Dear Mr. Dolan: Can we please just watch the Knicks play?

If you are reading this, I presume you are a fan of the New York Knickerbockers. Based on certain evidence, I might also presume that a good many of you share rooting interests in other New York sports teams as well. And if that is the case -- if you root for another New York team at the moment -- then may God have mercy on your soul.

Forgive me, dear friends, if I seem a touch melodramatic at the moment. I just watched my favorite athlete of all time play in his final home game. For us Yankee fans, Mariano Rivera's Bronx swan song was as traumatic as it was touching. The team's two-decade run of success looks to be quickly approaching an end. And Mets fans have fared little better these past few months, with ace Matt Harvey hitting the disabled list with an elbow injury that could cost him all of 2014. Normally, New York sports fans facing the end of a dreary summer could at least look forward to the promise of their local football team. This year ... ummm, no. The New York Giants look like the worst team and football, and the New York Jets are, despite their 2-1 start, still the New York Jets. I'm not much of a hockey fan, but I do know the Bruins made the last Stanley Cup Finals, and I know the Bruins are from Boston, so that totally sucks.

Which brings me, once again, to our New York Knicks. Last year's Knicks team was the rare pleasant surprise in the New York sports cycle. They were better than expected. They were downright lovable. Fans wrote kick-ass songs about them. And they (mostly) all came back for this season ... hell, the Knicks even bolstered the lineup by signing perhaps the Knick-iest player who never actually played for the Knicks, Metta World Peace. They have the perfect foil in the Brooklyn Nets, a team now composed of pure evil. This was going to be the best season ever!

...and then James Dolan.

Over the past 24 hours, Jimmy D has deeply disturbed the Knicks faithful by acting ... well, like himself. I won't rehash the details here. The decision was stupid, rash, poorly-timed, stupid, tone-deaf, stupid ... in other words, vintage Dolan.

Look, Jimbo, we didn't need yet another reminder that you don't give a damn about the fans. We all know the score here. Your two-decade stewardship of the Knicks has been all about one man's personal odyssey. And I don't mean that in a personally responsible, buck-stops-here managerial kind of way. No, for that to happen, you'd actually have to take responsibility for your organization's many, many failures over the years. And Lord knows that will never happen. I'm talking about the ongoing saga of "Jimmy vs. the World" -- a one-man drama of petty beefs, imagined slights, twisted loyalty and delusional narcissism.

Any Knicks fan over the age of five knows that Dolan has the potential to destroy this Knicks team. The reasoning and the method are almost irrelevant at this point. All I'm asking, Mr. Dolan, is a few months' reprieve. Please crawl back into your hole, like the cruel gnome from an early Germanic fairy tale that you clearly are, for just a little while longer. Let us watch this team play basketball. Let us watch Melo and Metta, Pablo and the Penguin. Let us watch Shump a little longer, before you trade him for Monta Ellis. These Knicks may not be a championship team, but they are New York's team, and they may just be the best team New York has left. Let them play.