With Sunday’s defeat to the New Orleans Saints, the New York Giants, eliminated from playoff contention last week, have now lost their 19th straight game while playing from behind heading into the third quarter.
Even worse, the New York Jets’ loss to the Miami Dolphins has now barred them from the playoffs for the 14th consecutive year, the longest active postseason drought in the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, and the WNBA.
The scuffling New York Rangers—parting ways with Jacob Trouba on Friday night—have now cast off their last three team captains midseason, a precipitating move that made Igor Shesterkin the highest-paid goaltender in NHL history, at $92 million over eight years.
Yet, the biggest story in New York sports struck near the conclusion of the Sunday Night Football showdown between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers. Megastar Juan Soto moved from the Bronx to Queens, inking a gargantuan 15-year, $765 million pact, the largest New York Mets’ heist and coup over the Yankees in the franchise’s 62 years of existence.
Aaron Rodgers, supplementing a stout defense and rising talents in Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall, was supposed to yield a Jets championship, but a ruptured Achilles in 2023 and quarterback play unbefitting of a surefire Hall of Famer in 2024 dashed those dreams.
Brian Daboll’s coaching philosophy had the Giants riding high in 2022, as they returned to the playoffs for the first time in six years, something Big Blue could not replicate these last two seasons.
Chris Kreider’s hat trick heroics against the Carolina Hurricanes were supposed to be the momentum boost to lead the Rangers to a Stanley Cup Final this spring, but the eventual champion Florida Panthers stood in the way.
A debilitating Freddie Freeman grand slam, accolades he carried throughout the remainder of the World Series, and a confounding fifth inning in Game 5 cost the Yankees a championship, a prospect that looked all the more daunting with Soto’s future uncertain heading into November.
Instead, those championship hopes may rest in where the Mets are heading.
With Soto’s destiny now sealed, the city has endured a seismic shift, a move that paints the New York City skies blue and orange, with work yet to do for owner Steven Cohen and general manager David Stearns, both no longer constrained to the millions they once owed Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer these past three seasons. Reunions with Pete Alonso and Sean Manaea remain distinct possibilities, building on the prospect that the Mets were essentially the second-best team in Major League Baseball after pushing the eventual champion Los Angeles Dodgers to six games amidst a miracle run to remember in 2024, even without ace Kodai Senga, who may very well join Corbin Burnes, another Mets target, in the rotation in 2025.
Soto proved he belongs in New York, amassing career-highs in homers (41), runs (128), hits (166), total bases (328), and WAR (7.9) as a Yankee, coming up big in the postseason, boasting a .322/.463/1.068 slash line with 4 homers and 9 RBI in 14 games. It cannot be understated how integral Soto was in Aaron Judge winning his second MVP, and he, a generational talent who does not take that distinction lightly, will only be 26 entering 2025.
He joins a core-in-their-prime group featuring Francisco Lindor, Mark Vientos, Brandon Nimmo and Francisco Alvarez, hoping to cash in on more titles and legacy markers as the Mets enter a new era of contention and good tidings with an owner who is willing to spend and surround himself with genuine minds and voices who know the game.
And what about those other boys in blue and orange at the Garden?
Despite a grueling loss to Detroit on Saturday night, one that saw New York come within two points of tying the game late in the fourth quarter after trailing by as many as 17 points with Karl-Anthony Towns and Cam Payne out with injury, the New York Knicks, winners of Group A in the East of the NBA Emirates Cup, will host the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday in the in-season tournament’s quarterfinals.
New York heads into the quarterfinal matchup feeling terrific, courtesy of a 113-108 victory over the Toronto Raptors north of the border. Remember who the Raptors are: The organization that sent OG Anunoby New York’s way, in exchange for RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickly.
Just one game after the quarterfinal clash with Atlanta is the other NBA team responsible for the Knicks’ newest look: the Minnesota Timberwolves who sent Towns to the Big Apple for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo.
The NBA Cup game is firmly sandwiched between the Raptors’ victory and the T-Wolves’ game to come, the pair of teams that provided the Knicks with the two men at the center of New York’s ascension as the top-rated offense in the NBA (according to NBA Advanced Stats, New York touts an Offensive Rating of 121.1, number one in the league).
At 15-9, firmly entrenched as the east’s four-seed, the Knicks, winners of 8 of their last 11, were clearly better served to let Barrett and Quickley leave, more so considering how each contract weighs their team down below a point of mediocrity (only the Washington Wizards boast a worse record in the Eastern Conference).
Better yet, the Knicks appear vindicated for shipping away Randle and DiVincenzo, both of whom are floundering. It’s left Minnesota on the outside looking in as the Western Conference’s ninth seed, a far cry from their inspired run to last year’s conference finals.
The man the Timberwolves lack—Karl-Anthony Towns, the man who couldn’t help but pound the proudly showcase the “New York” stitching on his road blue jersey in Toronto Monday night—is instead electrifying the Garden crowd with each game he adds to his legacy, scoring and rebounding at an All-NBA clip in the early going.
Though the Knicks are still a full game behind the Orlando Magic for the third seed (two in the win column yet even in the loss column), their stars Paulo Banchero and Franz Wagner are now both out indefinitely with torn obliques. Banchero has not played since Oct. 30, whereas Wagner was just diagnosed with the ailment on Saturday, both of which represent crushing blows when one considers the leaps each player made offensively to start the year.
Meanwhile, the Knicks have recently added depth with the return of Precious Achiuwa and Mitchell Robinson. Speaking of the 7-footer, head coach Tom Thibodeau recently revealed that Mitch is “steadily progressing” from offseason ankle surgery caused by a Joel Embiid playoff incident. (How far Embiid has come by way of climbing up the Knicks’ all-time villain list is another topic entirely.)
To close out 2024, the Knicks can go on a real run while the team continues to develop and gel, helping close the gap between them, the tried-and-tested Boston Celtics, and the hot-shot Cleveland Cavaliers. In their next nine games heading towards Jan. 1, New York plays Washington twice, Toronto, the New Orleans Pelicans, the San Antonio Spurs on Christmas Day, and the Utah Jazz on New Year’s Day, all of whom are vying for a spot in the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes, even with Victor Wembanyama’s ascension (as particularly relating to San Antonio).
While Mets fans wait in anticipation for how Juan Soto meshes with the rest of the roster in 2025, New York Knicks fans can relish where this team is trending right now, their collective hopes manifesting in an aspiring yet nebulous blue and orange haze.
