Tom Rock: How the Knicks' run to the NBA Finals could be a blueprint for the Jets
The Jets and head coach Aaron Glenn, left, could learn a thing or two from the Eastern Conference champion Knicks. Credit: Ed Murray; AP / Tim Phillis
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — A funny thing has happened since we last spoke with Aaron Glenn and the Jets just a few weeks ago.
New York has become a basketball town.
The Knicks and their run to the NBA Finals have sucked up all of the sports oxygen in the city and its surrounding area, and even out here in suburban Jersey, the pulse is electrifying.
“It’s hard not to notice it,” Glenn said at the team’s OTA practice on Thursday. “Man, I’m pulling for those guys, I really am, because they play their [butts] off. It’s fun to watch and it’s good to see.”
And if the Knicks manage to win it all? Well, that’ll be great for the Jets to see too. Because the Knicks and Jets share something that binds them more than just about any two other franchises in the region.
Both are in the midst of more than a half-century of trophy-less futility that has left them with multiple generations of fans who have never experienced the thrill of everything that comes with winning: The trophy, the parade, the euphoria, the payoff on the patience . . . and the exhausted exhale of finally seeing something that many, in the darkest, most honest recesses of their rooting souls, thought they might not live to witness.
If there is any local team in another sport that can relate to the long dry spell between championships that the Knicks are attempting to end, it’s the Jets. They each harken back to the glory days when Walt Frazier and Joe Namath were larger-than-life swashbucklers and they have been chasing those legacies ever since.
“I’m rooting the Knicks on like hell,” Jets receiver Garrett Wilson said. “I know Jets fans are frothing at the mouth to cheer like that, and we want to give it to them. I personally want to give it to them . . . That gives us a taste of what it might look like when we figure this thing out.”
But the Jets’ interest should go beyond passive applause and admiration. There are definite lessons to be had.
It’s not their priority, certainly, but the Knicks are teaching the Jets what it takes to change a longtime losing culture.
“That is a gritty, gritty team,” Glenn said of the Knicks, using a word he likes to apply to his own squad so much that it even appeared on the shirt he was wearing on Thursday. “It’s hard to be a gritty team without gritty players, and it all starts with the point guard.”
He was talking about Jalen Brunson. Really, though, there are multiple “point guards” steering the Knicks to their recent success and plenty of parallel actors from whom the Jets can glean currency.
The Knicks are demonstrating that front-office leadership matters. Leon Rose can serve as a very good role model for Darren Mougey in terms of sticking to principles and not jumping at every shiny player who comes across their big desks.
The Knicks also are illustrating that it’s possible to win without a superstar. A lot of voices want to start lumping Brunson in with all-time great New York athletes like Derek Jeter and Mark Messier, and those comps will only grow louder if there is a parade in lower Manhattan at some point in the next few weeks. But the local legend whom Brunson probably most resembles is Eli Manning.
Brunson isn’t really in the conversation for the best player in his league, yet he tends to become the best player on the court (or field) when it matters most. That was Eli. They may not be Hall of Fame talents but they are Hall of Fame winners.
The Jets need to accumulate players with those types of sports genes. Maybe they can even add a quarterback with those exact genes who will be available to them in the 2027 draft?
“You can tell the leadership, the fight, everybody follows that,” Glenn said of Brunson. “It’s easy to follow that. Leadership comes down to one word, and that’s influence. You really see the influence he has. It’s not always verbal. It’s a lot of what he does and how he operates.”
Another lesson from the Knicks’ turnaround: An owner’s reputation can change very quickly. It wasn’t long ago that James Dolan and Woody Johnson walked hand-in-hand as the worst in their sports, mostly because of their meddling and impatience and personal vendettas. Dolan, at some point, seems to have had the epiphany to hire good people, step back and let them run things. The payoff has been less hostility toward him (hey, there still are plenty of Rangers fans who would argue for his place at the bottom of the order) and this ride to the NBA Finals. Johnson would be wise to watch that evolution and take notes.
So if Mougey has Rose as his tutor, and whoever the next franchise quarterback of the Jets will be has Brunson, what about Glenn?
Time will tell, but his role model might wind up being more Tom Thibodeau than Mike Brown, the one who sets the direction but never reaches the end of the journey.
There is nothing wrong with that, and there are plenty such unsung table-setters who couldn’t enjoy the meal in New York sports lore. Think Ray Perkins before Bill Parcells with the Giants or Buck Showalter before Joe Torre with the Yankees. How this coming season plays out likely will determine in which of those camps Glenn ultimately lands.
Wilson smiled when asked if he plans to attend any of the NBA Finals games at Madison Square Garden.
“Too expensive,” he said. “But I’ll be watching.”
And, ideally, learning.
The Knicks are four wins away from giving that ultimate thrill to New York and their fans for the first time since 1973.
Maybe the Jets, who haven’t provided it in roughly the same time span, since January 1969, can be right behind them?
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
