Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images
While we are all still celebrating the Knicks’ historic NBA Finals win, one bizarre detail has emerged amid the festivities that is, well, a little less fun. On Monday, Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart’s podcast, Roommates Show, released footage of the CEO of Madison Square Garden, James Dolan, giving the team a little pre-playoffs pep talk back in April. During the speech, he asks the players (as a joke?) to abstain from sex for the next ten weeks. Sorry, what? The video was recorded on April 3, right before the team entered the playoffs, and I guess this was meant to be fortifying or something.
“I had this idea that maybe you should give up sex for the next ten weeks,” Dolan says in the video, quickly adding that nobody had to do this. But if they did, they might be sort of like Spartans, who, according to Dolan, “denied themselves so that they could have an edge.” Dolan advised the Knicks to go home and talk to their wives about how much of a commitment their playoffs run was going to be, but also not to tell them that the no-sex thing was his idea. Basically, Dolan concluded, “let them know what this is gonna be like … and how they’re gonna have to sacrifice, too.” I’m getting the feeling that Dolan would prefer if the Knicks players did not have wives at all, but that would really be asking too much.
For what it’s worth, it doesn’t seem as though any of the Knicks took this suggestion to heart. During a lengthy (and rowdy) Instagram Live on Monday, Mikal Bridges joked that Dolan is a “savage.” “He said ten weeks,” Bridges said, laughing. “Don’t have no sex? Lock in?” When Jose Alvarado was asked in an interview if anyone took Dolan’s celibacy request seriously, he simply laughed. Which is probably for the best. It doesn’t feel right to ask any more of the WAGs after Jordyn Woods’s lucky bag single handedly won the team this championship.
