So the Knicks have done it. A historic NBA Finals comeback, a city erupting in ecstasy, and British analysts falling over themselves to pat American backs and murmur about ‘sportsmanship’. How predictably noble. How perfectly, insufferably gracious. One might think we had won the thing ourselves, given the fawning coverage. But let us be honest: this is not about basketball. This is about a national inferiority complex masquerading as sophistication.
Consider the spectacle. New York, that brash, vulgar, magnificent city, finally tastes glory again. The Knicks, a franchise so long mired in mediocrity that even their own fans forgot what winning looked like, have clawed their way back from the dead. It is a story of grit, resilience, and a total lack of the British stiff upper lip. There were tears, there were screams, there were grown men hugging in the streets. It was everything sport should be: raw, emotional, and decidedly ungentlemanly.
And what do we do? We send our pundits to praise the ‘sportsmanship’. We tut approvingly at the handshakes, the nods, the mutual respect. We ignore the primal joy, the sheer bloody relief, and focus on the pleasantries. Why? Because greatness terrifies us. Because American success, loud and unapologetic, reminds us of our own cautious, declining empire. We are the Victorians without the empire, sipping tea while Rome burns and the Knicks win.
The historical parallels are unavoidable. When the Roman Republic fell, it was not to barbarians alone, but to a creeping decadence, a love of order over passion, a preference for form over substance. We see it in our own sporting culture. We revere the graceful loser, the plucky underdog who ‘gave it a go’. We mock the triumphant, the boastful, the winners who dare to enjoy their victory. We have turned competition into a tea party, and we wonder why our own athletes so often fall short.
This Knicks victory is a mirror. It shows us what we lack: a willingness to be vulgar, to embrace the chaos, to shout from the rooftops without fear of embarrassment. The British analysts, in their eternal quest for politeness, have missed the point entirely. Sportsmanship is easy. Winning is hard. And celebrating, truly celebrating, is harder still. It requires a vulnerability we have trained ourselves out of, a capacity for joy we have intellectualised into extinction.
So yes, let us hear the praise for the Knicks. Let us acknowledge the comeback, the skill, the drama. But let us also recognise the envy beneath our civility. We are not admiring them. We are marking our own distance from their vitality. The Knicks have given New York a moment of pure, unadulterated triumph. And we, in our parlours, can only nod and clap, wondering when we last felt anything so powerfully.
