those staunch old Roman Catholics who go almost that far back like to proclaim as the Paschal Mystery:
from the very first known use of the term Paschal mystery (literally Mystery of the Pascha) was found in the homily of Melito of Sardis On the Pascha written between A.D. 160 and 170:
Understand, therefore, beloved,
how it is new and old,
eternal and temporary,
perishable and imperishable,
mortal and immortal, this mystery of the Pascha:
old as regards the force
but new as regards the Word;
temporary as regards the model ,
eternal because of grace
perishable because of the slaughter of the sheep,
imperishable because of the life of the Lord;
mortal because of the burial in earth,
immortal because of the rising from the dead
— On the Pascha, 2-3
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