After 23 Seasons Covering the Knicks, a Reporter Reflects on Their Championship from Afar

Marc Berman covered the New York Knicks for 23 years, and they were dreadful for most of them. When they finally won a championship, he watched from a sports bar in Florida.

The Irish Brigade in Lake Worth Beach was not necessarily the ideal place to see the Knicks make history. Many of the patrons were there to watch the World Cup.

"I knew it would be a battle for the televisions," Berman said. "And it was. I had to ask. Some of the big screens were just soccer."

Three years, eight months and 19 days after he filed his last story for the New York Post, Berman thought about the pressure on the people who were on deadline, tasked with capturing a monumental moment 53 years in the making.

"Part of me was saying, 'Oh, I'm glad I retired, I would be panicking,'" Berman said. "I was shaking in the final couple of minutes, just thinking about the enormity of having to write it. And I didn't have to write it."

Another part of him wanted to be at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, putting his byline on a story that would be treasured and read forever. Late in the fourth quarter, he thought about players he'd covered, "like [Michael] Doleac, [Langston] Galloway, Earl Barron and Lavar Postell, Ron Baker," he said. "And the coaches, like Mike Miller, [David] Fizdale, [Kurt] Rambis, Herb Williams. All these people I wrote so many stories about, and all these Knicks fans having to read about this mediocre stint of the Knicks, and now they finally can just rejoice."

Berman's life no longer revolves around the team, but he was still invested in the outcome. When they finally pulled it off, he was "thrilled to death," he said. "Everyone on this team is a good guy. Very likable. They all play defense. They all pass the ball. They have great grit. I mean, there's no load management on the Knicks. You love every one of them."

Also, leading up to the game, he'd made a prediction of sorts.

"Listen, I can say this because I'm not a journalist anymore," Berman said. "I put the biggest bet of my life on the Hard Rock app on the Knicks to cover because I could not believe that the Knicks would be 4.5-point underdogs, at least on my app."

In Berman's view, this New York team was too tough to not at least make it close. "I wasn't sure they were going to win," he said. "I thought they were going to win, but I couldn't see them losing by five or more points." He declined to reveal the specifics of the wager, saying only that he put down "hundreds of dollars" and "made out pretty well."

> Yessss! Drought over. Congrats to Leon Rose. All the gutsy players/HC he brought in did exactly what he envisioned this playoff. 1970. 1973. 2026. #howu — Marc Berman (@NYPost_Berman) June 14, 2026

When people talk about athletes having to face the big, bad New York media , they mean reporters like Berman.

"I think if you said 'tabloid reporter,' his picture might be in the dictionary," Frank Isola, who covered the Knicks for the New York Daily News from 1996 to 2018, said. "He kind of embodied all of that. He knew what they wanted at the New York Post. I mean, the Daily News is the same way."

The beat was competitive, and Berman was aggressive. He'd laud the Knicks when they were winning, but they usually weren't, so he more often ripped them.

Inside Madison Square Garden, Berman's snooping for stories wasn't always appreciated. He was a fixture, though, and certain players took to him. Following a playoff win seven months after Berman retired from the beat, Mitchell Robinson , who memorably told Berman to "relax" during a press conference the previous season, took a seat at the podium and announced, "I miss Berman, man."

Then-Knicks wing RJ Barrett , seated next to Robinson, shook his head and said, "Oh, no." Barrett told Robinson not to encourage him to come back, and the two laughed.

Robinson used to call Berman "the bus driver," but Berman said he couldn't remember why. According to two reporters who were on the beat with him, Robinson simply thought Berman looked like a bus driver. A third recalled that Berman was wearing a purple dress shirt when Robinson came up with the nickname. You wouldn't catch the old-school scribe wearing a suit to the arena or asking highly technical questions to prove he was a ball knower.

Coaches who only saw Berman a couple of times a year remembered him. He stood out, and it wasn't just because of his bald head and his earring. During scrums, Berman had distinctive timing. He'd be "lying in wait," Isola said, and then "he'd look at the guy for a second, pause, kind of close his eyes. It very much was like Peter Falk playing Columbo: 'Doctor, just one more thing .'"

Berman regularly made Tom Thibodeau smile . Carmelo Anthony , too, found him far more amusing than annoying.

Anthony knew that Berman's questions were likely to be "headline-searching, so to speak," Isola said. As Berman got going, Anthony would be "kind of like giggling. It's like, 'He hasn't even asked the question yet, Carmelo!'"

Before the Finals, Robinson broke the fifth metacarpal in his right hand under mysterious circumstances. Isola would have liked to see Berman try to find out what happened.

"Oh, he would have pressed him," Isola said. "He would have pressed Mike Brown, he would have pressed Jalen Brunson , he would have pressed Karl-Anthony Towns . And now you can start listing every guy on the roster."

He added: "Marc was pretty comfortable in his own skin, in who he was. I think deep down he didn't give a shit what the players thought."

An exception: In Feb. 2008, with the Knicks a league-worst 18 games under .500, Berman wrote a column in Portland about a loss in which Jamal Crawford shot 6 for 27. Crawford, famously nice and accommodating to reporters, called it the worst game of his life, but wasn't expecting to see the headline "Just Crawful" in the paper the next day.

"You could tell that Jamal's feelings were really hurt," Isola said. "We were busting Marc's balls about it, but you could tell that even Marc kind of felt bad for him on some level. Because he was being honest: The guy wasn't playing well. Marc doesn't write the headlines. I'm sure Marc stood behind the story 100%, but everybody always remembers the headlines."

On a road trip in November 2013, the beat writers flew from Los Angeles to Denver and shared a cab to the hotel. "It was always a thing: who can get to the counter first?" Isola said. "Because then you'll have probably a better chance of getting a room." They arrived during a snow squall, so there was extra motivation to hustle into the lobby, where "there must have been some convention going on -- there were a million women in there."

The other writers got inside first, and then in came Berman through a revolving door, wearing a San Diego Chargers jersey, basketball shorts and flip-flops.

"And as he comes through, it's just like this gust of wind and all this snow blows into the lobby," Isola said. "Everyone just turns and looks. And there's Marc, with his green suitcase, with his Drew Brees jersey on. We were killing him. It was funny. It was almost as if there should have been a sign over his head in neon lights that said 'MARC BERMAN'S HERE.'"

Isola used to regularly troll Berman on social media. One of many examples : "Berman of the Post thinks LeBron didn't come to NY because LBJ didn't want pressure. I, like the rest of the free world, thinks BOTP is nuts."

Looking back, Isola said, "I kind of regret it, a little bit. I should have been more respectful." They didn't hang out all the time when they were rivals, but they were together for plenty of dinners, cabs and plane rides.

"He started out at the bottom, worked his way up to get the job that he had, so there's a lot to respect about him," Isola said. "And we're on a text chain, I'm on a text chain right now with all the beat writers … and all we do on there is destroy each other."

Berman didn't file a story at the buzzer when New York vanquished the Spurs and decades of demons, but he had a celebratory post ready to go. In it, he congratulated team president Leon Rose, whom he'd called more than two decades earlier, when Rose was a "small-time agent," to ask for clarification about a client's contract. Berman was happy for Rose and that client, Rick Brunson, who "really wanted his son to be on the Knicks," he said. He was happy for Robinson, too.

Berman felt bad that Walt Frazier didn't get to call games during the playoff run because there were no local broadcasts. Hearing Mike Breen's voice end of Game 5, though, "was just poetry," he said.

"I was very negative in the newspaper, and Mike had to go on these broadcasts during these dead seasons and still try to present some sort of positive picture," Berman said.

Having covered Brown as an opposing coach, Berman was pleased to see him get the team over the finish line. He thought Brown stepped into Thibodeau's shoes "very gracefully" and enjoyed his rendition of "Who Let The Dogs Out."

He did not, however, have the same fuzzy feelings for the franchise's most prominent singer: owner James Dolan.

"Listen, I wasn't a big fan of James," he said. "He was a pretty good guitar player, but he made a lot of silly mistakes and his media policies were always baffling to me. And I wonder now that they finally have a championship if he'll open up a little more with the media."

Now that he lives in Florida, where he strings for the Palm Beach Post from time to time, Berman no longer watches every Knicks game. He doesn't have NBA League Pass, and he estimates that he tuned in for 75% of New York's nationally televised games during the regular season.

He said, though, that he keeps in contact with "a couple of people inside the Knicks family" and reads "almost everything." He thought the Post's front page after Game 4, with "OMG" as the cover line and the letters O and G in orange and blue , was "tremendous."

Berman periodically reminds his followers that Rose hasn't taken questions from independent media since September 2021. He followed Thursday's parade with interest, noting afterward that Dolan had given the elected officials who spoke before him a "needless poke" and he'd "seen Jim more energetic introducing his blues band in a small club."

"I wish I could just divorce myself from it, but I can't," Berman said. "I mean, it's like an addiction."

In his final column for the Post, published in September 2022 , Berman wrote that he was off to "the palm trees of paradise." The kicker: "After 50 years of parade-less seasons, let's hope the Knicks can reach paradise, too."

At that point, Rick was the only Brunson who had worn a Knicks uniform. New York was coming off a 37-45 season in which it ranked 23rd in offensive efficiency. "I have to admit I didn't believe in the Leon Rose regime," Berman said, and he never imagined the parade coming so soon.

"I thought Leon was giving out some contracts to CAA players and friends of his past, and I thought the curse would live on a lot more than four years," Berman said. "I'm shocked."

Initially, Berman didn't like the OG Anunoby trade. He didn't like the Thibodeau firing, either, and, when the Knicks fell down 2-1 against the Atlanta Hawks in the first round of this year's playoffs, he thought they'd probably have to try to trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo to take the next step. Before the second round started, he predicted the Philadelphia 76ers would knock them out in six games.

Now, Berman is more than willing to offer mea culpas. And in his defense, he'd been conditioned to expect the worst.

"I thought Kristaps [Porziņģis] was going to be a superstar in New York for a long time," he said. "I was so upset how it turned."

He was disappointed, too, with the Anthony era, especially because he thought the 2012-13 team that won 54 regular-season games "could have been the title team." He was even high on the 2020-21 iteration that Trae Young terrorized: "[Julius] Randle was fantastic all regular seas

_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/marc-berman-knicks-23-season-title-bar-florida/)._