For the First Time in a Long Time, Knicks Have Given Their Fans Reason to Hope

NEW YORK — Early last Saturday night during a preseason matchup against the Brooklyn Nets at Madison Square Garden, the New York Knicks rolled an in-house production video on the arena monitor. It was one of those artistic montages meant to capture the team’s training-camp work to date and inspire the crowd. The video builds momentum toward the moment Derrick Rose appears shirtless, coated only in sweat and determination, lifting weights in slow motion and max effort.

In a different market, you can be sure the hometown fans would’ve filled the arena with roaring support and pure throaty hope that a former NBA MVP will renew his magic for their team.

Knicks fans did not opt for that hope.

Maybe it was because Rose wasn’t there. Maybe it was because why he wasn’t there—tending to a sexual assault accusation in civil court across the country in Los Angeles instead of keeping his first date with Knicks fans in the preseason home opener.

However you want to look at it, Knicks fans were restrained in their initial embrace of this new-look team. For a night, they were willing to wait. But they’ll want a little more this Saturday night against the Boston Celtics. And they’re going to want a lot more once the regular season begins Oct. 25 in Cleveland.

It’s quite possible they’ll get it.

There are objective reasons to believe the Knicks will be good this season.

The mere fact that we can throw out the possibility—and not get laughed out of the league—that the Knicks could be in the Eastern Conference Finals is a testament to Knicks’ president Phil Jackson’s oft-awkward two years of retooling around Carmelo Anthony.

After he was a leader in USA Basketball’s gold-medal run, Anthony has shifted his personal paradigm away from the utter and obvious determination to be the biggest star he can toward a commitment to doing whatever works and wins for the Knicks.

Kristaps Porzingis provided the city a much-needed infusion of basketball optimism with his youth, exuberance and skill—he was No. 4 on New York magazine’s “Reasons to Love New York” after mere months in the city—last season. This year easily could bring the leaps in production and efficiency often seen from European big men in their second NBA seasons.

New head coach Jeff Hornacek’s shallow voice with minimal inflection fails to …

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