Fans want their favorite teams to win. This is the prime directive of fandom. And when their favorite team loses, fans become upset, saddened by the results. Sometimes, that sadness morphs into anger, whether it is directed at a player, coach, opponent, referee, etc. The roller coaster of emotions that occurs when watching a sporting event with your favorite team as a participant can be an exhausting couple of hours. One minute you’re overcome with joy, and not even 30 seconds later that joy can turn into despair.

But what happens when the inverse becomes the reality? What happens when you begin to root for your favorite team to lose and get upset when they win games? Enter the conundrum of Knicks fans this season. After a heartbreaking, but entertaining, quadruple overtime loss against the Atlanta Hawks Sunday, the New York Knickerbockers are now 21–28 and do not appear to be improving anytime soon.

The Knicks started out the season going 3–6 with a few blowout losses, most notably against the Houston Rockets and the Cleveland Cavaliers. They then went on to win 13 of their next 20 games, creating the perception of being a competitive, gritty basketball team. Since Christmas, the Knicks have gone 5–15 and played terrible, borderline unwatchable basketball. Assuming that this team was going to have a slow start to the season with the influx of new players, who are the Knicks? Are they the competitive, gritty basketball team that closed out tightly-contested games, or are they the poor defensive team that allows large runs late in games?

During that first 20-game stretch earlier in the year, the Knicks were winning despite having a negative point differential (-0.7 to be exact) and being ranked 21st in defensive rating, per nba.com. Winning masked the clear defensive issues, as over this most recent 20-game stretch, the Knicks have a point differential of -2.9 and are ranked 19th in defensive rating, per nba.com (Note, the Knicks ranking is only better during this recent stretch of basketball because there have been worse defensive teams. The Knicks defensive rating is higher than the previous 20-game stretch).

As the trade deadline approaches and Carmelo Anthony trade rumors and reports swirl around the Interwebs, the Knicks are currently in a state of purgatory, known in NBA circles as “mediocrity.” Like purgatory, a team being mediocre is the worst place a franchise can be; you’re not bad enough to have a high lottery pick and not good enough to potentially make some noise in the playoffs. Teams that hover in this middle ground do not have any real legitimate avenues to get better, other than lucking into finding draft outliers like Kawahi Leonard or hoping that a superstar free agent likes the city in which the team is located. The only time being mediocre is acceptable in the NBA is if a young team is trending up and has been competitive all season, but either just misses the playoffs, or wins a game or two in the first round and eventually loses to the better team.

Unfortunately, the Knicks are not that “up and coming” young team with the clear franchise player on the roster and two potential future All-Stars as his running mates in complementary roles. The Knicks have that potential franchise player in Kristaps Porzingis, but outside of him (and Billy Hernangomez and Ron Baker), this team is comprised of veterans — i.e. players that are in the mid-to-late 20s and older — wanting to be a playoff team. This team was constructed this offseason with the intentions of being a competitive and making the playoffs. It was also constructed as a medium-risk, high-reward gamble. This Knicks team was either going to click and be good, or just completely bomb and be dreadful. As I explained in the offseason:

Overall, the Knicks’ offseason roster decisions are a gamble with many positives and notable drawbacks. It hinges on the health of 2 injury-prone players. The Knicks have a “win-now” mentality that has angered many because it resembles “old Knick tendencies” of sacrificing the future for the immediate present. This is the first time in recent history that the Knicks have taken a win-now approach without sacrificing the future. They have Porzingis. They have draft picks. They still have cap space moving forward. The Knicks are finally in a position that even if the Rose and Noah experiment backfires, it will not cripple the franchise moving forward.

Not only are the Knicks currently mediocre, they are also directionless. The Knicks gambled this offseason with the Derrick Rose trade and the Joakim Noah and Courtney Lee signings. That gamble doesn’t appear to be working out. Something needs to be done.

So, you may be asking, how do the fans’ emotions play into this? When a team is in basketball purgatory like the Knicks are, it really distorts the natural order of how fandom works, especially when the mediocrity is directionless. Part of you wants the team to continue losing to ensure a better draft pick in a supposedly deep draft this year, and in turn, you get upset when the Knicks do manage to win a game. Yet, when you are watching the game live on television or at the arena, you are cheering for your team to win the game and are upset when they lose. Using last night’s game is a rather extreme example, but even if you are a fan who wants this Knicks team to tank, didn’t you want the Knicks to pull out the victory in quadruple overtime? They fought so damn hard to stay in that game and continue to force overtime, after overtime, after overtime, after overtime. How could you not root for the Knicks to win?

Something needs to be done with this team, and quite frankly, that something should be focusing on the future by making trades and playing the younger players more regular minutes; fighting to get the 7th or 8th seed just to be embarrassed by the Cavaliers or Raptors (or Celtics) in the first round of the playoffs does more harm than good. Looking to trade Courtney Lee, Kyle O’Quinn, Brandon Jennings, and even Carmelo Anthony for a combination of assets to ensure a shot at selecting one of the top point guard prospects appears to be the most practical direction the Knicks should follow.

Yet, rooting and advocating for the Knicks to purposely be bad for long-term future goes against the core principles of fandom. This is the conundrum the team has put me in! Why would I ever want something I care about to be bad and awful on purpose? It’s like you actively wanting to be in a crappy relationship with your partner because there is a chance that the relationship will become stable and fruitful after those tough, painful few years. Would you want to put yourself through that? I know I wouldn’t purposely do this. However, if we are to analogize this situation a little more, my relationship with the Knicks has been crappy for over 10 years running with only a few years and moments of joy. What’s another 3–5 years, right?

I know that for the long-term health, stability, and (hopefully) future success of this franchise, the Knicks need to commit to a full-blown rebuild around Porzingis, which involves putting the team near the top of the draft to maximize their odds for finding an All-Star caliber player to grow with The Unicorn; and the only way to do that is to trade Carmelo Anthony, Brandon Jennings, Kyle O’Quinn, etc., even if it is just for Austin Rivers and future drafts picks of the Clippers in the 2020s. Making that sort of lopsided trade is not ideal, as trading Carmelo doesn’t necessarily prevent the Knicks from getting a good draft pick because they stink with Melo on the roster already. But, it is needed to essentially guarantee that better draft pick.

Yet, when I watch the games or see Jeff Hornacek quoted saying the team “believes they can get in the playoffs”, I cannot help it but to want this team to win. I want to see The Unicorn in the playoffs, dammit!

And the only reason that these emotions conflict with one another is because of the Knicks’ lack of direction. Is this team going to fulfill the goal of the offseason and make the playoffs, or are they going to commit to rebuilding via high draft picks? Despite the news of the Knicks and Clippers discussing a potential Carmelo Anthony deal, nothing further has been reported, expect for some rumors (this may have very well changed by the time this article is published).There also haven’t been reports of the Knicks exploring trade options for other players on the roster not named Kristaps Porzingis and Guillermo Hernangomez. Are the Knicks even going to give up on this gamble? And if they want to make a playoff push, how is this team going to correct its issues? This Knicks team is heavily flawed, especially on defense, and trying to make the playoffs to then fail near the end of the season could be disastrous.

The Knicks need to decide on a course of action, and do so sooner rather than later. This unknown and mediocre state the team currently resides only causes more emotional turmoil amongst its fans and delays the inevitable, which is this team currently constructed is too flawed to be a legitimate playoff team and needs to be disassembled. It’s time to make the necessary moves to either help solidify a playoff seed somewhere between the 3rd and 6th seeds, or secure a top 7 pick in the upcoming draft. And if I’m going to be forced to root against this team for the remainder of the season, it better be in the context of a potentially brighter future.