Editor's Note: Here's Barnesgasm with the final post of the P&T Top Ten. Somehow we skipped over Charles Oakley (completely my fault), but SML's still welcome to do that up if he'd like to. Anyway, happy reading and thanks to everybody who contributed. What I really love about running this blog is the quality of all of your work. This project turned out better than I ever could have imagined.

(Not to bump Schac or Venerable, but I've had no internet recently due to computer issues compounded with being out of New York, and that explains why the last post on my website is a Microsoft Word document. Anyway, I'm not sure when I'll see the internet again in the next few days, so here's your #1 post.)
It's pretty damn hard writing a post about why I/we love John Starks.

No doubt, Starks is my favorite player. I play this fun game - well, I used to play it, back before Stephon Marbury's recent ebulliance on and off the court - I played it back in the dark, horrific winters of 2004 and 2005. It was called the "true Knicks fan" game. I meet my friends for Knicks games normally outside the subways under the marquee on 33rd and 7th, and when got to the meeting point before them, I'd play this game. I would stand on top of those escalators under the marquee in my Jamal Crawford autographed Allan Houston jersey, and invariably, one in every three or four people at the game would show up wearing a jersey that read "New York #3" on the front. I would wait for them to pass, read the back of their jerseys, leading to two possible options, pass or fail. Some people had jerseys reading "#3, Marbury". They failed. But the good folks?
#3, Starks, in glorious white lettering. A plus. And if the amount of passers-by who passed the pop-quiz outnumbered the delinquents, the Knicks were guaranteed to win.

Of course, now I embrace Marbury, but nothing has changed about my emotions on John Starks, and nothing has made this an easier story to write. Starks' name still triggers a slew of varying emotions, from hatred to anger back round to just utter dislike, but when I think really hard, everything disappears save the pearly joy of Starks reign as the #1 most popular Knickerbocker.

This might confuse you. How could I dislike my favorite player ever in any way?

You see, Starks did some crazy fucked up shit.

I certainly have hope that someday, the Knicks, my favorite team in all sports, will win an NBA championship, springing feelings that my jaded Yankees fandom would need 9 or 10 championships to provide. There will be all bodily fluids imaginible, from tears and jizz to the most violent type of diarrhea, and I'll pour out a 40 for Matt Barnes' departure. It will be glorious. Merely thinking about a Knicks championship, honestly, is making my smile a little bit, as pathetic a thought as it is. However, the Knicks average roughly 30 years between championships, won't have won in 35 years this June, and smattered their only two trophies during the 4 year span which eerily fits Richard Nixon's era of popularity, between 1969 and early 1973. (I'm not sure what the significance of that is, but there is one) Anyway, my point is, it's lookin bleek like memph. 'Ships are rare round these parts.

That paragraph could just be a tutorial for Knicks fandom, but it also explains the oxymoron of John Starks' raving popularity. The man who is my favorite player ever is also the man who did more to keep my favorite team from winning my favorite trophy than any of my least favorite players. Charles Smith hurt the Knicks less than John Starks. Starks had a chance to bring the Knicks the only championship of my life with a three-pointer in the closing seconds of game 6 of the 1994 NBA Finals, but couldn't find away to elude the outstretched finger tips of Hakeem Olajuwon. Game 7, quite frankly, is up there with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Trade-Object-of-Other-Person-Who-May-Not-Be-Named, Patrick Ewing in Seattle and Orlando and the 2004 MLB postseason in things I force myself to never think about, but for the purposes of this piece, I must. Starks shot 2-18, a performance, which, quite simply, lost the series for the Knicks. 6-18 probably would've won the series. When you combine this with the fact that Starks trade in 1998 led to Latrell Sprewell and thus the 1999 finals run, Starks seems a monstrous failure, as he is personally responsible for keeping the Knicks from winning a championship in what may have been the closest the Knicks will come to a championship for my entire lifetime. Starks, at this level, is a tragic Knick.

But here's my Starksian thesis. What makes me love John Starks, in a way, was his freakishly tragic inconsistency, the very thing that allowed Starks to be cold as ice during Game 7. John Starks, on the court and off, is and always be, a motherfucking g. He could kill a defense in two ways: He could shoot the friggin lights out if he wanted to, but, as BJ Armstrong found out the hard way, um, he could drive and dunk. Ahh, that fatal combination of the two greatest plays in basketball.  The 3, and the dunk. And yet, on a team built on grinding, halting, boring, consistently winning team, Starks was a jolt of what every Knicks fan wished the whole team was: heart and unapologetic, yet not necessarily consistent offense. While the Knicks would vary 50 and 55 wins for a decade, Starks would drop 5 one night and 35 the next. Sometimes he'd drive, sometimes he'd pop.

So OK, big deal. I might have just described Jamal Crawford's game. But Starks is much better than Jamal Crawford. Starks also embodied the Knicks religion of scrap. He went to 4 colleges in 4 years, went undrafted, and played with as much skill as hustle. And despite getting shut down multiple times, Starks still had a shitload of self-confidence. He stuck through the WBA and CBA, before making it to the NBA, and then kind of journeymanned his way from Golden State to New York. AND despite this, Starks played with a level of confidence that allowed him to jaw against Jordan in multiple playoff series, even though he had nowhere near the talent. Motherfucker was COCKY! It's that type of shit that made me a John Starks fan, that is, the cockiness.
To sum up his entire game - and perhaps the reason I do love the Starks so - John Starks truly, and honestly, did not give a fuck. You can even see it now, if you think about it. I apologize if I'm speaking rashly, or without proper knowledge of John Starks' job, but, um, does he do anything? It appears to me, he just kind of goes to events and acts like a g, claps, smiles, and shakes hands. That's running-for-president shit right there, and he also gets to go to basketball games. Again, maybe he has a rigorous job I don't know about, but, if he doesn't, that's pretty motherfucking cool.

In essence, all words I throw together do little, really. I could wax poetical about John Starks' high-top or penciled on moustache, but, it wouldn't do half the shit this does:

John Starks was my first favorite player, my first jersey, and, shit, still my favorite player of all time. And if I may speak for the whole Posting and Toasting community, we, Posting and Toasting, salute John Starks. He wasn't the best Knick. That would be Patrick Ewing. He wasn't even the second best Knick on the Knicks at any time he played there. But for all that is good, he sure was a badass, and he sure was a fan favorite. I'll never forget the time I nearly shatted my pants a few years ago as someone who has been pottytrained for nearly 3 weeks upon simply waiting for John Starks autograph at a Mets game.

Can I get an ahhhhh-men?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhmen, Marv, ahhhhhhhhhhhhmen.

Folks, our favorite Knick, John Starks.