I started the season rejecting any notion that I was a Knicks fan. "I like to watch good basketball," I'd say. "I'm not really rooting for any team, but if I'm rooting for anyone it is most definitely not the Knicks."

This didn't turn out to be true.

Last night I watched the Knicks put in a brilliant performance, all the while fully expecting them to lose the energy and revert to old bad habits, and lose a well-played game that a more real professional basketball team would win.

And sure enough, in the last minutes, they went from fast, smart ball movement to what they call "isolation" play. Every time the Knicks have the ball, get it to Carmelo Anthony, who then takes a long low probability shot and usually misses (to be fair, Melo is a great shooter, but his performance lately at the ends of games has been pretty bad). The other team knows this is what the Knicks do, so they double or even triple team him, leaving his teammates standing around waiting for the ball, that never comes.

This happened last night, but at the crucial moment, when Anthony took a long shot from the corner, and missed, there was young Iman Shumpert, the star of last night's game, towering over everyone else, to tip it in! Teamwork, that's what makes basketball great. Teams built around one great player are easy to defend against. That's the Knicks, usually. But when Shump and JR Smith are hitting, and the new kids, Murry and Hardaway are dishing and swishing or fast-breaking, they really are something to watch. Almost as entertaining as the Houston Rockets, who are -- to me -- the perfect team, who I also root for unconditionally.

See, as much as I thought I was loving the sport and not a team -- my heart was breaking for the Knicks last night. Couldn't you just pull it off -- once -- to give your fans a little hope? And when they did, what a nice feeling of fullness, that all-is-right with the world.

Of course tonight's game should be interesting, the Knicks are in Houston to play the Rockets.

 1/3/2014; 9:23:00 AM.