Rangers and Knicks both make the playoffs

The New York Rangers and the New York Knicks are both in the playoffs at the same time for the first season since 1996-97. Eons have passed. Whole careers in both sports have started and ended. How long ago was that? Boris Yeltsin was running Russia and Bill Clinton was running America, coincidentally with much the same methodology.

In the 1995-96 offseason, the Rangers had made the karmic sin of letting the Captain and the bringer of Lord Stanley's Cup to 8th Avenue, Mark Messier, walk, over money. It was stupid and petty. The Rangers and their fans paid the penance of seven straight seasons of missing the playoffs, plus a year lost to a lockout. It was a dark time in Madison Square Garden.

Shortly after the Messier free agency debacle, the Knicks dealt Patrick Ewing. Dave Checketts and Scott Layden came in from Utah on a mission to destroy the Knicks. They brought with them Shandon Anderson and Howard Eisley. They signed Allan Houston to deal that the franchise has still not recovered from, for it started the cataclysmic chain of events that led to the Isiah Thomas hiring, which spiraled to and through Starbury and Larry Brown. The Knicks have made the playoff once in the last nine years, getting swept out of the first round by the heartless Vince Carter and the ignominious Toronto Raptors in 2003-04.

By 2003-04 the Rangers had brought back Messier, but he was forty-three and not going to carry the team the way he once did. They missed the playoffs for a seventh straight year. They dealt away signature stalwart and future Hall of Famer, Brian Leech. The next season brought the NHL lockout and the league has never been the same. The Rangers have tasted to the playoffs a few times since, but the Garden faithful have been waiting on the Knicks.

This year has been one of revival for the Knickerbockers, though it was nearly snuffed out at mid-season though a disastrous deal brokered by owner James Dolan with a whiff of Isiah Thomas behind the scenes. Knicks fans are desperate, so desperate that any playoff appearance will make this season a success. The Rangers had to win the last game of the season, against their hated arch-rival, the New Jersey Devils, and then sweat out a Carolina Hurricanes loss to know that they had qualified for the postseason. As a reward, they get the top seeded Capitals and their star leader, Alexander Mikhaylovich Ovechkin.

Hey, Jim Mora, at least the New York teams, the tenants at the world's most famous arena, are in the playoffs!