NBA is finally back in New York

NEW YORK — We have been reminded this season, an NBA season that has arrived at All-Star Weekend, that this is still a Knicks town. It doesn’t change the fact that this is the Nets time. The Knicks have made a big move, without question. Not as big as the Nets can make the rest of the way.

This isn’t about whether or not the Nets can own New York when it comes to pro basketball. They’re not going to do that, even if they win it all this season, or next; if it all works out like gangbusters in the playoffs for James Harden and Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. As big as a title would be for them, it wouldn’t be as big as the Knicks winning another one someday, whenever someday might be.

Even with all the failures of the Knicks in this century, there is still just too much history attached to them, too much romance, too much memory from people of an age about a team as loved as any we’ve ever had in New York, the Knicks of Clyde and Earl and Willis and DeBusschere and Bradley. All that jazz.

But the Nets are something to see. They are probably the best New York basketball team in a quarter-century, since the 1996-97 Knicks, who I believe were on their way to a championship until Charlie Ward and P.J. Brown got into a fight one night at old Miami Arena, and the suspensions that followed effectively ended the Knicks dreams about another title, and their season.

Now the Knicks are back, led by an unlikely All-Star named Julius Randle, having the season of his life, and coached by Tom Thibodeau, who once sat next to Jeff Van Gundy, the Knicks head coach who was on his way to the title in ‘97; who watched as half his team got suspended and Patrick Ewing didn’t get to play what should have been a close-out Game 6 at the Garden that year. The Knicks are over .500 again on an All-Star weekend, and making their fans think they have somehow been struck by lightning.

But with everything the Knicks have done, and the noise they might even make if they make the playoffs, the Nets have made themselves a team to watch, and not just around here. This isn’t about the way James Harden strong-armed his way to Brooklyn. This is about the way he has played since he got there, and the way he has played since he got there has made him look like as much a force in the Eastern Conference as LeBron James still is in the Western.

The road is wide-open for them to go full-throttle. So much can change over the second half of the season, but what fan of the NBA isn’t already thinking about what it would be like to watch Harden and Durant and Irving, if they’re all healthy when the postseason begins, go up against the Joel Embiid and the 76 er sin the Eastern Conference Finals. Who wouldn’t sign up for that?