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Writing Off the Knicks
A Frustrated Knicks Fan Sends James Dolan an Angry Letter—And Gets One in Return
By JASON GAY Wall Street Journal
Feb. 9, 2015 2:40 p.m. ET
Irving Bierman is a feisty 73, but by his own admission, he’s not pro basketball material. He never was. Growing up, Bierman played all the time—a Brooklyn kid who lived on Ocean Parkway, and later moved with his family to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where he made the high-school team.
“I was great on the schoolyard,” Bierman said. “One-on-one. Three-on-three.”
Knicks Owner James Dolan to Fan: Root for the Nets
What young Irving loved as much as playing basketball was the city’s team: the New York Knicks. “Harry Gallatin, Sweetwater Clifton…building up to the Knicks of the 60s and 70s with Frazier and DeBusschere and Monroe,” Bierman said, those championship memories still bright.
“The Knicks were on top of the world,” Bierman said. “As was every sports fan in New York.”
This is not the case today. The Knicks are one of the most chronically disappointing teams in sports, a jumble of hubris and expensive mistakes that has evolved into a reliable comic opera. Heading into Monday’s game with Miami, New York possessed a record of 10-41, worst in the NBA.
Like it has for many Knicks fans, this lost season pushed Irving Bierman’s loyalty to the limit. In late January, he wrote an email to the team’s owner, James Dolan. The note was unhappy and direct. Bierman put words in all-caps, like DOWNHILL and DISGRACE, to condemn Dolan’s stewardship, and he urged the owner to unload the team.
“As a Knicks fan for in excess of 60 years, I am utterly embarrassed by your dealings with the Knicks,” Bierman wrote. “Sell them so your fans can at least look forward to growing them in a positive direction.”
As Knicks polemics go, it was agitated but familiar, nothing that isn’t expressed regularly in print and sports-talk radio. Bierman—who sent the email to a variety of email addresses, hoping one might reach Dolan—did not expect a response.
By now, the city of New York knows that Dolan did respond, forcefully and strangely, with an email that began by describing Bierman as a “sad person.” “I am just guessing but I’ll bet your life is a mess and you are a hateful mess,” the Knicks owner wrote in a reply that a Knicks spokesman confirmed to the Journal’s Alex Raskin to be authentic. “What have you ever done that anyone would consider positive or nice?”
Dolan’s email went on to speculate that Bierman made his family “miserable” and an “alcoholic maybe.” He concluded by telling the 73-year-old fan to “start rooting for the Nets because the Knicks don’t want you.”
The note was signed, “Respectfully, James Dolan.”
The exchange made its way from Bierman to his son, Aaron, and then on to Deadspin, which published it Sunday.
Look: Let’s not be fragile here, OK? Life in loud, crowded New York is often a contact sport. Just getting from the sidewalk to the subway to the coffee shop to the office is a recipe for confrontation. If you choose to dish it out, you’re expected to take it. Those are the rules.
Still, Dolan’s reaction may be as deflating as that 10-41 record. Bierman’s grievance would not make a list of the Top 100,000 Most Angry Things written about the team. It was not remotely vulgar. And yet the owner responded with an odd, ad hominem response urging a longtime fan to quit the team.
Besides the mangled public relations, it’s a blown opportunity. The easiest way to soothe an antagonized customer—this is just good business and common sense—is to respond with kindness. Had Dolan sent Bierman a polite reply—fended off his exasperation with a dash of generosity—he’d have likely secured a permanent ally.
Instead it’s another foolish Knicks circus in a season full of them.
Speaking on the telephone Sunday, Bierman sounded amused by his sudden Internet fame, but also ready for a truce. “I’m not getting into a fighting war with the guy,” he said of Dolan, though, “I’d love to get into a room with him one-on-one, nobody around—you know, let’s talk!” He said he did not think Dolan should be disciplined by the league, as some voices have suggested. (NBA commissioner Adam Silver told the New York Post on Monday that Dolan would not be sanctioned, chalking the incident up to New Yorkers being New Yorkers.)
“What he should do is sell the Knicks,” Bierman said. “And buy a Little League team in Long Island.”
Bierman’s son Aaron, a filmmaker who made a documentary about New York playground legend Jack Ryan, said he was proud of his father, and unsurprised that he reached out to the Knicks owner. “He’s a tough old Brooklyn guy,” he said. “Tenacious, doesn’t take no for an answer. When he wants to be heard about something as important as the Knicks, nothing’s going to stop him.”
Basketball was always part of the Bierman household, Aaron Bierman said. He said there’s a photograph of him in his crib as a baby, and above the crib is a large picture of Clyde Frazier. Aaron has his own rich memories of trips to the Garden, the roars for Bernard King and the excitement of the Patrick Ewing era. “It was something that my dad brought to me,” he said.
That’s exactly the kind of connection the Knicks should fight to preserve, not alienate.
“How could you take a franchise that was on top of the world and destroy it?” Irving Bierman asked. “Look: I understand the Garden is a sellout. It’s all corporate money. It’s not people money. People money made the Knicks.”
It’s a reasonable concern, one that merits a better answer. Respectfully.
Write to Jason Gay at Jason.Gay@wsj.com
A Frustrated Knicks Fan Sends James Dolan an Angry Letter—And Gets One in Return
By JASON GAY Wall Street Journal
Feb. 9, 2015 2:40 p.m. ET
Irving Bierman is a feisty 73, but by his own admission, he’s not pro basketball material. He never was. Growing up, Bierman played all the time—a Brooklyn kid who lived on Ocean Parkway, and later moved with his family to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where he made the high-school team.
“I was great on the schoolyard,” Bierman said. “One-on-one. Three-on-three.”
Knicks Owner James Dolan to Fan: Root for the Nets
What young Irving loved as much as playing basketball was the city’s team: the New York Knicks. “Harry Gallatin, Sweetwater Clifton…building up to the Knicks of the 60s and 70s with Frazier and DeBusschere and Monroe,” Bierman said, those championship memories still bright.
“The Knicks were on top of the world,” Bierman said. “As was every sports fan in New York.”
This is not the case today. The Knicks are one of the most chronically disappointing teams in sports, a jumble of hubris and expensive mistakes that has evolved into a reliable comic opera. Heading into Monday’s game with Miami, New York possessed a record of 10-41, worst in the NBA.
Like it has for many Knicks fans, this lost season pushed Irving Bierman’s loyalty to the limit. In late January, he wrote an email to the team’s owner, James Dolan. The note was unhappy and direct. Bierman put words in all-caps, like DOWNHILL and DISGRACE, to condemn Dolan’s stewardship, and he urged the owner to unload the team.
“As a Knicks fan for in excess of 60 years, I am utterly embarrassed by your dealings with the Knicks,” Bierman wrote. “Sell them so your fans can at least look forward to growing them in a positive direction.”
As Knicks polemics go, it was agitated but familiar, nothing that isn’t expressed regularly in print and sports-talk radio. Bierman—who sent the email to a variety of email addresses, hoping one might reach Dolan—did not expect a response.
By now, the city of New York knows that Dolan did respond, forcefully and strangely, with an email that began by describing Bierman as a “sad person.” “I am just guessing but I’ll bet your life is a mess and you are a hateful mess,” the Knicks owner wrote in a reply that a Knicks spokesman confirmed to the Journal’s Alex Raskin to be authentic. “What have you ever done that anyone would consider positive or nice?”
Dolan’s email went on to speculate that Bierman made his family “miserable” and an “alcoholic maybe.” He concluded by telling the 73-year-old fan to “start rooting for the Nets because the Knicks don’t want you.”
The note was signed, “Respectfully, James Dolan.”
The exchange made its way from Bierman to his son, Aaron, and then on to Deadspin, which published it Sunday.
Look: Let’s not be fragile here, OK? Life in loud, crowded New York is often a contact sport. Just getting from the sidewalk to the subway to the coffee shop to the office is a recipe for confrontation. If you choose to dish it out, you’re expected to take it. Those are the rules.
Still, Dolan’s reaction may be as deflating as that 10-41 record. Bierman’s grievance would not make a list of the Top 100,000 Most Angry Things written about the team. It was not remotely vulgar. And yet the owner responded with an odd, ad hominem response urging a longtime fan to quit the team.
Besides the mangled public relations, it’s a blown opportunity. The easiest way to soothe an antagonized customer—this is just good business and common sense—is to respond with kindness. Had Dolan sent Bierman a polite reply—fended off his exasperation with a dash of generosity—he’d have likely secured a permanent ally.
Instead it’s another foolish Knicks circus in a season full of them.
Speaking on the telephone Sunday, Bierman sounded amused by his sudden Internet fame, but also ready for a truce. “I’m not getting into a fighting war with the guy,” he said of Dolan, though, “I’d love to get into a room with him one-on-one, nobody around—you know, let’s talk!” He said he did not think Dolan should be disciplined by the league, as some voices have suggested. (NBA commissioner Adam Silver told the New York Post on Monday that Dolan would not be sanctioned, chalking the incident up to New Yorkers being New Yorkers.)
“What he should do is sell the Knicks,” Bierman said. “And buy a Little League team in Long Island.”
Bierman’s son Aaron, a filmmaker who made a documentary about New York playground legend Jack Ryan, said he was proud of his father, and unsurprised that he reached out to the Knicks owner. “He’s a tough old Brooklyn guy,” he said. “Tenacious, doesn’t take no for an answer. When he wants to be heard about something as important as the Knicks, nothing’s going to stop him.”
Basketball was always part of the Bierman household, Aaron Bierman said. He said there’s a photograph of him in his crib as a baby, and above the crib is a large picture of Clyde Frazier. Aaron has his own rich memories of trips to the Garden, the roars for Bernard King and the excitement of the Patrick Ewing era. “It was something that my dad brought to me,” he said.
That’s exactly the kind of connection the Knicks should fight to preserve, not alienate.
“How could you take a franchise that was on top of the world and destroy it?” Irving Bierman asked. “Look: I understand the Garden is a sellout. It’s all corporate money. It’s not people money. People money made the Knicks.”
It’s a reasonable concern, one that merits a better answer. Respectfully.
Write to Jason Gay at Jason.Gay@wsj.com
