I went to the market the other day, and instead of talking about vegetables, both vendors and fellow buyers wanted to rant to me about the Philippine Senate. There seems to be no escaping the misery of what was once referred to as an august body. I couldn’t even get lost in thought among the kalabasa and arugula. 

I must say though, as much as I’m just as despondent about this country’s state of affairs as anyone else, there’s a side of me that has been jumping for joy. Since the political circus at home unfolded in May, my favorite basketball team from childhood has been on a historic roll. 

When the Senate rigamarole began last month, the New York Knicks of the NBA were just beginning an astonishing run of victories that have them on the cusp of their first championship in 53 years. It’s been a private roller coaster careening between the despair of democratic decay and the ecstasy of hoops heaven. 

Hardcore basketball fans will understand what the Knicks mean for the sport. The Knicks’ home arena, Madison Square Garden, is considered the Mecca of basketball, and New York itself with its myriad playground pickup games is the center of the basketball universe. The “Garden” is where the team won two storied titles in the 1970s with a colorful point guard who liked fur coats and a cerebral small forward who went to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. That team’s share-the-ball ethos, along with the grit embodied by their fierce, undersized center Willis Reed, endeared them to fans forever. I remember 11-year-old me watching those Knicks on TV with my father, who counted opera and basketball among his passions. Then we’d find a court and shoot like we were Walt Frazier or Bill Bradley. 

Those father-son memories stayed with me even as the Knicks were mired in a decades-long slump, occasionally interrupted by stretches of respectability, like the Patrick Ewing years, but never another championship. 

Then there was “Linsanity,” the all-too-brief interlude of joyful madness in 2012 when an unheralded, Harvard-educated Asian-American bench-warmer named Jeremy Lin suddenly caught fire, scored 38 points on Kobe Bryant’s Lakers, and led the struggling Knicks on a legendary seven-game winning streak. I was then the editor-in-chief of GMA News Online, closely monitoring both the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona — much bigger news for us at the time — and on the side, the exploits of my beloved Knicks. But I couldn’t show too much excitement for a New York team, not with all the domestic fireworks going on, lest I be seen as a frivolous Filipino journalist. But now I can confess – journalists can be as frivolous as any other human. 

Jeremy Lin, of course, was not the first Asian in the NBA or even the best. Yao Ming was the giant centerpiece for the Houston Rockets for a few years. But at 6’3”, the relatable Lin was about the same height as the famed Filipino sharpshooter Alan Caidic and the first Filipino superstar Caloy Loyzaga, aka “The Big Difference.” 

Looking back now as an added bonus, Lin’s roots were in underdog Taiwan, unlike Yao Ming of mainland China, much more associated today with its bullying behavior in Philippine waters. 

Lin has had a long professional career but will forever be best known for the comet-like brevity of Linsanity. That was just seven games! The current Knicks went on a 13-game winning streak in THE NBA PLAYOFFS before finally losing one, as of this writing, against the best teams in the league, including their finals opponent the San Antonio Spurs led by the otherworldly Victor “Wemby” Wembanyama. This is not some flukish interlude. And yet, it will go down as one of the surprise runs in NBA history, predicted by almost no one except maybe by the Knicks themselves. 

There’s much to like about these Knicks (short for Knickerbockers, an old word for New York’s original Dutch settlers). Like the 1970s version, these guys share the ball, play hard defense, and can shoot the noise out of an opposing arena, as they did twice already in San Antonio. They’re led not by a seven-footer like Wemby (although the Knicks have the capable big Karl Anthony-Towns), but by the 6’2” Jalen Brunson, diminutive by NBA standards and thus underrated until he became a Knick supernova. He makes up for his shortness with clutch shooting and leadership by example. Seeing him play, a style marked by skill and smarts, reminds local fans of the best Pinoy ballers. 

The Knicks-Spurs matchup features some Pinoy subplots: The Spurs’ rookie sensation Dylan Harper has a much smaller Filipina mom who looks like your svelte grade school teacher and proud Pinoy grandparents you want to make mano to. On the opposing team is Jordan Clarkson, more familiar to Filipino fans as the sweet-shooting Gilas mainstay whose mom is also Filipina. 

The beauty of sports is the unambiguity of results: there are usually clear winners and losers, unlike in other aspects of life like wars and politics. And there is usually a definitive final buzzer; at a certain point, the match must finish. Who’s to say when the current Senate imbroglio will end? And even then, will there be clear winners and losers? Perhaps even more significant, will the misery over our politics ever truly lift? Maybe not anytime soon. But as always, basketball can give us a temporary sanctuary and dare I say, even hope.

After a long purgatory of failure, even the Knicks have emerged to bring back the pure joy of an 11-year-old boy shooting hoops with his father. It reminds us that slumps, no matter how agonizingly long, are eventually meant to be broken.