The thing that highlighted sport's Dark Ages (2000-) is conformity. Guys like myself who don't know better always assume that you should go about football and basketball like it's socializing. And what I mean is -- anything that might seem out of the ordinary is forbidden. It works when it comes to chicks, it's just incredibly tedious and uninteresting. The depression that comes with homework makes one say to himself "I BETTER be getting good things out of this." He doesn't necessarily become happy when he gets girls and respect as much as he's angry as hell if he doesn't get girls and respect. And thus, it's mostly people with nothing to offer that join "teams". If they got famous tomorrow, they would see no downside, and that is a big, big problem. It means you're telling people who know better that you have no pride. Nobody who runs a company, truly leads it, is a worker drone like the San Antonio Spurs and New England Patriots. They're wily eccentrics who take things extra personally and respond by beating you at actual things with big, wide audiences. They don't simply put you down, they PROVE you down. And that's why despite his corporate douchery, I love Michael Jordan. Him and Scottie and Rodman and Phil Jackson were like wily, eccentric CEOS when it came to basketball, particularly playoff basketball. They didn't just win, they deliberately aimed to excite. To entertain themselves and the fans. Entertain. Because they weren't tools. When tools approach basketball, it's all about business and winning WITHOUT the entertainment. Because that's the way to approach swooning girls. You see the problem here? It's basketball. It's sport. Not a nightclub. I'm trying to teach my kids how to enjoy their time on Earth drug-free and find the pursuit of happiness a fun journey they'll always get up for. They're going to be the sexiest squares there is, make daddy alot of money, but all in all -- learn that a mental utopia can become something everyone shares and gives you money for. This is what the whole Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance stuff Phil Jackson talks about is for. It's about taking hippies and Native Americans who are coming down and recovering off the peace pipe and getting them motivated to defend their land when everything is 1880s and stinking, long, boring, hard, everything's heavy, everything hurts, and everyone's a general shnook. So despite my New York ties, it was hard not to be a fan of the Chicago Bulls. Be big...so big that you don't have to do the prescribed way...it's a sign of superiority. In the 1990s, you couldn't just be a quiet jerk and play the odds of retaliation, because Scottie and Michael WOULD retaliate. AND take your girls. Yes -- those weird, unusual freaks.Teams in the NBA cannot function like a business does because businesses rely on the general public not caring an inch as to who actually invents stuff, who makes the stuff, who does all the real stresswork to make them enjoy an end product. The guys who do nothing get to put their name on it and get the recognition. In the NBA, if you suck, the fans know, making sport something that inherently exposes and embarrasses the way managements everywhere do business in their own fields. And their little virginal team game with their little nepotistic power hierarchy. So why are we acting like them, Tony? Tim? Manu? Gregg?

June, 2002 -- the Dark Ages starts a few days after Kobe and Shaq's three-peat in New Jersey.

The signs were there. We should have picked up on the fact that our glorious sports world was going to crap when the Patriots won the Super Bowl with football's version of Four Corners wussyball, thus beating the exciting St. Louis Rams, denying us a show not seen since Mark Rypien was throwing dead on 60 yard passes to Gary Clark in stride for the Washington Redskins.

In greater society at the time, the press bad-mouthed Enron, and this only appears to make Enron look cool. Yeah, corporate mania was sweeping America, and because the same rednecks who use the flag to hate also watch football, we were subjected to Bush's horse crap in the sports world. The influence was staggering -- suddenly if you wouldn't get a job in real life, you are suddenly immune from an NBA championship, a Super Bowl trophy, a Stanley Cup, and a World Series. Only if Rasheed Wallace toned his act down was he allowed to prosper, and I was expecting him to get ejected in Game 1 in the 04 finals, and maybe hit with a few technicals for the rest of the Laker rout. Didn't happen. The Pistons won because they were domicile house mice who embraced the same kind of concept that crappy players like Rick Fox and Brian Shaw and Sedale Threatt might. Of course they're team players. Because nobody wants their freaking autographs. They have to be a close-knit group, because all the fans think they suck. If they don't act like they know something vital and important to achieve, girls would never get with some scrub utility player. Kobe Bryant got treated like crap by people everywhere he went -- think about that, the guy is a black dude in Italy and then an Italian dude pretty much in Philadelphia, and then completely anti-social by the time he joins John Salley and Derek Fisher, all these fools that suck. Shaq was very interesting. So good, SUCH a great storyteller I'm being serious, you have got to read his book it is very very good, very surprising inside stuff. But you see, it really helped the NBA to have Kobe and Shaq hate each other. Because a big product of the Dark Ages is talking about athletes for the rivalries they have with each other. It makes teams in the Western Conference look tough. And it's the only way to have something different then the Spurs without actually going the full route of doing something STRANGE.

The Spurs, the Patriots, no Yankees, the dismantling of the Colorado, New Jersey, Detroit fight-for-all that went on in the NHL for nine glorious seasons, it was terrible. And the very last of these great '90s teams of freaks and interesting individuals who were more talented then the team game of posers, well that would be the New York Knicks of the late '90s. And they got Screwed.

A QUICK WORD ON JOHN STARKS before we get to the basketball...

John Starks would be gone soon. Talk about the image game. We really took Starks to be something because they kept replaying that single dunk on the Bulls over and over again. He defended Michael well, but Starks was the guy that Michael kept having his 50 point games against. The Pistons taught the Bulls never to be intimidated by the Knicks. October 1993 was a good time for Michael to initially retire because overcoming the 93 Knicks made alot of people go hey, I DIDN'T expect Michael to do that. I would have screwed that up! Michael's the best ever! Now back to the Knicks -- we got rid of Don Nelson, and then brought in Pat Riley's assistant Jeff Van Gundy. And Van Gundy turned out to be the man.

And now basketball.

1997

Against Miami in the 2nd round of the playoffs, we went up 3-1. Then in Game 5, with Miami pretty far ahead, Charlie Ward on the Knicks tries to undercut Miami's P.J. Brown for a rebound on a free throw. Brown THROWS CHARLIE WARD over his shoulder! Now a new rule in the NBA states that you aren't allowed to leave the bench during a fight or you get suspended. And so the players on the court get into the scuffle. On the New York bench at this moment, saving themselves in the midst of this rout for the next game, are Patrick Ewing and a few other starters. They step out on the court -- toes, okay, not even -- and are all ejected and suspended for Game 6 and three of them for Game 7! Starks gets two games for flicking off the crowd on the way out and he can't play either. You can't do that. There are kids.

And so we lose the series.

And so Starks and Harper gets injured in 1998 and I boycott the team. But I did get to see the highlights of the Knicks series in the playoffs. That fight between Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson was a HOOT!!! It started not because of any push or shove, but because the Charlotte Hornets decided to keep the Grandmama Larry Johnson and pay him 84 million dollars, and get rid of the Guy Who Gets Into Fights On The Eve of Clinching Playoff Berths And Serieses Because He's Scared Of Getting Embarrassed In A Playoff Match-Up With Chicago.

But 1999 was a great time. We got Latrell Sprewell!!!!!!!!!! SPREWELL!!!!!

LATRELL "Long Before the Kobe Dunk" SPREWELL!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Oh boy. Now we have Marcus Camby and Patrick Ewing at center, Larry Johnson at power forward, Sprewell at small forward, and Allan Houston at two-guard, and a former Heisman winner in Charlie Ward at point.

The problem was we had no chemistry, and Ewing had a vicious injury to his leg that would soon end his career, but he wanted his title, and he was sick of everyone in New York's media and shows talking about how "it could be possible, just possibly, that Willis Reed was more of a badass then Patrick."

So he kept trying to play and we limped into the playoffs as the 8th seed. And we had to play Miami again. We lost Game 3 to go down 2-1 and should have lost Game 4. But didn't and so we had a fifth game in Miami. Everyone knew that Jeff Van Gundy would most likely be fired if New York fans didn't see some action.

Down by 1 with 2 seconds left in Game 5, Allen Houston puts in an ugly jumper that takes a lucky bounce. (YEEEEEEEEEEEEAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! YEAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!) See just moments before, we got entangled and lost about 8 or 9 seconds off the clock. So now instead of being down by 1 with 9 seconds, we're down with 2.AND WE PULLED IT OUT ANYWAY!!!! AHHHHHHHH!!! KNICKS KNICKS KNICKS!!! So he comes back down, then raises his arms as he runs down court, taunting the Miami crowd by insinuating that they should get excited for him. Houston runs down court, and then goes right up to who he doesn't realize is recording "legend" Jimmy Buffett. Yes. Margaritaville shows up to Miami games, gets drunk as hell, and then yells enough things at opposing players until -- it happened once on national TV -- he was escorted out in front of everybody. Houston's first instinct after winning this playoff series is to run all the way to the opposite end of the court just to stick it to Jimmy Buffett. And Sprewell and all them rush over to mob him. The crowd is silent. The benchers on the Knicks are all "YEAH!!!!" "YEAH BOY!!" And we win.

Next is Atlanta. We're on their home court, but there are two phrases that will never be spoken together -- Atlanta Hawks and Eastern Conference Finals. We win 4-0. Now it's onto the Pacers.

Indiana was alot cooler in the mid 90s then the late 90s. First the shaving of the heads is a superficial annoyance. I couldn't stand looking at them. Second off, Bird figured out that he couldn't turn these guys into the old Celtics even though he had almost the entire starting five from the Celtics -- look, you had Rik Smits who should have been amazing, you had Dale Davis who can rebound, that's McHale and Parish right there. Then you got Reggie Miller who could shoot, he was like a faster Danny Ainge. Then you had Mark Jackson and there's your Dennis Johnson. But there was no Larry Bird at small forward. Meanwhile Spree could cream McKey, Antonio Davis, Jalen Rose, Austin Croshere and Chris Mullin, which would leave him free to go and guard your backcourt or your center or Karl Malone and shut down your whole offense. This was the era when Indiana's top competitors all had very very good 3-spot players. When Scottie Pippen went to Houston they didn't even have a use for him! And even though Pippen was utilized on Portland, they were able to use Jermaine O'Neal and Bonzi Wells at the three-spot because Sabonis and Wallace had the 5 and 4, and Steve Smith was at 2. The point is, Larry Bird's Pacers were EXCEPTIONALLY VULNERABLE.

They fought it out, you know, I mean Larry Johnson won on that 4-point play and they took the Knicks to six games, but Sprewell was far too fast in the late 90s. The play would be continuously be 50 feet behind Indiana. And they lost.

And so we're in the FINALS!!! IT WAS INCREDIBLE!!! It was so exciting in fact that Jeff Van Gundy even smiled!!!! HE SMILED!!!

So then we had to play the Spurs, and it was everything bad about sports vs. us, everything right about sports. We had Willis Reed. We had Doctor Spree, We had Allen Houston.

The Spurs on the other hand had a bunch of nice guys who liked each other, led by two big centers. The Spurs got lucky and had the worst record in sports after Rodman left. They were able to get both a new coach and the number one pick in the whole damn draft. And they took Tim Duncan who turned out to be the poster-child of boring.

Let me tell you something -- a shot off a backboard is not a highlight. If Duncan had been in the video game Lakers vs. Celtics, and his signature move you did when you pressed B was a shot off the backboard, that would have been lame.

And so they win in five games as if they're your no fun religious cousins.

SCREWED!!!

And now onto the Bad Boys. Click below!

http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Glorious-Wonderful-Story-of-Chuck-Dalys-Detroit-Pistons

http://hubpages.com/hub/SCREWED-Tonights-Episode-The-New-York-Knicks-Of-The-1990s-Part-2-of-2