Amar'e Stoudemire.

When Amar’e Stoudemire took the stage after the screening of his new documentary, In The Moment, last Thursday night at Marquee, he genuinely seemed to appreciate the attention and applause that greeted him from the packed house of athletes, musicians, fashion designers and more than a few men in yarmulkes.

It was less than 24 hours after the New York Knicks had closed out their best regular season in 16 years (having captured the Atlantic Division crown and the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed), and a near-starting lineup, including Carmelo Anthony, Tyson Chandler, Iman Shumpert and Chris Copeland, had turned out to fete their oft-injured teammate—a rare bright spot in what has been yet another snake-bitten season for Mr. Stoudemire.

Not that he looked particularly unhealthy on this night. Mr. Stoudemire was red-carpet sharp in a fitted black sport coat, a camouflage bow tie and some sort of gold boutonnière—an ensemble he might have the chance to reprise in the coming weeks. (His latest setback, a knee debridement, has all but ensured that the six-time All Star will miss the team’s first-round matchup against the Boston Celtics.)

“Oh, we’re definitely going to get out of the first round,” Mr. Stoudemire said in a conversation with Stephen A. Smith following the film, which gives fans an intimate look at both his troubled family history—his father, Hazell, died when he was 12; his mother, Carrie, spent years in and out of prison; his older brother, Hazell Jr., was killed in a car wreck last year—and the former first-round pick’s journey from impoverished high school prodigy to Rookie of the Year to New York Knicks savior.

And lest fans forget—as many seem to have—that’s exactly what he was, signing with the organization in 2010 when other superstars, like LeBron James, snubbed the city’s bright lights for Miami’s sun-stroked beaches.

“I wanted to accept the challenge and revitalize a team that needed help,” Mr. Stoudemire recalled.

In his first season with the Knicks, the man known as “STAT” set a franchise mark with nine consecutive 30-point games while leading the team to its best start since the 1996-1997 season. He earned “M-V-P” chants from the Garden faithful. Vogue put him on its cover and called him a “basketball deity.” The New York Post wrote, “Carrie Stoudemire has given birth to New York’s basketball messiah.” (In the documentary, Ms. Stoudemire admits to having tried to abort her “billion-dollar baby.”)

Still, the high-flying forward was not immortal. Mr. Stoudemire matched a career high in minutes per game that first season, as then-Knicks head coach Mike D’Antoni demanded too much of the team’s fragile new superstar—a player whose contract was literally uninsurable. (Coach D’Antoni has come under similar criticism this season for overtaxing Lakers star Kobe Bryant, who recently ruptured his Achilles tendon.)

By the time the Knicks shipped nearly half their roster to Denver in exchange for Carmelo Anthony, the team was relevant again, but the minutes had added up. Injuries returned, and the spotlight instantly shifted from Amar’e to Melo.

Last May, when Mr. Stoudemire injured himself for the second straight postseason, the goodwill was all but gone. ESPN New York columnist Ian O’Connor wrote of Mr. Stoudemire, “He should be thanked for the pre-Melo memories, and sent on his way.” And in the months that followed, the Knicks reportedly shopped him to every team in the league, making him “available for free.”

The business of sports can of course be heartless, but such treatment seemed especially cold. This, after all, was the man who signed with the Knicks when no one else would, who once again validated New York as a destination for star players after so many failed arrivals, who gave his heart and soul—and yes, his knees—to a city so that its team could thrive.

And thrive it has ... even without him. Carmelo Anthony is playing MVP-caliber basketball, and the Knicks are poised for their first legitimate playoff run since 2000. But Mr. Stoudemire is not bitter. He continues to train hard. When healthy, he has embraced a role off the bench (his style of play and Melo’s were never meant to mesh). And unlike the city whose team he saved, he remains grateful—because he remembers what those lean years growing up were like.

“The thanks is always there,” he said. “Even if you’re in hard times, as I am now with the injury, I still give thanks. And it helps. What food is to the body, prayer is to the soul.”

And as a Knicks fan who remembers those lean years of Isiah Thomas and Stephon Marbury, the Transom says: amen.

The secret directive comes after Mr. Anthony was suspended for getting in a fight with Celtic Kevin Garnett after the Boston player allegedly insulted Mr. Anthony's wife during a January 7 game at the Garden.

But what could the tapes have yielded? Well, The Observer has obtained the exclusive tapes. Carmelo Anthony: just like us!

Here are some snippets:

• "Yo, did you know that A.J. Daulerio and Cat Marnell are a thing? How did I miss that? What's A.J.'s gonna do next.... I mean, where do you go after you quit Gawker, right?"
• "I'm not sure about this season of Girls. I saw the first episode on the screener and I mean, did it seem kinda sitcom-y to you? But I think I like the new Marnie. She's vulnerable, y'know. The real question is why do they hang out with Shoshanna? I mean. She uses emojis. Emojis! Who puts up with that shit?"
• "I wonder what Lena's gonna wear at the Globes. Gotta hand it to her. Girl can work a red carpet."
• "How much do you think I could get for a memoir/dating advice book? Lena got 3.7 mil. That's baller money."
• "Who do you think is gonna take the Times buyout? The clock is ticking..."
• "I'm think I'm just gonna stick to Twitter fights. That's the future, man. Twitter's for talking shit. The court's for killin' it. And you can't get suspended for that, right? As long as Margaret Sullivan doesn't get involved."
• "Why don't we have any of those hand-brined pickles from Brooklyn at the Garden. The Nets get all the perks, man."
• "Maybe I'm late on this, but did you see that Modern Seinfeld Twitter feed?"

By Alex Fine.

Basketball is back. Three weeks after opening night was canceled in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, four months after the Knicks let Jeremy Lin slip out of town, 13 years since the Knicks’ fluke run to the NBA finals, and two decades since Pat Riley’s tough-guy team captivated New York in the early years of the Giuliani era, fans in the world’s greatest basketball city care without cynicism again.

The Isiah Thomas era and the Knicks’ failed pursuit of LeBron James are old news. The Nets’ long struggle for big-city relevance got lost somewhere in New York harbor. When the teams squared off Monday night in Brooklyn’s new Barclays Center, the city had plenty to cheer about: real stars, the top two spots in the Atlantic Division standings and the eyes of millions upon us.

“Brooooooklyn,” they sang in the style of Biggie Smalls—the best rallying cry in American sports—when the Nets scored a bucket. “MVP!” they chanted when Knicks star Carmelo Anthony stepped to the free throw line. The crowd was so loud at times it was hard to believe that the 17,000-plus fans weren’t all cheering for the same side.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was among them, as were Michael Strahan, Charlie Rose, Richard Gere and, of course, Nets part-owner Jay-Z and his wife Beyoncé. By our count, there were 100 members of the press on hand, including representatives from Chinese, German and Italian outlets. ESPN had 12 journalists at the game, in case you were wondering how the sports network gauged its importance.

In the end, Mr. Anthony missed a jumper that would have won the game in regulation, and the Nets outlasted the Knicks in overtime. It didn’t matter, much.

For a night, we could forget that the Knicks hadn’t won a title in 40 years, forget about Bernard King’s balky knees and Patrick Ewing’s shaky nerves, forget about anything having to do with Mr. Thomas.
New York was back where it belonged, as the basketball center of the universe.

New York is a basketball town, God help us. There’s something in the collective DNA that tells us hoops is the most important sport, some vague understanding that there are neighborhoods where a kid can still become immortal on a playground, some distant memory of the days when teams traveled to media and not vice versa, the days when the Garden earned the right to be called Mecca.

So what if it’s an empty boast? So it’s been 40 years since Willis and Clyde led the team to glory, longer still since the city produced a truly elite player. (Best New York City product in the last 25 years is ... Stephon Marbury?) Basketball is the ultimate confidence sport, and New York is the fake-it-till-you-make-it confidence town. Don’t forget the darker days when the city’s greatness wasn’t a given, the days of “It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there,” when we could swap tales of Earl “the Goat” Manigault snatching quarters off Harlem backboards—or Willis Reed staggering onto the court for game seven of the 1970 finals, John Starks rising high over Jordan and Grant for a left-handed jam—and recognize a grace and gall and toughness we imagined in ourselves.

Suffice it to say the psychic stakes were high for us Knicks fans setting foot in the Barclays Center on Monday night. Indeed, in the years since Bruce Ratner first broke ground, I often feared that the Knicks’ woes would continue, that the hangover from Mr. Thomas’s tenure, when the team collected overweight players with fatter contracts, would never abate, that James Dolan would remain a pox on the franchise. And that, in the absence of a team they cared about, the fickle masses would give in to the allure of the hottest borough, the newer arena, the team with one owner who’s rich enough to run for Russian president and another who doesn’t simply not suck, but doesn’t suck so much that he’s married to Beyoncé.

Would I blame them? No. Excommunicate? Probably. But something would tear loose from the fabric of my city if New York were no longer a Knicks town.

I can report that a trip to the Nets’ new arena offers temptation enough for a lesser-willed fan to cross over: High ceilings (this is Brooklyn, so exposed ducts, natch) and open sightlines; a thoughtfully curated selection of local food (Spumoni Gardens for the natives, Fatty ’Cue for the arrivistes, Nathan’s for the tourists); instead of the light shows that often mar pregame introductions, a dignified volley of fireworks. Instead of stadium anthems, music that reminds you that Brooklyn belongs to the world. (We have to wonder, though, how big a cut the sound man is getting from Roc-A-Fella Records: with the exception of the periodic Biggie track, it was almost entirely Jay-Z’s catalog.)

Slick Rick played at halftime. He was pudgy, and some of the words were lost in the acoustics, but still, it was a classy nod to New York City’s hip-hop history, and something that’s hard to imagine going down at corporatized Madison Square Garden.

I can also report, happily, that on the evidence of one evening, the fan exodus isn’t happening. Led by Mr. Anthony—reinspired, the sportswriters say, and leaner at the waist after playing alongside Mr. James in the London Olympics—and Tyson Chandler, the biggest man on the court, if not tip to toe, then certainly by the size of his heart, the Knicks have the look of a title contender. Maybe not a favorite, but at least a plausible long shot. It’s not just the fans who think so: the team filled out its roster for this season with veterans like Jason Kidd and Rasheed Wallace, the type of already-rich players lured not by the biggest paycheck but by the best title shot.

So the Nets fans were more numerous, more conspicuous in their “Fan Since Day One” badges (oh really?) and black-and-white Brooklyn gear. Knicks fans were, if not louder, better at the business of being fans. They chanted “Defense” from the first possession and serenaded Mr. Anthony at the free-throw line. Maybe it was simple sports loyalty, as Spike Lee, the world’s most public Knicks fan, tweeted at Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz: “With All Due Respect I’ve Been A NEW YORK KNICERBOCKERS Devotee Since 1967, Not Gonna Switch.” And as Mike Williams, a Knicks fan from East New York, Brooklyn, told us in the spacious bowels of the arena, “Knicks fans have been Knicks fans forever. The Nets are just a novelty.”

But let’s not overindulge in name-calling, at least not in the afterglow of this happy new rivalry. Who cares if the black-and-white-clad masses remember nothing of the Drazen Petrovic tragedy, the Derrick Coleman disappointment, if they had to read the banners hanging from the rafters to know the Nets won a pair of ABA titles in the days before the merger?

Instead, let’s celebrate for a moment the improbable course that led these two teams to their current exalted status. Nets general manager Billy King, who achieved middling results as the decision-maker for the Philadelphia 76ers, bet that by paying heavily for swingman Joe Johnson, late of the Atlanta Hawks, he could convince Deron Williams, his star free agent point guard, to re-sign with the Nets.

Meanwhile, if the Knicks are as good as their early play has promised, the fans will owe the team’s salvation (or at least, above-averageness) to the last figure they’d expect: current GM Glen Grunwald didn’t just play college ball with Isiah Thomas at Indiana University, he was hired by Zeke on two separate occasions. The Knicks are wont to downplay the relationship between the pair, lest they stoke our suspicions that the former GM is still conspiring to ruin the team. Mr. Thomas isn’t so coy: “I love Glen, he’s one of my favorite people on earth,” he told ESPN Radio last summer.

Who cares? Like players, executives come and go: love and hatred for them are fleeting emotions, and for the moment, Mr. Grunwald’s free-agent signing of shot-blocker Mr. Chandler and installation of defensive-minded head coach Mike Woodson (another one of Mr. Thomas’s Indiana pals), are all anyone needs to know.

The Brooklyn partisans can speak for themselves. Mark Anise, a Brooklyn resident who loves his borough so much he had a Nets ‘B’ tattooed on his right bicep on the ground floor of the Barclays Center, told me: “Basketball was the one sport where I always rooted for the name on the back of the jersey. I always said if Brooklyn got a team, then I’d root for the name on the front.”

Never one to mince words when it comes to his love for his hometown, Mr. Markowitz emailed The Observer, “Our fans are so wild, so over-the-top, so proud and so loud that even residents of the outer borough of Manhattan will hear us cheering for the best team in New York and the best team in the NBA, the Brooklyn Nets.”

On the way down to the postgame press conference, I passed an usher with his hands clasped in the air in the shape of the Roc-A-Fella diamond in an homage to Jay-Z. “We’re coming for you, Spike,” a colleague usher said to Mr. Lee, who wasn’t in the arena, or to no one. Or everyone.

Well, let them come—it’s good to have a rival. The great Knicks team of my youth, Pat Riley’s boys, tapped into the ethos of 1990s New York: tough as Charles Oakley, the man who used to ride an exercise bike to the point of tears, and cocky as John Starks, who played his college ball in nowhere Oklahoma, and believed even then that he was better than any of the anointed kings of the NBA. And so we loved them for it.

In the hearts of the city’s sports fans, they were displaced by Derek Jeter’s Yankees: brilliant hardworking men who made their fortune in New York City, tapped in less to the town’s blue collar roots than to the Wall Street princes who defined a revitalized city.

These Knicks aren’t that tough or that classy, and neither are these Nets. But the city doesn’t need an NBA title. Yet. For the moment, it’s enough to care.

pclark@observer.com

While you're at it, pity poor Larry Brown, and poor Lenny Wilkens, and poor Don Chaney, and poor Jeff Van Gundy. 

Isiah Thomas, who lead the Knicks to basketball hell (and tabloid newspaper glory) before D'Antoni came aboard in 2008, however, will never, ever deserve any of your pity.

These poor souls (once again, save for Zeke, that swine) have had to deal with an ever-changing roster of has-beens and never-will-bes, a fanbase and a media base that would praise you just as fast as they would tear you from limb to limb, and an owner who is, well, just the absolute worst.

That is, James Dolan, the "swaggering" vocalist of JD & The Straight Shot, head of Cablevision (his father Charles Dolan hired him for the position) and the miserable-looking fellow who can be found sitting  courtside at Madison Square Garden, appearing as though he is waiting for his turn to tell his sobriety group how his week went. This is the man who calls the shots in the supposed "Mecca" of basketball.

For the past ten years, those shots have been really, truly, absolutely shitty.

He has brought in head coaches with Hall of Fame pedigrees and New York City roots:  Lenny Wilkens,  the pride of Bedford Stuy and the one-time winningnest coach in the NBA's history (Don Nelson, another former Knick coach, now has that title), and Larry Brown, another Brooklyn-born Hall of Famer who is widely considered one of the all-time great basketball minds.

Both men came with great fanfare, expected to turn around a sputtering franchise that never seemed to regain its swagger since losing to the Indiana Pacers in the 2000 Eastern Conference finals.

Both men left in what has become a familiar exit: fired midseason and with a losing record (Knicks were 17-22 at the time of Wilkens' firing, and 23-59 when Brown was tossed).

So surely Mr. D'Antoni, the offensive guru who turned Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns into one of the most exciting offenses in the past decade, knew what he was getting himself into when he signed a 4-year, $24 million deal to coach the Knicks?

For in Dolan's world, having a revolutionary offensive system means bubkes in the scheme of things. In Phoenix, Mr. D'Antoni had a mainstay at the point guard position. In New York, he had Stephon Marbury and Nate Robinson and Jamal Crawford and Chris Duhon and Toney Douglas and Sergio Rodriguez and Raymond Felton and Chauncey Billups.

Then a miracle happened.

Jeremy Lin, the Harvard-educated scrub who was called up as a bench fill-in, eventually became that mainstay the offensive guru so desperately needed to survive in this town.

And for a brief, rapturous run, Mr. Lin and the Knicks did the unthinkable: They won, they became likable, and they were actually fun to watch (at least, only after Mr. Dolan and co. finally resolved their dispute with Time Warner Cable in February and New Yorkers could, you know, watch their hometown team on TV).  They won while Carmelo Anthony, the marquee player who Dolan overturned a promising roster for (say what you will, but Felton-Fields-Gallo-Stoudemire-Mozgov had character), sat out.

But then Anthony returned, he largely played his own style of basketball instead of D'Antoni's, and the Knicks lost. A lot.

Then yesterday, amid growing reports that the Anthony-D'Antoni rift was destroying all the goodwill  that "Linsanity" had built up, Mr. D'Antoni resigned.

Like his predecessors, he left with a losing record (121-167 overall record) and a lot of money. He also left amid reports that he had argued with Dolan about trading Anthony for New Jersey Nets point guard Deron Williams, a move that made some basketball sense.

"Basketball sense" has never really mattered to Dolan. There are more important matters afoot.

Madison Square Garden is currently transforming itself from the "World's Most Famous Arena® " into a state-of-the-art arena, reportedly at a cost of $850 million. In Dolan's mindset, having a balanced basketball roster (which wins) is not going to pay for the Garden's facelift. Stars like Anthony will. He hiked the average price of a ticket by 49 percent after he traded for Anthony in 2011, and raised it again by 4.9 percent last week. 

But the gloom surrounding D'Antoni's departure was short-lived. With newly-installed head coach Mike Woodson at the helm, the Knicks throttled a listless Portland Trailblazers team and D'Antoni, the mustachioed maverick, was an afterthought.  Stoudemire even slagged off his former Suns and Knicks coach by saying that "everyone wasn't buying into his system."

And why should they? There is no such thing as a system in the Dolan-owned Knicks. It's not about winning basketball games. It's about hiring coaches and bringing in players whose basketball pedigrees and New York City roots lure our sorry asses into the Garden. Marbury of Coney Island, Anthony of Red Hook (but really of Baltimore), Wilkins and Brown of Brooklyn... it works. We buy into the idea that a NYC-native will save this woeful franchise.  (Everyone was wrong: A California native turned out to be our team's savior).

So, the next question is: Why root for the Knicks? Why buy a Knicks t-shirt with, say, Timofey Mozgov's name on it if the fella is just going to end up getting traded the next day?(Editorial note: That happened to me) Why root for Dolan, who refuses to speak to the press (save for a brief statement yesterday), jacks up our ticket prices and laughs all the way to the bank while we read the Daily News and groan?

Because it's basketball. And because we still have Lin... unless Lin, like his old coach, gets the eff out of this circus.

drosen@observer.com 

Luckily, that’s about to change, and none too soon. The National Basketball Association has been shut down for months because of a labor dispute, but last week the players union finally agreed to give up a portion of basketball-related revenue, agreeing to a 50-50 split with owners (the players had been getting 57 percent). The league will begin a truncated regular season on Christmas Day, but for basketball-starved New Yorkers, a short season is far better than no season at all. Kudos to Commissioner David Stern and his staff, including Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver, for standing firm, getting a good deal, and rescuing most of the season.

Last year the Knicks took several big steps toward recapturing the magic of the mid-1990s with an exciting young team that promised to have the Garden rocking this year. And if you don’t think the Knicks contribute to New York’s buzz, you weren’t in the vicinity of the Garden back in the days of Patrick Ewing and John Starks and those memorable battles with Reggie Miller and Michael Jordan.

With the lockout over, the Knicks will have a chance to deliver on the promise they showed last year, when they put together their first winning season in a decade, led by superstars Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony. Just as important, the bars and restaurants around the Garden once again will be packed on game nights, and the arena’s vendors, ushers, security staff and other support personnel will be returning to work.

Unlike some other NBA cities, New York certainly doesn’t need professional basketball—there is, after all, no shortage of other distractions in the Big Apple. But there’s no denying that the Knicks add something special to a city that loves a good show with world-class performers.

Welcome back, Knicks. The city’s not the same without you.

Cassidy and Carmelo.

“I only really party when I’m in New York or Italy,” said Kirstie Alley, between puffs on a cigarette, sitting on the dock next to the naval ship Intrepid. “And I’ve been in New York for a while now,” she finished.

The Transom was floating on DJ Cassidy’s 30th birthday party; for this summer’s rendition—the last one ever, the nightlife-famous DJ claimed in the invite—he draped the boat’s ballroom in black velvet and served up enough Hennessy to fill the river it’s floating in.

Maybe Mr. Cassidy senses his own star fading, but by midnight, the venue was at capacity. If it sounds like a classic New York club fire hazard, it was: at midnight, a fleet of New York’s Bravest showed up in full gear, boarded the boat and walked past the immobile airplanes to the giant hall. No one noticed.

“Get your Hennessy on, girls!” Mr. Cassidy yelled from the stage, screaming his party’s liquor sponsor dutifully. He was wearing a canary-yellow suit, standing next to former Lindsay Lohan paramour Samantha Ronson, who was juggling an arm’s load of vinyl. “Come on! Come on! Come on!” repeated Mr. Cassidy. After a “surprise” performance from New Edition—yes, that New Edition, nostalgia-invoking rap producer Swizz Beatz showed up with a giddy Carmelo Anthony. Swizz was coming from playing a Paper magazine party with Joe Jonas.

“Yeah, I seen him there,” Swizz noted of the Jonas brother, an unlikely fellow performer for the hip-hop producer. “I love music, man. Anybody that can be a phenomenon, it’s impressive.”

And no matter, the nuances of fame: there is Hennessy to be drank. Swizz walked into the crowd with the Knicks star, pumping his fist to one Michael Jackson song after another, unlikely to look back.

Alex Rodriguez took a full-floor five-bedroom at the Rushmore in February, and he will now have a neighbor in Carmelo Anthony. The Daily News hears that the Russian-baiting Knicks superstar has grabbed four homes in two Extell developments, the recently completed Aldyn next-door to the Rushmore and the nearby Ashley, at 63rd Street and West End Avenue. All that space is for family and assitants, but it may be temporary:

"We looked for apartments with similar qualities as Carmelo's other homes in Denver in Los Angeles," said [Douglas Elliman's Prince] Dockery, whose Prince Group specializes in high-end lower Manhattan properties.

"The key thing is the family wanted to be in New York and didn't opt for a 10,000-square-foot home in Westchester or New Jersey."

So even athletes are into gentrification! How long before Eli Manning abandons Hoboken for the Flatiron?

Speaking of, Curbed reports that Mets third baseman David Wright is selling his bachelor pad at Infinite Flats. The reason is--what else--Barnett threw him uptown into a $12,000-a-month rental at the Upper East Side's Lucida.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Knick fans have suffered through some awful basketball in recent years. They watched loyally and faithfully as former general manager Isaiah Thomas made a mess of things and, in the end, proved to be an embarrassment both on and off the court. During this torture, owner James Dolan did the right thing by fans. He didn't raise prices for six years as the team failed repeatedly to make the playoffs.

Now, however, there's light at the end of the tunnel. The new additions have turned the Knicks into a playoff contender that can compete with the NBA's elite. Knick fans are dreaming of the postseason for the first time in years.

Mr. Dolan, however, has put a damper on all this excitement. Ticket prices are going up--way up, by an average of 49 percent. That's just the wrong move at the wrong time.

There's no question that Mr. Dolan has presided over a revival--however late in coming--at the Garden. The team seized the opportunity to improve itself when it added three proven All-Stars, and things figure to be even better next year. Free agents who would have shunned the Garden four or five years ago suddenly will be eager to set up shop in the Garden.

Still, now is not the time to jack up the price of seeing a Knicks game in person. At the moment, the average price of a ticket is $88. That's relatively cheap compared with the Los Angeles Lakers, who charge an average of $113 a ticket. Then again, the Knicks haven't won a ring since Walt Frazier was dishing off to Bill Bradley. As for the Lakers, well, they have enough bling to impress even a Yankee fan. 

Mr. Dolan is within his rights to charge what the market commands. But he should consider what his team's fans have been through since the turn of the century. It hasn't been pretty, but the fans have always shown up.

"While we have always respected Carmelo as a player, when we met the other night--I enjoyed that meeting, liked him a lot--it was clear he wanted to come to our city and play for our franchise," Mr. Dolan said.

The emphasis was his.

After monopolizing the five boroughs for the past five decades, Mr. Dolan's Knicks are suddenly on the defensive.

Crowding the city's basketball spotlight is an outsize Russian billionaire, Mikhail Prokhorov, who, in May of last year, purchased the lowly New Jersey Nets--the vagabond stepchild now bound for Brooklyn--and declared, in all his Bond-villain blandness, that he would "turn Knicks fans into Nets fans."

As Mr. Anthony dangled from Denver and the Knicks demurred on sealing a deal, Mr. Prokhorov made a last-minute, over-the-top offer that included the Nets' best player, its top prospect and four first-round draft picks, all in the hopes of denying the Knicks their biggest swap since Bernard King in the early 1980s, and luring the Brooklyn-born Mr. Anthony back home. 

Mr. Dolan, in turn, went all in, throwing in a package of young talent that seemed to belie the patient, piece-by-piece approach that had dragged the franchise back to respectability under his resident basketball guru, general manager Donnie Walsh.

"The Nets are trying to hang in the ball game, that's why we had to give up so much," said Walt "Clyde" Frazier, who sat in the front row alongside other Knicks legends during Mr. Anthony's introductory press conference.

"There's clearly a rivalry going," said Robert Boland, a professor of sports management at N.Y.U., who said the greatest threat to any franchise is losing the exclusivity of its market. "It seems that Prokhorov is not going to let this thing go without a battle. He's going to fight in the streets for this one."

He already has, actually.

Shortly after buying the team, Mr. Prokhorov plastered a 225-foot billboard of himself and co-owner Jay-Z--under the headline "The Blueprint for Greatness"--in plain view of the Knicks' offices at 34th Street and Eighth Avenue, and rented his own office space at Aby Rosen's Seagram Building in midtown.

In October, Mr. Dolan returned the volleys with a massive billboard of star forward Amar'e Stoudemire--under the banner "BROOKLYN REPRESENT"--just a few blocks from the Nets' nascent arena at Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards.

The budding rivalry stands to be one of the more colorful conflicts in the annals of New York sports.

Mr. Dolan is squat, with a big belly and a bush of brown hair above a face straight out of a Thomas Nast cartoon; he grew up on Long Island, where he now lives with his wife and children, and is a proud teetotaling 12-stepper.

Mr. Prokhorov is a slender 6-foot-8, with a physique carefully refined by twice-daily workouts, who calls his 21,500-square-foot mansion on the outskirts of Moscow his "bachelor pad," and in 2007 was detained for 88 hours in France for allegedly flying in Russian prostitutes. He frequents Moscow's clubs but claims never to have consumed more than a single sip of vodka.

Mr. Dolan nixed his dreams of being a rock star while a student at SUNY-New Paltz, but still toils in a blues band, J.D. and the Straight Shot, and was an avid sailor and competitive yachter before giving up the sport a few years ago.

Mr. Prokhorov did an obligatory stint in the Soviet Army as a youth, and still enjoys shooting AK-47s; he eschews yachting for a 300-pound jet ski.

Mr. Dolan mostly shuns the media, running what has been characterized in the past as a draconian press operation that closely monitors nearly every word uttered by Garden employees and bounds departing ones with strict nondisclosure agreements.

Mr. Prokhorov claims to have funded an opposition newspaper in the mining town he controlled--just to keep a healthy dose of dissent--and, at times, he might be too revealing for his own good. Last year, he showed off his favorite Kalashnikov to 60 Minutes, and before an interview last month, he challenged a reporter to match him in the eye-hand exercises of Tescao, a Tibetan martial art.

(A Knicks spokesman said Mr. Dolan and other Garden officials were unavailable for comment. Mr. Prokhorov was heli-skiing in British Columbia; a spokesperson said he was unavailable to speak.)

Mr. Dolan was groomed from a young age to take over his father's Cablevision empire, selling subscriptions and decamping to Cleveland to start a sports radio station, all while preparing to succeed his father as CEO.

Mr. Prokhorov was reared in a small apartment in Soviet Russia, and his first business venture involved stone-washing jeans to sell during perestroika, followed by a rise through the ranks of post-Soviet banking before coming to dominate the Russian mining market.

They share at least one common trait: Both want to rule New York's basketball market.

Mr. Dolan would very much like to counteract the past decade of futility, one that left an impression that he was more concerned with the parent company's bottom line than with hanging new banners from the Garden rafters.

"Jim Dolan has always taken, to me, unnecessary hits as far as wanting to win," said Jeff Van Gundy, the Knicks' coach from 1996 until his resignation in 2001. "Maybe you question the methodology, but he's always wanted to win."

"He's had such a negative reputation for so long, in terms of what the Knicks haven't done in recent years, I think he knew above all else that he had to get this deal done," said Wayne McDonnell Jr., a sports business professor at N.Y.U., of the Anthony trade.

For Mr. Dolan, adding Mr. Anthony helps the entire MSG empire. It boosts the television ratings, ups the in-stadium advertising fees and helps book the luxury boxes--all of which help to offset the nearly $800 million in renovations the arena is undergoing.

The challenge for Mr. Prokhorov is to somehow chip away at the prestige, and now the buzz, of Mr. Dolan's monopoly.

He has brazenly guaranteed a championship within five years, and--even as the team watched Mr. Anthony slip away--he crowed about the Nets' impact on the deal. "I think we've made a very good tactical decision to force Knicks [sic] just to pay as much as they can," he told CNBC, even before the trade was officially completed.

A few hours before the Knicks' press conference to introduce Mr. Anthony, the Nets announced a new star of their own: Deron Williams, acquired in an out-of-nowhere swap with Utah that was certain to crowd the next day's headlines.

"We all love to have rivals," said Mark Cuban, the outlandish Dallas Mavericks owner and fellow billionaire to whom Mr. Prokhorov is often compared, in an email to The Observer. "He is a good guy," Mr. Cuban wrote. "Smart. Passionate. Competitive. Most importantly, he is witty as shit. He loves a good battle of the words, even if it isn't his native language." (Mr. Prokhorov is unlikely to match the noisy courtside presence of Mr. Cuban. A person familiar with the plans said Mr. Prokhorov is assembling an in-house retreat for himself 10 times the size of a standard luxury box "for he and his Russian friends.")

The Knicks' official position is to feign a lack of concern. "While we always respect any competition, the Garden will always be the Garden," the company said in a statement.

And, on the night of Mr. Anthony's debut, the Garden was very much the Garden again, for the first time in recent memory.

In the concourse, fans pulled brand-new "Anthony" jerseys over their shirt
s, and the crowd stayed on its feet for the layup lines, snapping cell phone shots of Mr. Anthony in his new uniform.

Then the arena went pitch black, Diddy's "Coming Home" floated over the PA, and a quotation from Mr. Anthony flashed on the scoreboard. "I was born May 29, 1984 in Brooklyn, N.Y."

If Mr. Prokhorov has any hope of capturing the city's affection, he must first conquer Brooklyn, which could prove a rocky beachhead.

The rosiest scenario has the Nets replacing the bygone baseball Dodgers as the borough's pro sports heroes, but the prospect of a glorious homecoming is quite a bit more complicated.

"For someone like me, who's a Brooklynite through and through, it's going to create dilemmas," said Senator Charles Schumer, who was born and still lives a short bicycle ride from the new arena site. "Because I've been a Knicks fan all along, and I guess I'll have to wait until they arrive and see what happens. But my inclination is to stick with the Nets"--he shook his head--"with the Knicks."

The team's arrival has already suffered years of bad press, thanks to the protracted battle over the $4 billion development at the Atlantic Yards site in downtown Brooklyn. Before a series of court rulings resolved it and construction started in earnest last year, the battle pitted neighborhood activists, many of them newcomers who spawned the borough's gentrification, against the team's former owner Bruce Ratner, the site's developer.

The bitterness lingers.

Eric McClure, the founder of Park Slope Neighbors, said the only thing that might possibly draw him to the arena was "a Beatles reunion."

"Can Prokhorov sway Brooklynites to root for a different team?" mused Daniel Goldstein, a leader of Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, the leading Atlantic Yards opposition group, in an email to The Observer from India. "If he pays them enough."

"For the hard-core anti-Yards people, I don't see them coming around that fast," conceded Borough President Marty Markowitz, a longtime supporter of relocating the team. "But I see their kids coming around. And that will motivate them."

For the majority of Brooklynites, the prospect of Nets fandom is likely to rest on the simple question of whether the team is worth watching.

"I've been a lifelong Knick fan, but winning changes everything, so if they start to win, they'll like 'em," said Larry Chertoff, a Park Slope dad, who was leaving the Atlantic Center mall on Sunday afternoon. "I don't see myself switching allegiances, but a couple years ago, when the Nets were pretty good and they had [Jason] Kidd and [Richard] Jefferson, I went out to Jersey to see them, and I enjoyed them, so you never know."

In that regard, Mr. Prokhorov seems to inspire more hope for a competitive product than Mr. Ratner ever did.

"Bruce Ratner, who I respect enormously and who made this possible--after I put the pressure on--he was never a jock, I was never a jock," Mr. Markowitz said. "This man eats and breathes basketball. He's looking at it, I don't think as an investment, as in only dollars and cents; I think he's looking at it as being a good owner."

Mr. Markowitz cited the recent trade for Mr. Williams and said he hoped the new point guard would help lure a winning team to the borough. "We'll have his back, that's for sure. He'll learn how lucky he is to be wearing a Brooklyn Nets uniform in not too long from now."

But first the team must get him there; Mr. Williams can opt out of his contract in the summer of 2012, just when the franchise is set to occupy the brand-new Barclays Center.

On Monday evening, Newark did its best to woo him.

Jay-Z and Beyoncé sat in the Prudential Center's front row; fans were showered with complimentary Williams T-shirts; the opening montage had been recast with his highlights; even the mascot, an overgrown silver fox, was wearing his No. 8 jersey.

Though the crowd was spotty--despite being within a few hundred seats of a sellout--the fans who were there gave him a rousing ovation.

Mr. Williams high-fived his teammates with a stone face. "I can't really give any assurances or say that I'll be here, when I don't know what the future holds," he had said in his first press conference last week, when asked about his long-term future with the Nets. On Friday, Mr. Prokhorov cut short his heli-skiing trip to fly to San Antonio and welcome him to the organization, which hopes he'll be a cornerstone capable of luring other top talent.

While both teams tinker with their rosters over the next 16 months, the climax of this cold war won't come until the summer of 2012, when Mr. Williams and two other superstars--Orlando's Dwight Howard and New Orleans' Chris Paul--are set to hit the open market.

But with the NBA renegotiating its labor contract this summer, it's unclear just how much room Messrs. Dolan and Prokhorov will have to maneuver around each other. Will teams be able to exert a contractual clamp on their free agents like football's franchise tag? And will a strict salary cap restrict the ability of both to spend freely? No one knows, and the pessimists predict a long lockout as the two sides try to hash it out.

For Knicks' fans, though, the larger, looming question is who might be making the basketball decisions in 2012.

At Mr. Dolan's press conference, after introducing Mr. Anthony, the owner launched into an unprompted screed against rumors that he had overruled Mr. Walsh and was instead heeding the counsel of Isiah Thomas, Mr. Walsh's predecessor, who stuffed the team with an underperforming cast of bloated contracts.

"While Isiah Thomas is a friend of mine, a very good friend of mine, he was not at all involved in this process," Mr. Dolan volunteered to the crowd. "The trade was a complete effort with Donnie, Mike and I," he said, as Mr. Walsh, whose contract expires in June, sat awkwardly next to him on another stool and head coach Mike D'Antoni stared straight ahead with his arms crossed.

"I'm a die-hard Knick fan," said Shawn Mundinger, a season-ticket holder who was wearing a Ronnie Turiaf jersey on Wednesday night. He commutes to the Garden from Westhampton, even though he has to wake up at 5 a.m. for his shifts as a sanitation worker. "But if [Mr. Thomas] was ever to come back, in any way, shape or form, and the Knicks really aren't a contender, I think I'd give up my seats. I know a lot of people who feel the same way. He's just toxic, always has been."

"In my opinion, Dolan will not bring Isiah Thomas back," said Dan Klores, the veteran PR man turned documentarian, who met Mr. Walsh in 1967, and then helped him land the Knicks job four decades later. "Donnie went through the two worst years of his professional career, and it would be wonderful to have him see the fruits of his labor."

Mr. Klores, a Brooklyn native, was cautiously optimistic about what the new rivalry might mean. "Obviously, it's a great time for New York basketball," he said. "Unless the people running New York basketball screw it up."

rpillifant@observer.com

Matt Chaban contributed reporting.