#2 - New York Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox

Why it's this high:

Baseball has been slowly fading from the national consciousness over the past decade. Empty stadiums around the country are a testament to that, and the waning interest hasn’t discriminated when it comes to success (the Marlins and the Rays have had trouble filling their stadiums with World Series contenders). But as it stands right now, just as it has been for the past 100 years, no two teams in any sport share a rivalry as strong as the Yankees and the Red Sox.

            Eventually, a movie will be made about the two consecutive ALCS’ between the teams in 2003 and 2004. And just like any good sports movie, it won’t hold a candle to what actually happened. Those two series were sports at the highest level, with the stakes as high as possible, between two mortal enemies.

2003 was supposed to be the year the Red Sox exorcised all of their considerable demons. An ALCS win against the Yankees and a World Series in one fell swoop. But even a 5-2 lead couldn’t hold up to heat of the Bronx in September. Grady Little lead his team to their most regular season wins since 1986, and yet was publically eviscerated for a decision that any manager – or baseball fan for that matter - would have co-signed on. Of course Pedro ended up coughing up the lead, but Little had few other options.

The Red Sox bullpen, which had been stellar through most of the series, was overworked by a poor outing from John Burkett the night before. The three relievers not tapped were a 37-year old journeyman (Mike Timlin), the makeshift closer with an unsightly regular season ERA (Scott Williamson), and a lefty who had 46 strikeouts in 61 innings (Alan Embree). Little made the right gamble to bet with his ace, and for that he was run out of town with a two-year record of 188-136. Four innings later a flat knuckleball from the master of the craft sealed Boston’s fate, and ensured that Aaron Boone will never buy a drink in New York, even though he was only there for a few happy hours.

But all 2003 did was set up bar none the greatest role reversal in history. With the offensively impotent Cardinals waiting in the World Series, the Yankees had champagne chilling in Fenway after massacring Boston in the first 3 games by a score of 32-16. It legitimately looked like the curse was never going to end. Four games later a dirty Dave Roberts jersey went from a rag to a collectors item, a bloody sock was on its way to Cooperstown, and the Sox celebrated an unfathomable win in an otherwise dead silent Yankee Stadium. 

            Both teams were forged out of overwhelming pressure to succeed, albeit from different places. The Yankees of the 2000s were spurred on by the hyper-competitive George Steinbrenner. When his teams failed to collect trophies, George collected heads. His impetuousness bordered sports radio caller territory, and even the perceived untouchables were namedropped when the Canyon of Heroes was left empty. Joe Torre’s even keeled approach helped to stabilize the locker room in season, but even he couldn’t shelter players from the Boss’ annual fall cleanings.

            The pressure in Boston came less from the deep-pocketed ownership, and more from one of the most tortured fan bases in all of sports. Before 2004, Red Sox fans began bracing for the team’s annual fiery wreck after three game losing streaks in June. High fives were rare at Fenway in August, as by then the fans had chewed their fingers down to the bone. Boston contained all of the overwhelming pressure to succeed, but with the looming expectation of disastrous failure.

Without even discussing the playoff wars of ’03 and ’04, the Yankees and the Red Sox bulging payrolls meant that the stars were out when they faced off. Pedro vs. Jeter (Jeter was 22/89 vs Pedro as a Red Sock), Clemens vs. Manny (Manny was 6/34 off Clemens as a Yankee), the whole Red Sox lineup against death, taxes, and Mariano Rivera (the Sandman has been Krueger-like to the Red Sox with a 2.82 career ERA). Because of the sheer number of times they faced each other, there are just so many more great moments than any other rivalry on this list, even if you just included the regular season.

            Although the major players of the past 10 years are retiring left and right, this past decade had characters that added more to the story than anyone in the past century. Pedro seemed to take a certain delight in buzzing Bomber towers, even threatening a posthumous plunk for the guy who started all of this. Clemens transparently DESPISED the Red Sox for letting him go, more than enough motivation for a guy already hopped up on Icy Hot jockage. Pedro was serenaded with “Who’s your daddy” in the Bronx, and Clemens received other choice words in Fenway. Manny Ramirez, who spaced out for games at a time, was always at his locked in best at Yankee Stadium (.321 career batting average).

            But what puts this rivalry at the top of this list is the pure scope of it. Wherever you go across the country, you’ll find fans of both persuasions. In most major cities, there’s at least one bar draped in pinstripes, and one where someone will tell you how “Nomah nevah gawt his prawpah due”. All of these other rivalries on this list are between two great teams (or people), but not necessarily the two most important. Whatever way you slice it – payroll, TV ratings, earnings, ticket sales – the Red Sox and the Yankees are the two biggest teams in baseball, with the best rivalry in the sport, which has peaked in the past 10 years. No other two teams have all three of those arguments.

             

Why it’s not higher:

            Well at this point, there’s only one higher than this, which I’ll be writing when Paris runs red with clay. The Yankees and the Red Sox are the pre-eminent team rivalry, but there’s a limit to the vitriol two teams can produce now. With player movement through free agency and trades at an all-time high, colors matter more than people at this point. With a pen and a razor, Johnny Damon went from public enemy number 1 to left fielder number 18. One of the only places CC Sabathia doesn’t have beef is with the Red Sox, and Jon Lester none with the Yankees. Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz make dinner reservations with eachother.

Of course there are the mainstays on each side, and obviously each team wants to beat an opponent they face more than anyone else the rest of the year. But with too many even keeled personalities on each side, this rivalry has lost a little bit of the fire that made 2003 and 2004 so intense (fortunately the Red Sox hired Bobby Valentine, which should change that shortly). With spring training just around the corner, it won’t be long before the yearly war for the AL East begins again. 

How the Knicks Keep This Going

I root not to lose at this point. After seeing every promising team at best flame out and at worst crash and burn, I lose optimism at the first sign of trouble, and hope that when my teams do fail, they have the courtesy to do so when a liquor store is still open. So, when my predictions are wrong (especially midseason predictions) it usually means I'm happy. Really, my last prediction was more of a foregone conclusion: the Knicks season was going to go in the tank with the starting lineup of Tyson Chandler, JV-level jump shooter Jared Jeffries, Billy Walker's gross looking dreads, 2012 Landry Fields, and Jeremy Lin.

Well, Jeffries has apparently channeled the dark arts in order to start knocking down shots, Bill Walker has been replaced by ridiculous sharp shooter Steve Novak, Landry Fields has turned the clock back...a year, and Jeremy Lin may very well be the adopted child of John Stockton and Steve Nash. I'm an idiot, and the world is wonderful. So since giving up on my teams hasn't worked out well, I'll take a page out of the Costanza playbook. This Knicks team is finally ready to fulfill its preseason promise. A rejuvenated Amar'e is going to average 20-25 the rest of the way, Carmelo will pull a full Clark Kent, take off the hipster glasses, and go back to being one of the best clutch shooters in the NBA, and Jeremy Lin will be the master key to this offense. The Knicks will not only make the playoffs, but will win at least their first round series and maybe more. Just a few minor changes...

There needs to be more time standing up than sitting down for Novak

At the beginning of this year, I said that the best benches are those that compliment the coach's philosophy. Well, if this is going to be a textbook D'Antoni offense the rest of the way, Steve Novak fits as the type of sharpshooter that can keep defenses from clogging the lane, or at least give them pause before they do it. He is a career 42% 3 point shooter, so although he's knocking them down at a coin flip rate right now, the regression to the mean won't be too drastic. The Knicks have one of the better inside tandems in the league with Chandler and the soon to be revived Stoudemire, and a player that usually demands a double team in Carmelo Anthony. The strategy against the Knicks should be to pack the paint and make inside buckets difficult to come by. The fact that Novak will knock down open shots in his sleep, and his off the radar range (he nailed one from nearly halfcourt against Minnesota) will make teams think twice about collapsing into the paint or doubling Carmelo.

Split up Amare and Carmelo

At this point, it's relatively obvious that Amar'e and Carmelo don't fit very well together on a basketball court. The best way to deal with this (without having to trade one of them) is using them on different units as much as possible. Carmelo showed last year that he can not only function, but thrive on a team full of scrubs against Boston in Game 2. He doesn't need a point guard or a complimentary scorer, and sometimes he he's at his best without either of the two. Let him wreak havoc on the second unit with Shumpert, Walker, Jeffries, and Chandler. With Lin's effective grasp of the P&R, Tuesday should be the beginning of a return to all-star form for STAT. Those two along with Novak, Fields, and possibly Walker once Baron Davis returns should form an undersized team, but one capable of putting the ball in the basket in a number of different ways. D'Antoni needs to take a cue from Michael Mann: just because you have two stars doesn't mean you need to push them together all the time, as long as the work as a whole speaks for itself.

The next few games are only in need of frosting (at Toronto, vs. Sacramento, vs. New Orleans), and with only three tough games left until the All Star Break, the Knicks should be looking down at .500 by the halfway point this season. Just for once, let me be right.

Knicks Reality Check

In order to ignore the soul-crushing reality that 60-70% of New York fans are skipping around cloud 9 in drunken elation today (which includes my entire extended family), I’ll try and bring down everyone's collective mood in the best way possible: talking about the Knicks.

             I wrote a few weeks ago about Maryland basketball being the type of frustrating team that’s ultimately forgivable. They play hard, and occasionally even look like the better team, but end up ultimately succumbing in most of their games because when it comes down to it, they just don’t have the goods right now.

            The Knicks this season are the antithesis of Maryland. After being dealt garbage cards for the past decade, this looked like the year Knicks fans finally caught a hand to cash in on. Coming off of a playoff series against Boston that made me Wikipedia Murphy’s Law to see if it had been proven, the Knicks looked promising to start the season. 

            Carmelo and Amare alone weren’t going to make the Knicks a championship contender, but they were going to make it dangerous. A high-powered speed boat with a newly purchased anchor in the paint capable of blowing out inferior teams and putting a scare into 90% of the league. There were holes (the bench, a young inexperienced backcourt) but there were also finally stars IN THEIR PRIME back playing on Broadway. And if Baron Davis healed up quickly, or Landry Fields took a step forward, or the Toney Douglas in my mind finally manifested himself on the court, the possibilities would become even more intriguing.

            Around this time, I was expecting to be embroiled in a battle for a home playoff series. The reality is scrapping for the right to face powerhouse Chicago with the likes of the Bogut-less Bucks, and the still freshly buried Cavaliers. I was expecting STAT-stuffed first halves and Melo fourth quarter fireworks. Instead, Amare is embroiled in the worst season of his professional career, and Carmelo will be an All-Star in name only.

            And the worst part is, anyone can understand why they’re bad…but NO ONE can understand why they’re THIS BAD. The source of the most scrutiny is the lack of a top point guard, which is definitely a hindrance. But Jeff Teague (11 PPG, 5 APG) and Darren Collison (13 PPG, 5 APG) are the starters on two of the more successful teams in the eastern conference. Post-Melo trade Toney Douglas looked to be trending towards those numbers at the end of last season. But instead, it appears he’s completely lost cabin pressure, and Douglas has spent 2012 in a complete nosedive. His field goal percentage has dropped 9% and his 3 point shooting is down even further (2010: 37% 2011: 24%). What has happened to his scoring ability, and any semblance of basketball acumen, is anyone’s guess.

            Even if Douglas were to have a shaky hand at the wheel, Baron Davis was originally expected to come back and steady the ship. Now when he returns (which is anyone’s guess), he’ll be tasked with dragging the Titanic to shore. Baron When Healthy And Motivated Davis is a very talented point guard with good court vision and the strength to finish in traffic. He’s also at least 4 years past his prime, a career 32% 3 shooter, and has made one All-NBA team (3^rd team – 2004) in his entire career. Until he returns (at least three more weeks according to the Knicks) the team’s hopes at point guard will rest with Jeremy Lin. I’m as happy for Lin as anyone, and I’ve liked what I’ve seen the past two games, but what are the chances that a playoff team can be run by an undrafted 2^nd year player who averaged 16 and 5 in the Ivy League?   

            Mike D’Antoni’s career in New York has played out like a “Chopped” episode. A bunch of bizarre and sometimes unpalatable ingredients that he’s been forced to try and meld into something cohesive. This team as presently constituted certainly doesn’t fit his “seven seconds or less” pick and roll heavy offense. But just like competitors in the show, sometimes it’s necessary to go outside your style and literally think outside the box to succeed. Remember, this is a coach who has been credited with revolutionizing how offensive basketball is played.  

            So…why can’t he do it? Why do so many possessions look like they were drawn up for a fucking 6 year old team? With four players clustered to one side of the court leaving crossing their fingers that Melo will create something on his giant private chunk of floor. Why is the ball movement settled pond-stagnant? Why does one of the more explosive finishers in the game drift listlessly on his orbit 20 feet away from the basket, seemingly neglecting his ability to draw fouls and hammer home dunks in favor of conciliatory jumpers?

So as rough as Mike D’s job has been, his inability to adapt to what he’s been given has been astoundingly frustrating for someone of his reputation. Instead, with some good ingredients finally available, Knicks fans have been served the same plate of blue and orange chicken shit that’s been a house special since 2001, when there is finally chicken salad on the menu. On reality TV that gets a contestant kicked off the show.

            But where the hammer falls the heaviest is with the two names headlining the marquee. The coaching is certainly an issue, but nobody is delusional enough to believe the NBA is a coach’s league. Erik Spoelstra and Mike Brown have both reached the NBA finals and Vinny Del Negro is heading one of the best teams in the league. There are plenty of possible reasons that the Stoudemire-Anthony pairing has produced results well below its expected yield, but again, WHY?

Why wasn’t there a story this summer about the two stars getting together and talking about what they could each do (read: concede) to turn what should be into what is? Why is it that this marriage is just shy of a year old, and yet in their moments on the floor together, Amar’e and Carmelo still regularly look first date awkward?

And most importantly why, oh why, was tonight’s game with a cast of characters straight out of the Replacements the most entertaining, exciting, and ultimately satisfying Knicks game I’ve watched since Christmas? Six guys dressed up as the Knicks tonight and outperformed what has been billed as the “genuine article” for the past two months. This team of D-league all stars and bench players isn’t a sustainable source of wins, but the fact remains that the bootleg Knicks won a game against an above .500 team at home. A game I’m not sure the big league team would have pulled out. And it’s extremely worrisome the questions that thought brings up