Former Miami Heat star Tim Hardaway once boasted: “I hate the Knicks with all the hate you can hate with. Can you hate more than that? If you can, then I hate them that much.”
Thursday night, all that hate went away about as quickly as it took David Stern to walk from across the stage to the podium, where the NBA Commissioner announced the Knicks had just selected Hardaway’s son in the first-round of the NBA Draft.
“Wow, my nemesis,” a proud Hardaway, who still works for the Heat as a college scout and community liaison, told the Miami Herald of his son’s new team. “I was happy that he got in the first-round, and it doesn’t matter where he went. It happened to be the Knicks. A lot of people are kidding me about that. I had a lot of heated battles with the Knicks… the rivalry we had, now it’s come full circle.”
Hardaway Jr., who along with Player of the Year Trey Burke led Michigan to within a game of a NCAA title, was selected with the No. 24 pick overall and is projected as someone who can instantly break into the team’s everyday rotation.
“I will root for him and his team to do well,” Hardaway told the Herald. “I want him to experience winning a championship too. I want him to win as many games as he can.”
Even those nights when the Knicks are facing the Heat? “I don’t even know how to approach that, don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “I’m going for the team that wins. That is going to be nerve-racking. I always want him to play well. You never want your son to fail.”
Hardaway Jr. averaged 15 points and five rebounds during his final season at Michigan.
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