The Immortality of the Garden Villain

In the fourth quarter of the opening game of the Knicks’ postseason, a chant started forming in the stands of Madison Square Garden. The Knicks faithful chanted "F*** Trae Young" as their team would take a 1-0 series lead against Atlanta. The only issue? Trae Young is no longer a member of the Atlanta Hawks.

His successor, CJ McCollum, was presented with an opportunity to become the next Garden Villain after a stunning Game 2 comeback victory. McCollum made timely baskets, went after Knicks players, and got into it with the crowd. But when asked if he was truly a villain of the Garden, he deflected, saying, “I ain’t no villain. I’m a nice guy with two kids and a wife.”

Young, by contrast, was an excellent Garden Villain—an agitator who relished the theater and stage that Madison Square Garden provides. McCollum, after Game 2, rejected a small slice of basketball immortality, eschewing a moment in time that would be crystallized in amber. While so much in the NBA is fleeting, the ghost of a Garden Villain has proven to be eternal.

Plenty of players have had big games at the Garden, and even more players love playing at the world's most famous arena. What makes a player cross that line is how they relish being villainized and how they enjoy demoralizing Knicks fans.

But a lot of players have bravado. What truly sets a villain apart is performing at the highest level while agitating the crowd and infuriating them. It's Michael Jordan and Reggie Miller going back and forth with Spike Lee while making bucket after bucket. It's Tyrese Haliburton making a choke sign after a last-second three. It's Trae Young taking a bow as the Garden boos him.

A true Garden villain embraces his role, knows that 20,000 people in the building hate him in that moment, and smiles through it. What also matters is the context of their villainy. The timeline for the Knicks matters here as well. If the Knicks are an irrelevant team, then the potential to become hated is minimal. But when the Knicks feel like they are on the cusp of something special, then the crowd needs their antagonist.

For the Knicks of the 1990s, it was supposed to be their time to break through. The Lakers, Celtics, and Pistons of the 80s had faded away as they were rising behind the greatness of Patrick Ewing. From 1991-92 through 1997-98, the Knicks were in the playoffs every single season and won over 50 games six times. During that time, they ran into both Michael Jordan and Reggie Miller in the postseason over and over again.

Jordan's Bulls would become the team of the decade, but for Knicks fans he was the Grim Reaper. In the 90s, the team played Jordan four times in the postseason and lost every single time. The only time the Knicks prevailed against Chicago in the decade was in the 1993-94 season when Jordan was playing baseball. Against those Knicks teams, Jordan would average 30.5 points, 6.5 rebounds, and 6.4 assists per game at MSG, relishing every minute of playing in the Garden. Jordan did this while consistently going back and forth with Spike Lee, relishing the trash talk as he showed why he was such a great player in real time.

Reggie Miller in that same era became the epitome of theater. His back-and-forth with Spike Lee was legendary and spawned an ESPN documentary. Miller became a villain through moments. His “eight points in nine seconds” game, the choke gesture, and relentless trash talk made him a caricature of hatred for Knicks fans for an entire generation. Miller was 6-10 in playoff games at the Garden, but those moments are enough to make him a perpetual heel.

Trae Young and Tyrese Haliburton are the more contemporary villains—two figures who emerged as the Knicks arose from decades of irrelevance. From 2001-02 through 2019-20, the Knicks only made the playoffs four times. The 2020-21 season brought an unexpected renaissance, as they captured the #4 seed and felt like a dangerous team entering the postseason. Trae Young and the Hawks vanquished those dreams, and for a city that was finally emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic and had something to root for, he became the jester everyone loved to hate.

Haliburton represented a reincarnation, a couple of years later, of the animosity that was created with Reggie Miller. As a player who grew up and played college ball in the Midwest, Haliburton embodied the small-town versus big-city dynamic that always played well in the Knicks-Pacers rivalry. Haliburton was the natural foil to Jalen Brunson and absolutely relished the role of breaking the hearts of Knicks fans as an homage to Reggie Miller through the popularized choke sign gesture, a continuation of the Pacers legacy as the Knicks felt that they had a true title contender for the first time since the days of Ewing.

The combination of timing, personality, and skill is what makes a true Garden Villain. If all three of these prerequisites aren't met, it is simply a player having a good game. That is what happened with McCollum in Game 2—he performed at a high level, won the game, and went after the Knicks. But he didn’t embrace it, which is arguably the most important part. When the three elements come together, something immortal is created: a sort of animosity that never dies, and in a certain sense helps to create a notoriety about the player in the process.

Knicks fans are passionate and desperate for a title. The combination of these two facts helps to create a fan base that is viewed as obnoxious, delusional, and insufferable. That passion manifests itself in celebrations on the street, an insistence that this year is finally the year. The mood in New York City seems to reflect the team's success, an indication of how tied the city is to this team. And to be quite frank, other fan bases and players hate us for it.

The emotions Knicks fans carry into every game are simply intense. We live and die with every loss, criticizing play calls, rotations, and demanding players be traded and coaches fired when they have a bad game. This team means so much to us because we want success that badly.

So, when a player on an opposing team denies us that happiness, they become etched in our memory as an architect of destruction. That animosity oftentimes becomes a catalyst for that player's profile. Reggie Miller has built an entire lore around his mythology as a player by earning the moniker of "Knick Killer." Trae Young is vilified by Knick fans to this day, and it might be one of his crowning achievements as an NBA player. Tyrese Haliburton has established himself as a premier point guard in the NBA, but few moments have allowed his star to shine brighter than when he was lighting up MSG in the Conference Finals last season.

Being a Garden Villain ensures a sort of immortality, a status in basketball that is a legacy builder in a strange way. Moments like Young's bow at midcourt, Miller's choke sign, and Haliburton's last-second shot are etched in both the collective Knicks and NBA memory. That's because Madison Square Garden matters that much in the basketball consciousness.

Being a villain in the Garden is a piece of basketball permanence, a culmination of sports theater, entertainment, and vitriol. It is a Shakespearean comedy and tragedy wrapped into one. The players will leave, retire, and move on, but their memory at the Garden is forever. Fans chanting "F*** Trae Young" show us how visceral this fandom is and the reality of the hatred. Trae Young may languish in mediocrity for the rest of his career, but he will always be a Garden Villain, and there is something poetic about that sort of permanence.