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We go back to this term every now and again. It was the brainchild of Pat Riley, back when he was the coach of the Knicks and had enough spare time to land on the best-seller lists with a self-help book called “The Winner Within.”
The term in question is “The Innocent Climb,” and if I had a nickel for every coach from 1994 until now who’s used that phrase … well, I’d have an awful lot of nickels.
At its essence, the innocent climb is refers to a team of unselfish team members, without any prior success, beginning a journey to greatness. “When a team dedicates itself to acting unselfishly, trusting each other, and combining instinct with boldness, it is ready to achieve something spectacular,” Riley wrote.
The Knicks, beginning in 2021, have embodied this as much as anyone. Over the course of four years, they regained much of the credibility they’d squandered during the lost two decades of 2001-20, and also recaptured much of the heart of New York City. There is also, in New York, a subtle corollary to this: