One of my favorite rocks in my collection is a Jack Hills zircon, a piece so old it predates the Earth having water and a moon. It doesn’t sparkle or shine or light up under UV light the way other rocks do. Doesn’t display different colors depending on where you illuminate it. It doesn’t “do” anything. It simply is what it is. Enduring billions of years of erosion is its most striking feature.

The New York Knicks defeated the Charlotte Hornets 119-104 last night at Madison Square Garden. Hardly news, a team that entered the night 10-1 at home knocking off one now 1-10 on the road. Knicks fans dream of a tickertape parade in June; Hornets fans fantasize about ping pong balls in May. The Knicks have won four playoff series since 2023; the Hornets have won four, ever, none since 2002. You know who’s sixth all-time in win shares in Hornets history? Cody Zeller. Seventh is Anthony Mason. They stink, they’ve stunk, they always have, they always will. No alarms and no surprises.

In the NBA, such constancy is so beyond striking as to seem alien. If Charlotte’s history of losing landed in a field, depending on your nature you’d either sell it ASAP to the highest bidder or call in the feds to examine it. The Association is not a safe space for constancy. Just take a look at light night’s scores.

The Cavaliers lost at home to the Trail Blazers, Cleveland’s 10th loss of the season. They didn’t lose their 10th game last year until February. The Pistons, a bizarrely popular Finals dark horse candidate — at least on this website — raced out to a 15-2 record but have since dropped two of three, including last night to the suddenly Giannis-less Bucks. Remember when Kings fans were lighting the beam? Were we ever so young? Sacramento fell to 5-17 after getting thumped by Houston, who themselves went from 60 losses to 52 wins in only two years. And the Clippers won, a headline you’ll probably see less and less of as the year moves on.

It’s worthwhile as a Knick fan to appreciate the plights of the Kings and Clippers, if only to remind ourselves of how far we’ve come and how fast it can all disappear. Not too long ago — like, literally a year — the Kings featured De’Aaron Fox and Coach of the Year Mike Brown; way back in 2023 they sported the most efficient offense in league history. Today the beam is dim and forgotten. Their offense is 28th. After signing Dennis Schröder to be their sad-trombone point guard follow-up to Fox, the Kings have since benched him in favor of Russell Westbrook, who is like the whole orchestra farting and somehow blaming the audience for it. That’s Russ at 37, mind you. Thinking he’s the answer is like the New York football Giants thinking Abdul Carter sleeps in too much and replacing him with Rip Van Winkle.

Did you know the last time the Clippers had a losing season was Amar’e Stoudemire’s debut year in New York? Since then, every other team in the NBA has had a sub-.500 campaign — except for the Los Angeles Nets! If someone ever asks you to define “irony” and you’re stuck, bust out that fact: the franchise that was Losers Incarnate for 30 years — the worst-run operation not just in the NBA, but all of pro sports — changed into a clockwork of competence? That would be the opposite of a reasonable expectation. That would be irony.

This season? With Kawhi Leonard pulling a Richard Cantarella no-show gig under Steve Ballmer’s basketball Bonnano family? And Chris Paul getting whacked in the middle of the night? Suffice it to say: botching things is the Clipper way and the family seems desperate to get back to business.

Once upon a time, the Hornets were the Kings. They were the Clippers. The difference? Charlotte never pretended to be anyone else. When the 2001-02 season ended, the Hornets had just finished their 10th straight season of winning at least half their games. In 23 since, they’ve been .500 or better four times. Never in consecutive years. Haven’t won 50 games since Seinfeld was airing new episodes. On May 20, 2001, the Baron Davis/Jamal Mashburn/Elden Campbell (R.I.P.) Hornets led the Bucks 47-44 at the half of Game 7 of the East semis. That remains Charlotte’s furthest postseason push. Ever.

In last night’s win, Mike Breen — as is his wont — would not stop criticizing the Knicks for “blowing” the 20-point first half lead they built, failing to seal the deal and “letting” the Hornets back into the game. This, care of nba.com, is the game chart showing who led by how many points all night.

Once I was headed into the city to visit a nonagenarian relative suffering from Alzheimer’s. I asked a toddler I knew if they wanted to come along. The kid flipped out, couldn’t have said “no” with any more certainty. I laughed when I learned why: they knew I was a teenager, taller and bigger than them. They knew my father was in his 40s, taller and bigger than me. So they assumed, having never met a 90-year-old, that anyone that old had to be far taller and bigger still, and they wanted nothing to do with such a monstrosity.

Teams that are up 20 in the first half rarely win by 40. Teams up by 30 at the break don’t generally win by 60. I don’t know why this concept is so slippery. I especially don’t understand it given all the years we watched the shoes be on the other feet. I remember Marv Albert and John Andariese bemoaning the ‘90s Knicks for building big leads but failing to “step on their opponent’s throat,” then during the Isiah Thomas fiasco Breen and Walt Frazier inevitably praising the Knicks for cutting yet another 20-30 point deficit down to 8 or 10, always with the aw-shucks, “If they hadn’t fallen behind that much early on, they’d be in great shape!”

Emotion and momentum are as much a part of ball as of life. Some people you gotta fight before you can fuck, or fuck with, and vice versa. We use different words for “defeat” and “embarrassment” because we recognize they’re two different things. Failing to accomplish a goal we set for ourselves? That’s life. Being embarrassed? That burns.

Even burns the Hornets. Not enough to make an ECF. Not enough to win 40-50 games. Just enough for LaMelo Ball to lead a brief flurry of fight-back, to cut a 20-point lead down to eight, and to enjoy it before slinking back down to another L, to whatever non-teal gloaming passes for an off-day in the lone market the whole league views as an off-day.

I’m not here to tell anyone how to feel about the Knicks last night, this year, or anytime. I’m not jaded or spoiled enough to care *how* they’re winning games. They’re 14-7 and 11-1 at home. You know what I wanted from this regular season? 55 wins and the top seed in the East. Guess who’s on track for both? And I can project and crunch numbers and predict to my heart’s content and still have as little of a clue how this year will end as any other. Same as it ever was.

My joy — the unrelenting, unforgiving, unimpeachable lightness of spirit with which I watch these Knicks this season — may stem as much from what I don’t see as what I do. Mike Brown isn’t their ex coach. Russell Westbrook isn’t their new point guard. Jalen Brunson hasn’t been accused of making millions off the books, much to my relief. And Willie Randolph, to my memory, remains the last New York sports figure to be unceremoniously sacked in the middle of the night, making the CP3 story an entirely, uniquely Clipper-culture thing (for now).

The Kings and Clippers are a combined 11-33. L.A. owes their first-round pick this year to Oklahoma City and doesn’t control any of their own firsts until 2030. The good news is the Kings still do. The bad news is they’re still owned by Vivek Ranadivé. That’s how a team lands a top-10 pick 10 years in a row, drafts almost entirely busts with those picks, then somehow two years later lands another top-10 pick, actually scores with it for once by selecting Tyrese Haliburton, then trade him away . . . because they also have Fox . . . who they eventually replace with Schröder . . . who begets Westbrook.

There’s a lotta talk about all the things the Knicks need to do, don’t do, have to do, better do. KAT gotta toughen up. Gotta get down to the post more. Gotta shoot more 3s. Brunson needs to pass more, needs to move more. Mikal needs to do more. Mikal needs to do less. McBride oughta start. Hart oughta start. Mitch oughta start. Ranadivé once offered to re-invent the wheel by having the Kings defend 4-on-5, so they could always have a cherry-picker free for a basket on the other end. Maybe James Dolan can get permission for the Knicks to start eight guys. Arenas build people statues for less.

But lo, this is America, where most of us are one missed check and hospitalization away from ruin. Be grateful for what you have when you have it, I say. Hark: there’s a universe where Leon Rose traded for Giannis Antetokounmpo right before last night’s non-contact injury that has all of Milwaukee holding its breath. There’s a universe where the Knicks are capped out, don’t control their firsts and aren’t a contender for nothing, nowhere. Remember 2009? The feeling of being a boat adrift in the middle of the sea, with no wind? No air current coming from anywhere? No sense of change being possible, much less imminent?

The Knicks won 119-104 last night, their fifth win in six games. Only the defending champs are better at home (10-0). Brown’s Blue & Orange Crush is now three up in the loss column (with a win in hand) over their consensus toughest competition for the East’s top seed. They’re good enough to regularly build 20-point first-half leads and resilient enough to hang on to (most of) them. They’re not the Clippers. They’re not the Kings. They’re not the Hornets.

They’re the New York Knicks. They’re pretty good!