For a team that has been a laughingstock for much of the past decade, the New York Knicks can’t take a joke.
During Sunday’s YES Network broadcast of the Nets and Knicks, former Nets player Richard Jefferson told a story about how he refused to play for the Knicks at the end of his career. He claimed that the Knicks were the one team to offer him a job in 2018, but instead he opted to retire simply because the Knicks are, well, the Knicks.
“I refused to play for the Knicks,” Jefferson said on Sunday. “Jason Kidd and Kenyon Martin — they don’t really care. Me — I was the one person that said, ‘Knicks? No. I’ll retire.’ That’s why I retired. They were the one team that offered me a job, and I decided to retire. It’s true. I decided to retire instead of playing for the Knicks. … I just knew it was time. When the Knicks were looking for me to play for them, I knew my time in this league was over.”
Now, this should have been a funny thing that Jefferson said on a Sunday broadcast that NBA fans would have largely forgotten about in 48 hours. It was said on a regional broadcast with NFL games happening at the same time. But the Knicks just couldn’t let that perceived slight go unanswered.
On Monday, the public relations account for the Knicks tweeted a formal denial of Jefferson’s story.
Oh, Knicks.
First of all, that’s a pretty narrow denial. The Knicks didn’t offer Jefferson a contract in the summers of 2018 and 2019. That would leave preliminary contract talks and any offers during the other times of the year presumably open.
But really, this tweet opened the Knicks up to more mocking when the NBA news cycle was already prepared to move on.
Jefferson was also quick to continue the joke.
