Enjoying the wins. Knicks and others.

The Knicks won last night. Great comeback.

They were down 22 with seven minutes left in the fourth quarter. Truthfully, I left the bar at that exact moment when it seemed like all was lost. I saw them stage a huge comeback on my phone on the way home.

I’m glad I left the bar early. I gave them space to breathe. A watched pot never boils, or goes on a 44-11 run in the last seven minutes, plus overtime.

I’m a lifelong Knicks fan. As a kid, I watched, rooted, had a Latrell Sprewell jersey, cried when Patrick Ewing was traded, excitedly cheered when Allan Houston hit a runner in their ‘99 playoff run to beat the Heat.

One of my earliest memories is sitting in the upper deck of a Knicks-Bulls playoff game. Knicks forward Charles Smith missed four consecutive layups with time running out, smothered by a swarming Bulls defense. Bulls won; Knicks lost. I didn’t really process the details of what was happening — I must have been barely three years old — but I remember my dad hanging his head, defeated, as a sea of sad New Yorkers filed out. The perfect intro to Knicks fandom.

I was there for Stephon Marbury’s first home game, when the Garden was buzzing with the excitement of a Great New Era (we lost 111-79). I was there for the first home game Charlie Ward played after publicly stating he wasn’t wild about Jews — a bold move for an athlete playing in New York City. He was booed every single time he touched the ball, which was often, considering he was the point guard.

The team entered the grim Isiah Thomas era, under the umbrella of the grim-until-now James Dolan era. My childhood fandom atrophied into numbness. I still watched, but only because I love basketball. There just wasn’t a ton to root for.

Some Knicks fans are beautifully delusional. They believe every year could be the year, even during that 20-year span over which the Knicks had the worst cumulative record in the NBA. I lost that delusion. I became resigned as I watched losses pile up.

For me, the surprising part has been my reaction in the little moments when they’ve had wins. The 2012-13 season when they had a great record. The season before that, when Jeremy Lin had those five good games. These little blips of life in an otherwise-flatlined heartbeat that wakes you up as a fan. It’s like discovering you can still have a crush, like, Oh, that’s cool; I’m not all dead inside. It’s cool I still care.

Knicks fans are often mocked for savoring those wins — for celebrating a single game or a playoff series win. There’s a pervasive sports narrative that you should only celebrate a championship, that everything else is bullshit. That Kobe “Job’s not finished” Mamba mentality mindset. It’s at once solid motivation and also feels like a recipe for living in utter misery.

But sometimes the little wins are all we get.

Knicks fans know that. The team hasn’t won a championship in more than 50 years. For a long time, when the team was truly awful, I would tell friends that I didn’t even care about a title; it would just be fun if they were competitive. If we had something to cheer for, some reason to hope. They give us that now.

It’s tough not to view success through that all-or-none binary, though. I played little league baseball as a kid. My coach used to say, “If the ball touches your glove, that means you should have caught it.” That framing definitely stuck with me; the idea that if something is within your grasp and you don’t get it, you’ve failed entirely.

It’s a toxic, robotic way of thinking that makes it incredibly hard to give yourself any professional credit. It’s made it hard to give myself credit.

I was talking to a friend recently who works in a different field. He has an interview for what would be a career-defining role, but he told me he almost certainly won’t get the gig. I argued that even being in the conversation, like being viewed at that high level, is a massive accomplishment. He wouldn’t hear that.

I get it. He could flip it back on me and say the same thing, that the milestones in my own career — collaborating with great people, work that’s gotten over-the-line, work that’s been close-but-no-cigar, being in conversations — should be celebrated on their own. Yet I wouldn’t hear that. I’d know he’s right intellectually. But emotionally, I wouldn’t buy it. I’m still chasing some Big Win. Job’s not finished.

Maybe it’s an American thing, or a capitalist byproduct, this black-and-white view of the final result. But it sucks. It implies you shouldn’t enjoy the smaller milestones along the way, that if you dare to celebrate a smaller win, it means you’ve grown complacent or that you lack the hunger for something bigger.

Yet there’s so much rejection as we pursue and compete and chase these goals. There’s so much failure, so many misses, so many losses that are inevitable. The only way to survive them, short of sociopathy, is to also savor the good as well.

I’m still working on applying that to myself, but I’m trying. It’s something to shoot for.

Anyway, the Knicks won last night. Maybe they’ll win the title, or maybe they won’t win another game all season. But that comeback was cool. A nice win.

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