The bounce was from a better time, a prosperous time, a time when dark clouds didn’t follow the Knicks around everywhere they wandered. If your basketball memory goes back that far, 18 years, that was what you saw when you saw Kristaps Porzingis get the shooter’s bounce with 32 seconds left.
Front rim. Backboard. Bucket. That right there was an Allan Houston bounce.
It was understandable if your mind and your imagination were somewhere else, of course, if you let your attention wander to the spring of 1999, far from the winter of 2017, to the dying seconds of Game 5 of an insanely intense playoff game against the hated Heat, rather than this … this …
(Trying to be kind …)
This quadrennial matchup of interborough basketball neighbors.