Well, I started blogging on a whim very late one night before the ’06-’07 season (my senior year of high school). It was an ugly little thing called “Your New York Knicks”, but I kept it regular and put together a tiny readership over a few months. I had been reading and commenting on SB Nation blogs for a little while, and I guess somebody noticed the site when they were shopping for their Knicks blogger. In March of that season, they contacted me and I moved over to the Nation. “Your New York Knicks” was a legally questionable name, so we brainstormed other ideas with limited success. I think “Bockerblogger” was actually a possibility at one point, which probably wouldn’t have pleased our friends at Knickerblogger. Eventually, I came up with “Posting and Toasting”, which is indeed an homage to Clyde, and also a bit of a pun (Because we’re “posting” on the blog, right? Right!?)
I’m not going to pull the “LeBron James was the ultimate target and they blew it” card, because that’s hogwash. The Miami plan was an unforeseen pull that simply couldn’t be beat, and Donnie Walsh did the best he could, considering the circumstances. LeBron can kick rocks. Amar’e Stoudemire got overpaid, but that’s how free agency goes. The game is the game, and Stoudemire is a dominant, type-A player with genuine gravitas. You could do much worse with a max contract in the NBA (and a couple of teams did).
Hmmm…my tribute to David Lee back in the ’07 offseason comes to mind for some reason. It was part of the “P&T Top Ten”, in which community members wrote some really superb stuff about Knick greats of the last twenty years. That post was ridiculous and a lot of fun to write. I also really enjoyed doing the “Know the Opponent” series back in the day.
-Why do you think Poasting and Toasting has the tremendous following it does?
Relatively speaking, P&T has a pretty modest following, but it’s a lively group and we’re growing rapidly. I think the growing community is due mostly to the SB Nation platform: the nice commenting system, the Fanposts, etc. Over time, those discussion tools attract people with something to say. More than the quantity of commenters, though, I’m happy with the quality and tone of the regular folks. It’s a close-knit community with a bit less sniping and cynicism than Knicks fans are used to. I think the light, positive atmosphere turns some more critical people off, but it’s helped us assemble a community that takes itself much less seriously than the average bunch of New York sports fans.
I don’t know if I’d call it an anti-Knicks bias. What I was getting at is that national media entities have identified covetousness as one of the defining weaknesses of New York fans and they waste no opportunity to exploit that weakness. A lot of rumors, particularly in the summertime (Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony, and Rudy Fernandez could all serve as examples, and that’s just in the last month), seem tailored and overblown to rile up Knicks fans, and we never fail to get riled. The national media pounces on every chance to dangle some greener grass in front of our faces, and we always go nuts over it. I was just celebrating the lack of cynicism at P&T, but I’m definitely cynical when it comes to rumors, and I think plenty of community members share that sentiment.
Not much, but that’s OK. Building a champion takes time and luck, and we’ve only just turned the dial from “demolishing” to “building” this past summer. I certainly hope the Knicks are contending for a championship in the next five years, but winning the thing is a big deal.
This is a lame answer, but I have a lot of faith in Amar’e Stoudemire playing to his highest potential. Amar’e strikes me as a guy whose “effort-meter” and “something-to-prove-meter” are closely in sync. Without Nash, back with D’Antoni, and with a lot of zeros on his contract, Amar’e's got layers upon layers of doubt to work through. I’ve got a lot of faith that Stoudemire is prepared to defy the haterz by becoming a leader on and off the court. I’m a really gullible person, though, so we’ll see how that goes.
