A Holiday Wish List For Our Area’s Pro Teams
Like Santa, many of the items below for which supporters of our New Yor City area sports teams are pining this Holiday season are fantastical. Others are unavailable for purchase.
However, in the spirit of the season, hope is a blessed thing and it doesn’t hurt to wish. For the sake of our city’s sanity, may some of these magically appear under the respective team’s Christmas tree, et al:
Knicks: Good health
An attainable gift, as opposed to the dream of an NBA championship. New York was also rolling last season, only to be undone by a slew of injuries at the worst possible time. Is it Head Coach Tom Thibodeau’s atypical working hours or just another of the commonly afflicted plagues that consumes many of the league’s clubs? It really doesn’t matter. A relatively healthy Knicks squad has a floor of an Eastern Conference Finals appearance, their first since 2000. After that, who knows?
Nets: Lottery luck
These next two gifts are on back order. Brooklyn is all in on tanking for a few more prime ping pong ball assignments out of the 1,001 possible combinations for the upcoming 2025 NBA Draft lottery, according to The New York Times. The NBA’s worst team has never won the lottery since the odds were flattened in 2019—in fact, they have almost a 50/50 chance of picking fifth. As unwatchable as the Nets look following their trade of point guard Dennis Schroder (with more trades of solid veterans likely to come), I doubt they’ll finish last. So stay off the naughty list, Nets fans.
Giants: A new quarterback
This season has been agony, but cheer up, Giants fans. Your reward is on its way in the form of the No.1 pick in the 2025 NFL Draft (provided they don’t blow the tank by winning one of these last two games—eh, who am I kidding?). Though the pick guarantees nothing—just ask Jets fans—a Cam Ward or Shedeur Sanders selection will bring some joy, at least for a honeymoon period, to a fan base that has been bludgeoned by dreadful football throughout the Daniel Jones Error.
Jets: A new owner
Imagine if Santa had a quarter of a century of screwing up deliveries of presents. How do you get rid of Santa? That’s what it’s like for Jets fans tortured by all the teases from 14 consecutive missed playoff seasons, the most among any of the teams in the four major pro sports leagues. Barring evidence of illegal activities, NFL owners are entrenched. So Woody Johnson, unfortunately, isn’t going anywhere despite all the embarrassments he’s caused the franchise since returning from his gig as Ambassador to the United Kingdom in the first Donald Trump administration. Even if he were to get another assignment in 2025, that would leave the football decisions to his brother Christopher, a supposedly nicer version of stupid. It would take a miracle to get the Johnson’s to sell, but that’s what this post is for.
Rangers: Stability
This is the area team I most despise, but I will try to be nice for the sake of the post. Here’s my perspective: A team with many very good hockey players is playing well under its capabilities. It seems a leaked social media chat thread from General Manager Chris Drury about making certain veteran players available in trades has sent the team spiraling out of the playoff picture. Why did management dismiss the success from last season, when they set a franchise record in points in winning the NHL’s President’s Trophy and fell two games short of a Stanley Cup Finals appearance? Everything the organization has done since looks like an overreaction. They have four players who earned nods on 4 Nations Faceoff rosters and none of them are the league’s best goalie Igor Shesterkin or the team’s most skilled forward Artemi Panarin, both of whom hail from Russia, which has been excluded from the event. If I were rooting for the Rangers, I’d wish management would kill the drama and let the players figure it out.
Islanders: A reboot
At 82, General Manager Lou Lamoriello has reasons to be impatient. His win-now principles built a team that went to back-to-back Eastern Conference Finals in advance of the new UBS Arena opening in 2021. But they haven’t come close to winning a playoff round since despite Lamoriello’s aggressive mortgaging strategy. 2024 No. 20 overall pick Cole Eiserman was the club’s first in a first round in five years. This is a salary cap-stressed team that is floundering in a tough division. Attendance will continue to dwindle as the season goes completely off the rails. Instead of continuing to attempt to patch holes with future assets, the smart play would be to undergo an intense rebuild in the model of the league’s sustainable winners.
Devils: Recognition
New Head Coach Sheldon Keefe must think he’s in heaven. After dealing with the manic Toronto press for the last five seasons, he’s been getting mostly softballs from the team/NHL affiliated media in New Jersey. The Devils have always tended to be the area team most under the radar, even during their three Stanley Cup seasons, and there are some benefits from that. But this club might be a piece away from achieving something special this season, and it would be nice if it got them some accolades. Contrary to what a sour grapes MSG commentator opined, this is far from an “Instagram hockey” culture; the Devils are on a streak of holding seven consecutive opponents to 20 shots on goal or fewer, an NHL record since the stat was first tracked in 1978. Yet the team has one independent beat writer from a traditional daily publication. The Jets and Giants also practice and play in New Jersey, so give the Devils their due, New York media.
Yankees: A cure for Aaron Judge’s October allergies
Judge has won two of the last three American League MVP awards. The 2024 voting was unanimous. Regular season Judge is a machine, with historical levels of power and plate discipline. Unfortunately, the lore from such an awesome body of work will be overshadowed by postseason failures unless he figures things out ASAP. Judge is a career .205 hitter in the playoffs, striking out about once every three plate appearances. He even dropped a routine fly ball as the Yankees imploded in the deciding Game 5 of the 2024 World Series. In this era, Judge is the heart of this iconic franchise. Please, Santa, get him something to help with the October palpitations.
Mets: Christmas came early
Santa Steve Cohen bought fans Juan Soto, one of the game’s premier hitters, stealing him away from the Yankees in free agency to boot. Gifts don’t get much better, or pricier, than that. Happy Holidays to all the area’s sports fans!
Nothing for the New York Liberty?