Why Being a Knicks Fan Hurts So Good

Knicks fans used to disappointment are now reveling in a season of joy. “God forbid, if we win, we are going to burn this city down,” one famous fan said.

Ashley Nicole Moss did not have much of a choice when she was growing up. Her father, Jeff, was a Knicks fan, which meant that she was a Knicks fan, too. For part of her childhood in Brooklyn and Queens, Moss, 27, found that rooting for the Knicks was not such a horrible thing. When she was especially young, the team often made the playoffs and even advanced to the N.B.A. finals in 1999, which she said was among her earliest memories as a fan. So she was completely unprepared for the subsequent two decades, which were largely a wilderness of losing and dysfunction, of failed hopes and shattered dreams. “It’s been a lot of disappointment and a lot of frustration,” said Moss, who is a co-host of “KnicksFanTV” on YouTube.