James Dolan’s wild ride to Knicks championship owner: ‘After 25 freaking years of doing this, I might actually have learned something’

The final seven seconds may have been the hardest of all for James Dolan. There were all those missed free throws, Spurs and Knicks both. There was the surreal transfer, in real time, of Frost Bank Center converting from maybe 60-40 between the fans to 100 percent Knicks, as the locals departed and the invaders crawled lower and lower into the better seats.

There was one more missed free throw, of course.

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“The game was still in doubt,” Dolan said, “right to the last seven seconds.”

And even as those last seven seconds played out, even as the clock slow-walked to 0:00 with the Knicks ahead 94-90, even with a world championship occurring in front of his eyes, in living color, Dolan still didn’t believe what he was seeing. Couldn’t believe.

Same as millions of his fellow Knicks fans.

“It was like when you’re in your car on a snowy day,” Dolan said. “When you start skidding down the road and you know you’re going to hit something, but there’s no impact yet, you can’t get out of the way, you can’t move the wheels and you’re just waiting for impact. That’s what it felt like. It was like an out-of-body experience.”

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And then it hit. As it surely hit you.

“Oh, my God, this has actually happened!”

It happened, all right, and Thursday, Dolan and his family will be right in the middle of the Knicks parade, in the middle of the Canyon of Heroes. He will be Grandfather of the Year for his six grandchildren, all of whom will be in the procession.

“For a day, anyway,” he said, laughing.

For much longer than that, Dolan will enjoy what the old Mets broadcaster Bob Murphy used to say about baseball, now true about hoops: It’s a game of redeeming features. The same applies to high-profile owners who’ve absorbed their share of Kniocbarbs and slings and arrows through the years (full disclosure: many of them lobbed by your humble narrator).

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But as Dolan spoke to The Post from his office on a half-hour Zoom call Wednesday afternoon, he really did seem transformed. So many images of him across the last quarter century have captured a man who looked less than…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/james-dolan-wild-ride-knicks-222834578.html

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Publish date : 2026-06-17 22:28:00

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