My brother, his good friend from high school, and I had a slew of conversations in advance of the game excitedly hyping what would be in store for us when the New York Knicks took on the Oklahoma City Thunder at Madison Square Garden. In our estimation, Kevin Durant would go after the Garden’s single game scoring record of 61 points, Oklahoma City point guard Russell Westbrook would notch a triple-double, and new Knick Tracy McGrady, a star-crossed “superstar” these past few years, would go off for 40 or so in an attempt to get the home crowd on his side in his first game in blue and orange.

These were totally unrealistic expectations, of course, but unrealistic expectations seemed called-for. This would be my first experience in Madison Square Garden, the church of American ball, Mecca to the professional basketball fan. In fact, that’s how I referred to in conversations leading up to my trip.

“What are you going to do in New York?” people would ask.

“I’m going to Mecca,” I would tell them with a smile before clarifying, “A Saturday night Knicks game at MSG.”

I’m not a Muslim, and I don’t know the depths of devotion and spiritual belief verified by the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage every Muslim must take to that faith’s holiest city. I do, however, know exactly what it’s like to worship at the Church of Roundball: the miracles I’ve witnessed in my young life have more to do with Reggie Miller or Michael Jordan or Robert Horry than any unseen deity revealing its presence in my day-to-day life. And no single building means more to me in this instance, or more to basketball in general, than Madison Square Garden.

No town has done more for basketball or is more in touch with the sport than New York City. There are a miniscule number of basketball towns in America, football having usurped civic pride these past twenty years, and New York is one of these. The metropolis has two baseball teams and two football teams, but there’s only one basketball team, and every NYC basketball fan, even through the past ten lean years, knows the one organization to which loyalty lies. In a town that worships basketball, the Knicks remain a sacred franchise, regardless of how desecrated in recent years, and MSG a holy place of worship.

***

At some point, it had to happen. I talk about the NBA too much, follow it too doggedly, to have gone this long without having been to the Garden. I grew up a Knicks fan on account of my family’s New York ties, Mom’s family from the Bronx, an older sister and brother who live in Brooklyn and Manhattan, respectively, as well as cousins and friends who have or currently do reside somewhere within The City That Never Sleeps. And so it came to pass this past Christmas Eve, when I opened my present from my brother and sister-in-law, to find not only Bill Simmons’ The Book of Basketball (which you can read my review of here*) but also a piece of paper revealing tickets to the Knicks/Thunder game on the ensuing February 20.

Now, I’ve discovered time and again in my 26 years that anticipation is rarely a good thing. I say this because, more often than not, anticipation only leads to disappointment. If everything doesn’t go according to plan, if downtime becomes the trip itself, if the chemicals don’t mesh perfectly and reveal the sought-after elixir of profound experience, then anticipation becomes like a thief, something that robs you of enjoying the moment because you expected all this other stuff to happen. Regardless of how much fun what actually happened was, it still didn’t meet your expectations, and thus ends up somewhat disappointing you.

By the end of the second pint of Guinness earlier in the day, however, any trepidation I felt about these unrealistic expectations went out the window. As my buzz grew over the course of the afternoon, as we watched college basketball and then met up with friends and then moved to an establishment with off-track betting and then those friends and my sister and her boyfriend and my sister-in-law and a cousin came to meet us, the excitement heading into my first MSG experience became something like a mutant on my shoulder, a force at the back of my mind that focused my energies on everything that happened as it happened.

In advance of arriving, my brother informed us that, if we stopped by the Club at MSG before the game, we had a good chance of seeing John Starks, the former Knicks star. Apparently, he’s a regular. When I was a kid, I had both a Starks jersey (which I wore often) and his poster hanging in my room. He was my guy up until he almost single-handedly cost the Knicks the ’94 Finals with as horrendous a shooting performance as exists in NBA lore. But still, at one point he was my dude, and much the way the rest of my excitement triggered unrealistic expectations, on top of so much sudsy goodness I figured, well, I’ll see John Starks.

I should have known better than to add yet another expectation, but then again, I didn’t care.

Once inside the Club at MSG, once bellied up, once we ordered a drink apiece, once we got settled and took a deep breath, my brother scanned the room before laughing. Leaning in, he said, “Remember when I said we might see John Starks?”

His friend and I nodded.

“Turn around.”

Sure as shit, there was John Starks at a table directly behind us, taller in person than I remember him being as a player. Of course, he would’ve had to have some length to viciously dunk on Jordan and Horace Grant like he did in the ’93 playoffs*. We barely had time to take in his nearness before an assistant shuttled him over to the other side of the bar, but still…

Seeing John Starks? Expectation #1? Taken care of.

With that out of the way, with faith renewed, we downed our beers and made the walk to our seats.

***

With a new mug of beer and pretzel rod in hand (yeah, they give you a pretzel rod with every beer purchased at concessions…amazing), we headed through the curtain and down, down, down, until I could easily spit on the court, if I were some sort of barbarian. Fourth row. Right there, that’s how close the court was. Right. There. Warm-ups started, lay-up lines, and here comes T-Mac, and David Lee, and the rest of the Knicks joking around and the Thunder at the other end of the court and holy fucking shit this is really happening I can’t believe I’m here you have got to be kidding me! My beer went quicker than I expected.  I went to grab another before my brother stopped me and pointed to a lady twenty feet to our left.

“We have a waitress, man. Get three more.”

A waitress.

There’s a funny part in Martin Scorsese’s Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home in which one of Dylan’s producers, Bob Johnston, talks about a particular recording session. He says, “[Dylan] counted off, the band kicked in, and from that point…well, I really have no memory.” I always thought this guy was some hippy dude who lost his memory on account of the standard recreational habits given your average Flower Child. But then the ball tipped for my first game at MSG, and the food runner brought us our beers. I now know exactly what Johnson meant.

And again, it’s nothing to do with intake of alcohol. Don’t get me wrong, I felt Tony the Tiger Grrrrrrrrrreat heading into the game. But I wasn’t blacked out, or even close. That came later. I was simply too busy living to worry about generating memories.

Usually, when I take in an experience, I take in everything about it in a veritable 360-degree panorama of stimuli. Oftentimes, this is the source of the aforementioned ummet expectations and disappointed anticipation. Rare is the event that focuses my attention to the point that I don’t notice what the asshole next to me is doing or that beers are too expensive or that the lights behind the stage are distracting or that it wasn’t quite as good as it could have been. I take in everything, and usually that drives me nuts.

At MSG, on the other hand, my entire being, my entire focus, everything about what I was doing as a living being in the world at that moment was focused on the action on the floor. To anyone else in MSG, I probably looked like the biggest Knicks fan in the world. Every And-One, I leapt out of my seat. Every nice pass, every three-pointer, and every exciting play elicited a reaction. I was buzzing, sure, but beyond this I was practically vibrating with energy for the game’s entirety.

Check out this clip*: at the :16 mark, when they cut to the shot of T-Mac walking back after getting the And-One, the gentleman going crazy in the background, the one in the tan blazer with beer in hand and fist raised, is the author of this piece.

Crazy.

***

The game was a back and forth affair. McGrady took over for a stretch of action in the second quarter to a degree no one really expected (except us, of course), and by halftime had nineteen points. Westbrook was having a good game as well, and Durant seemed to be biding his time, hanging back until he needed to take over. The Knicks went up big, then slid back, then went out a little further ahead, and then back again came the Thunder. It was a slugfest dominated by McGrady, Durant, Westbrook, and Knicks All-Star David Lee. Once Durant exerted his will, all of the sudden we had a tie ballgame on our hands and little time left on the clock. The Knicks were able only to get up a long three at the end of regulation, which missed, meaning…

OVERTIME!

I’m not sure what the odds were that this particular matchup, one of the best teams in the Western Conference versus one of the worst in the East, would go to overtime. The crowd was electric. The stars had shown up in a big way on this Saturday night and bestowed upon us an extra period of action to augment the exciting game we’d already had the pleasure of watching. As we figured would happen, the Knicks eventually lost, but not for a lack of chances. They got open looks on the final possession. The Thunder were simply a better team, and they slowly, almost politely, slammed the door in New York’s face to the tune of a 121-118 victory. The greater NYC crowd left disheartened by the Knicks’ loss, but the three of us left…uplifted? Inspired? Fulfilled? All of these, and more.

As for our expectations going in?

Kevin Durant goes for the MSG scoring record: He finished the game with 36 (not too shabby, the game’s leading scorer) and carried his team down the stretch, including hitting both the game-tying three in regulation and game-winning jumper in OT.

Russell Westbrook goes for a triple-double: He finished one rebound short, with a final line of 31 points (second-leading scorer), 9 boards, and 10 assists.

Tracy McGrady goes for 40: T-Mac finished the game with 26 in a performance vastly superior to what anyone could have reasonably expected. Had he been in better shape, he might have gone after the scoring record.

So no, we didn’t hit those predictions exactly on the head. But we got damn close, and with an extra period to boot. To quote Johnny Drama, VICTORY!

And to quote Alicia Keyes: Newwwww Yoooooooooooork!

***

The night went off the rails from there, at least for me personally, jacked up on adrenalin and hope and good times and a substantial amount of alcohol as I was. The next day was among the worst of my life, and the day after that not a great deal better. But for those ten hours or so on a Saturday in New York City, there wasn’t a single other thing I would have rather been doing, nothing else on which I spent any sort of mental or emotional energy, beyond the scene in which I was enmeshed. Beyond the court, and the players, and the experience of Knicks/Thunder live at the Garden, nothing else mattered.

MSG. Mecca. Like the pilgrim who has his lifetime of devotion affirmed when he sets foot inside that holy city, consider me a true believer, and one forevermore.