NBA teams
Johnette Howard, ESPN Staff Writer 9y

2015 has got to be better ... right?

NBA Draft, New York Giants, New York Jets, Brooklyn Nets, New York Knicks, New York Mets, New York Yankees

NEW YORK -- If you can tear your eyes away from the New Year's Day game featuring those two Heisman Trophy-winning quarterbacks the Jets won't be getting in the draft, or the latest, inexplicable 24/7 coverage of Jim Harbaugh's arrival at Michigan, in which Harbaugh commences to brush his teeth on Day 3 and then leads a motorcade to light a tea light at the altar of Bo Schembechler, we do have some breaking news right here in our little hamlet of New York, you know.

It's a lock that 2015 can't possibly be as bad a sports year as 2014, right?

Somebody please answer yes.

The New York Rangers have the right to feel frosted that their Stanley Cup finals runner-up finish has gone largely ignored as the biggest success story of 2014, other than the arrival of Giants rookie Odell Beckham Jr. The Rangers are playing remarkably well again this season, too, if anyone would quit bellyaching about the Giants or Jets, Yankees or Mets, Knicks or Nets long enough to notice them -- or the even-better Islanders. Or notice that the St. John's men's basketball team is ranked 15th in the country this week.

There is hope for 2015 around here.

Jets general manager John Idzik -- he of the bizarre 18-minute news conference soliloquy -- was mercifully fired Monday by Jets owner Woody Johnson and is free to go do voiceovers for books on tape or whatever his next calling is. Now, if Johnson can just buck the long-shot odds and persuade former Green Bay Packers executive Ron Wolf to run the Jets rather than simply serve as one of the two consultants helping to pick Johnson's next general manager and head coach, the team might turn around quicker than its 4-12 record permits.

Johnson badly needs a front-office executive of Wolf's caliber. He should throw charm and money at Wolf (though, granted, not quite as extravagantly as Jim Dolan did at Phil Jackson) to see whether Wolf -- who is a totally different cat -- is willing to take a curtain call.

If the Jets build a shrewd front office, more talent will come.

Speaking of Jackson, he doesn't need any more time to decide who can learn the triangle and who can't. The answer is crystal clear: The triangle hardly matters because the Knicks' defense is even worse than their offense. But look at the bright side. Phil is doing a marvelous job of getting the Knicks a 2015 lottery pick, don't you think? And let's be real. Hoping for a top-three pick is a better tack than perennially pretending as if LeBron and Durant and Kobe and Kevin Love -- or maybe all of them at once! -- are actually coming here, only to see they never do.

Given the Knicks' dreadful record, it can't be long now before the MSG Network starts carrying Jahlil Okafor's games at Duke just as an appetizer, or Carmelo Anthony -- ever surgery-averse -- shuts his sore knee down and tells Amar'e Stoudemire to slide over and start sharing those red-wine Jacuzzis with him.

J.R. Smith, who has a tear in his plantar fascia, can bring a nice slab of Gouda, some gluten-free crackers and a Rihanna CD to make it a par-TAY.

But don't you dare call it tanking.

It's karma.

And anyway, why are we even talking about the Knicks when there's two far more interesting sagas going on across the East River?

The tied-for-first-place Islanders are playing well enough in their last season at Nassau Coliseum to make Mikhail Prokhorov ask himself why he didn't think to buy a hockey team instead of the Brooklyn Nets.

But Prokhorov has reason for hope, too. The latest Nets coach he hired -- plain-speaking Lionel Hollins -- is willing to go where no Nets coach has recently gone before. Hollins seems determined to find out whether so-called franchise player Deron Williams and center Brook Lopez have the heart and games to be determined team cornerstones who win titles -- or just guys who are content to get paid a lot.

Hollins' unapologetic decision to slap both players on the second team and keep them there -- "Why would I change? We're winning," he barked the other night -- may be a prelude to a trade of one, or both, benched starters. And it's about time. The Nets should quit treading water and force a reckoning of what Williams and Lopez are and aren't. And Hollins has the guts to do it.

Both New York baseball teams have reason to believe they'll be better in 2015, too. Especially the Mets. Their season depends on a bunch of ifs -- if ace Matt Harvey's surgically repaired arm holds up, if David Wright has a bounce-back season, if they don't regret making Michael Cuddyer their only notable outfield addition, and if their young pitching staff isn't hurt by the tweaking of the outfield fences as much as it helps their underperforming hitters (Curtis Granderson, please pick up the white courtesy phone ...).

Investing hope in the Mets is always perilous. The dashed dreams stretch back so many generations that when babies are born in Flushing now, they don't go, "Waa!" when the doctor slaps them -- they yelp, "How could Beltran take strike three!?'"

The Mets' decision to stick with Terry Collins as manager while Joe Maddon was available and switched leagues to manage the Cubs is the latest brain freeze that just might haunt them.

It won't be nice to dwell on that if the Cubs soar and the Mets stink. But what's that got to do with it? This is New York.

The Yankees have to hope better health will bring them better results in 2015, too, despite having to put up again with more of the same old A-Rod.

General manager Brian Cashman has done everything he can this offseason to diminish expectations for Alex Rodriguez's return from a nearly yearlong suspension.

The bigger issues will be: Were the Yanks correct to believe Masahiro Tanaka's elbow can hold up without surgery? That Brian McCann, Carlos Beltran, Jacoby Ellsbury and Mark Teixeira can finally give them enough offense all at once? That Dellin Betances can repeat his terrific 2014 season in the bullpen and Andrew Miller, whom they poached from the Orioles, will cover for letting closer David Robertson walk? Were they right to trade versatile Martin Prado to stockpile yet another young arm, and pay to keep Chase Headley despite his past back issues?

As the Zen Master himself is apt to say, time will tell.

In the meantime, right here, right now, let's acknowledge the sabermetricians who griped for years about Derek Jeter's woeful defensive metrics even as he was (ahem ...) passing the likes of Willie Mays and Honus Wagner on the all-time hits list and putting his five Yankees championship rings back in the wall safe.

Victory is yours, seamheads!

Cashman finally listened to you.

Rather than view Rockies star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki's off-day visit to the box seats at Yankee Stadium last season as a naked cry for help -- "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE GET ME OUT OF COLORADO!" -- Cashman traded for Arizona's slick-fielding Didi Gregorius instead.

Forget how big a mouthful that's going to be for the Bleacher Creatures during Roll Call. If Gregorius wins a Gold Glove, the seamheads might not stop at I-told-you-sos. They might throw themselves a parade.

It wouldn't be the kind of Canyon of Heroes parade that folks in New York really want. But it'd be a start -- at least until Beckham has the Giants back in the Super Bowl and replaces Troy Polamalu in all those Head & Shoulders commercials, or Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist finally gets to kiss the Stanley Cup, or John Tavares and the Islanders beat him to it.

Forget all your troubles. C'mon, get happy.

This really could be the year.

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