What Opening Night Can't Tell You
A first night tells you who turned up. It has never once told anyone who lasts.
A first night tells you who turned up. It has never once told anyone who lasts.
Tuesday night the Knicks raised their first championship banner in 53 years, LeBron James started his 24th season in a Sixers shirt, and the Sixers stayed in the locker room for the ceremony. In Sacramento, an Australian who fought his way back to the league didn't get a first night at all. Opening night tells you who turned up. It can't tell you who lasts, and sometimes it never even arrives.
Monday morning, the shop off Crown Street. A bloke in for a skin fade had the Knicks schedule up on his phone and was already booking the parade. "Ring night, LeBron in the building, Embiid hiding in the sheds. If they win Tuesday, it's over, mate. Back to back."
The barber, the Bankstown bloke who's been cutting in Surry Hills since the late 2000s, didn't argue. He pointed the clippers at the wall behind the register, where there's a photo from the shop's first day. Brand new chairs, brand new mirrors, a sign out front that's since been replaced twice. "That's opening day," he said. "Everyone came. Half of them never came back. The ones in the chair today are the ones who came back in week six."
That's the whole column, really. But let's earn it.
The Knicks' last title was 1973. The new banner went up before tip at Madison Square Garden, the rings were handed out, and Jalen Brunson, the Finals MVP, got to stand under the same rafters as the retired numbers of Walt Frazier and Willis Reed. If you're a Knicks fan under about 60, you had never seen this. I hope you enjoyed every second. I mean it.
But notice what the banner measures. It measures last June. It's a receipt, not a forecast. The Knicks swept Philadelphia in the second round on the way to that title, and the team that walked out on Tuesday and spoiled the party is not that team. It has Jaylen Brown, who came over from Boston in a summer trade. It has Tyrese Maxey. It has LeBron. And it has an Embiid who has been asked, again, to be healthy in April rather than spectacular in October.
Embiid made that point himself, in the least sentimental way possible. "I don't really feel like watching the whole ceremony, so I guess I'll be in the locker room," he said. "First game, there's nothing really special about it. The way I see it is taking it day by day, slowly getting better."
People read that as sulking. I read it as the most honest thing anyone said all week. He wasn't skipping a party. He was refusing to let one night be graded like a season.
Here's the mechanism, and it's the only one you need. A season is not one game multiplied by 82. It's a pile. Every night adds a brick or doesn't, and the pile only shows its shape around February.
LeBron is the proof walking around in a new shirt. NBA.com has him needing 27 regular-season wins to pass Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's all-time record of 1,074. He started the season on 1,048. That record was not built on great opening nights. It was built on turning up for 23 seasons, through Cleveland, Miami, Cleveland again and Los Angeles, and being on the floor when the ordinary Tuesday wins went in the book. Kareem set the mark over 20 seasons. LeBron is chasing it in his 24th, at an age (42 in December) when most of his draft class are doing podcasts.
Nobody will remember that he went 1 and 0 at the Garden. The 27, now 26, is the story. Opening night is brick one.
The barber liked this. "Same as a regular," he said. "I don't care how good your first cut was. I care if you're back in three weeks."
Now the part I'm watching from the other side of the world.
When Ben Simmons came into the league out of Melbourne, every Australian with a TV watched his first game like it was ours too. One kid, a whole country's hopes, a first night. We do that with our exports. We pin everything on the debut.
His career since has been longer and harder than any debut could hint at. ESPN's E60 documentary Being Ben, made with Andscape, premiered on Sunday and goes back to Game 7 of the 2021 Eastern Conference semifinals against Atlanta, the passed-up open dunk that ESPN's own release calls "a symbol of his unraveling." Then the injuries, the scrutiny, and a full season out of the league.
He came back anyway. Sacramento signed him in September on a one-year deal, and by every account he earned his place in camp. In the preseason finale at San Antonio he had 14 points, eight rebounds and seven assists in 26 minutes.
Then on Sunday, the same day the documentary aired in the US, he tore his Achilles in a live drill at Kings practice. He had surgery on Tuesday to repair it. ESPN calls it likely season-ending. He never got to his first game that counted.
I'm not going to pretend I know what that feels like. Simmons put it better than I could, in a statement on social media: "This injury is another chapter in my journey, not the end of my story." And: "Adversity doesn't define you. How you respond to it does."
From Sydney, it's a strange, flat feeling. We'd set the alarm for Thursday lunchtime. Plenty of us were ready to watch on a phone under the desk and carry a country's hopes into one more first game. Instead, the hopes stalled again before the first tip, and this time it's nobody's fault. No dunk to argue about. Just a tendon and a bad Sunday.
The Kings will move on, because that's how the league works. Marc Stein and Jake Fischer reported that Sacramento checked on Memphis' Walter Clayton Jr and Milwaukee's Kevin Porter Jr before the roster deadline. Both got waived instead, Clayton signed a two-way deal with Dallas on Wednesday, and nothing has been reported as done for the Kings.
This is what opening night can't tell you, in its cruellest form. Turning up is hard enough. Lasting is the whole game, and some nights it's taken off you before the lights come on.
The barber went quiet when I told him. Then he said, "You still keep the chair for him, you know? Bloke's earned the next appointment."
Detroit came back from 22 down to beat Boston 121 to 113, and Paul George's 38 points, the most by any Celtic on debut, went home with nothing.
At the Garden, the banner went up before tip. AP reports the Sixers, LeBron included, stayed in the locker room while the Knicks got their rings. Then Philadelphia spoiled ring night, 106 to 100. Tyrese Maxey had 28. LeBron had 14 points, nine rebounds and seven assists, and that's brick one: 1,049 wins, 26 from passing Kareem.
In San Antonio, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 32 and the Thunder won 116 to 104. Even he wasn't buying it. "One of 82," he said. "This doesn't prove anything."
Someone's already booking a parade off this. The barber's already sweeping it up.
"Come off it, Rico, opening night matters. Ask the team that loses it." Sure it matters. It counts exactly one eighty-second. Nobody has ever hung a banner for October.
"LeBron's 41. The wins chase is a farewell lap, not a story." Then explain why the Sixers built their summer around him. And the wins chase is a team stat by definition. Every win he banks is a Philly win.
"So the Simmons comeback was a waste." No. He made a roster nobody gave him a chance of making, and on his own word this is a chapter, not the end. Lasting isn't only about staying healthy. It's about coming back, and he's done that before.
The Knicks were meant to have the best night of anyone on Tuesday. They got the banner and the rings, then lost the game. The confetti's been swept, and on Thursday they're a 0 and 1 team with a target on them like everyone else.
When I left on Monday the barber was pulling that first day photo off the wall to dust it. "Lovely photo," he said. "Means nothing about Thursday's bookings."
Opening night is the first day photo. Frame it. Then come back in week six and tell me who's still in the chair, and keep one empty for the bloke who never got his first night.
If you want the week six check in your inbox, the Join the List box is below. I'll tell you straight who lasted, and whether I owe the barber a coffee.
If this one started an argument at the bar, the shop or the group chat, that's the job done. Rico Holt runs on readers, not bookies or big media money. Shout the next column here.
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Editor note: the barbershop, the barber and the customer are composites. Every named person is a public figure quoted on the record.
Rico Holt · ricoholt.com
If this one started an argument at the bar, the shop or the group chat, that's the job done. Rico Holt runs on readers, not bookies or big media money.
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