It's hard to think of anyone who gains every time the Knicks lose, other than owner James Dolan, who rakes in billions of your dollars because Knicks fans tolerate this ineptitude.
And perhaps the other Big Apple basketball team.
The Nets may be the one basketball entity that benefits greatly from the Knicks' dysfunction. As Gotham's flagship franchise, the Knicks cast a serious shadow over the Nets, a club that has hopped the Hudson River and back, from Long Island to the Meadowlands and now Brooklyn.
How many Nets fans do you know? Or how many admit it? If not for the strident loyalty of WFAN's Evan Roberts, who is a Nets fan and admits it, we might not hear much about them on sports radio. If the Nets were the only NBA club in New York City, they would be crushed with great regularity. While we bash the Knicks for not winning an NBA title since 1973, the Nets have never won one, their only success coming in the ABA, when Dr. J's epic Afro soared over defenders as he dunked those red, white and blue basketballs from the foul line.
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Since that ephemeral glory, the Nets have had one fun team any New Yorker could embrace, even if they were playing in New Jersey. Those fastbreak clubs led by Jason Kidd reached consecutive NBA Finals, getting crushed by the Lakers and Spurs. Even then, the fans were hardly frothing for more, with just a few thousand fans freckling the Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, which didn't get much better during the playoffs. Since their last trip into June, in 2003, the Nets have had just five seasons over .500. They've won 477 regular-season games over those 14 years (not counting this season), for an average of 34 per season. They've reached the playoffs eight times, which speaks to how emaciated the Eastern Conference has been over the last decade. The last time the Nets made the playoffs, in 2014, they finished the season 38-44. All those seasons include a crater of 12-70, their abysmal record in 2009-10.
But who cares? Since the Knicks absorb all the spotlight, headlines and thus the losses, the Nets get a pass. In case you didn't think this was possible, the Knicks are at least as bad, if not worse. In the 17 years since their last really good campaign -- in 2000, when they lost to the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals -- the Knicks have won 576 games, for an average of 33.8 wins per season. This includes the worst season in franchise history -- led by Phil Jackson and Carmelo Anthony, of course -- when they went 17-65 in 2014-15.
Since 1946, the Knicks have a woeful, .492 winning percentage during the regular season, and are 185-188 in the playoffs (.496). (Likewise, these numbers don't include this season.)
The Nets getting lost in the sprawling shadow of the Knicks is a bizarre, unique dynamic in sports, at least in NYC. All the talk of MSG being a Mecca of basketball is tired, untrue and, frankly, disgusting. But it actually helps the Nets that we give the Knicks way more cachet than they deserve. By the way, the Knicks are 27-48 this season, 28 games out of first place in the Atlantic Division. The Nets, fittingly, are right behind them, at 23-51, a cool 31 1/2 games back.
This doesn't happen in pro football, in which the more celebrated and successful Giants don't eclipse the historical gaffes from the Jets. Gang Green has been a running joke for too long and have long burned under the Big Apple media lens. Nothing the Jets do goes unnoticed.
It's the same in Major League Baseball. While the Yankees are not only the talk and chalk of the American League and the most successful franchise in the history of American sports, the Mets can't hide behind the Bombers. We know all the injuries, ineptitude and claims of collective poverty from the Wilpons. No Mets headline slides by the media or the masses.
After the Knicks beat the Washington Wizards on Sunday night, WFAN's Jerry Recco played a clip from Trey Burke saying, ""Obviously we're not playing for nothing, but it shows that we've got talent over here," after which a chuckling Gregg Giannotti quipped, "You can insert that quote at the end of every Knicks season."
As always, the boys were talking the Knicks. The Nets' loss to the Cavaliers received only a passing mention.
Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel
