I wanted to do something a little different for this and (hopefully) make a shorter, more digestible post. Because comprehension is on the decline and satire feels less and less like an absurd reality and more like our current one, I wanted to preface this by saying this is meant to be halfway tongue in cheek. It’s an impossible task to do an actual ranking without making some wildly insensitive assumptions, so let’s keep it light, have some fun, and dive into some half-baked analysis of our country. I’m sure no one will have strong opinions about this whatsoever.
I have never, at any point, now or in the past, had a lot of money.
I’ve worked multiple jobs, I’ve received government assistance at one point, and I’ve had help from family over the years.
But never have I ever considered myself to be anywhere higher than middle class at best.
Now, that’s not to say that I don’t make good money in my profession. New York City school teachers get a pretty decent salary. And every year I’m making more money than I’ve ever made in my entire life. I make more money than my parents do! Starting next year, I’ll officially be making six figures!
I know! That should be a bigger deal than it is!
But this is not to brag. This is all to say that despite all of these things being true, I actually am poorer now than when I was making a dollar above the minimum wage working at my local mall over a decade ago (a minimum wage that has not changed on the federal level since 2009!).
I think about how despite making more money than I’ve ever made, I actually can’t afford to own a house. I’m lucky enough to have healthcare through my job, but I wouldn’t be able to afford that otherwise. I have two cars, which might be a pretty good wealth indicator if it wasn’t out of necessity for the size of my family. And I still have some debt that is definitely shrinking, but will still take too long to pay off.
Now I want to be clear here: I AM NOT COMPLAINING.
I have been uniquely blessed in countless ways and my situation is still way more favorable than many other people in this country. However, just because I’m not at the bottom of the totem pole doesn’t mean I can’t speak up about a system that is clearly rigged and broken.
I might even be uniquely disqualified from discussing this in the first place because I very clearly have a bias in that I would benefit directly from the status quo being shaken up.
But I think, for me at least, there is a truth here that resonates, and should resonate, for all of us. And by us, I mean the 99% of us that don’t hold a majority of the wealth in the world.
I’ve been a Knicks fan for as long as I can remember. Like most of my sports lineage, I trace back my fandom to the man who left me with far more baggage than wisdom and life lessons, my dad. I would only ever see him on the weekends growing up, but I do remember, in between running around outside and playing video games with my friends, just waltzing into the living room and sitting next to my dad on the couch and watching whatever game he had on.
We live in New York, and so my dad rooted for the Jets, the Rangers, the Yankees, and of course, the Knicks. I never knew the extent of his fandom for the Knicks (he was always more of a Yankees fan at heart), but when I was old enough to care about basketball they weren’t exactly putting their best foot forward on the court, and my dad was not exactly quiet about how bad they were.
I would watch Stephon Marbury (my dad joked about his self-made signature shoe, the Starbury, even though it was an affordable option for kids who couldn’t afford Jordans), Channing Frye, Eddy Curry, Quentin Richardson, small but electric Nate Robinson, sure handed David Lee, and the list goes on. The only game that I ever went to at MSG, I watched this team get the tar beat out of them by Ben Wallace and the Detroit Pistons. It didn’t matter to me that the team was terrible. I just cared that I was spending time with my dad and feeling like connecting with the game was helping me connect with him.
He died in January of 2025, and so he never got to witness the team in its current form. Which is why I’ve been thinking a lot about how he would’ve loved to see this squad succeed. How he would’ve marveled at the maestro, Jalen Brunson. He absolutely would’ve complained about the exaggerated zestiness of Karl-Anthony Towns. And I know he would’ve hated Josh Hart’s pace and motor, mostly because he’s the player that would’ve reminded him the most of himself: stubborn but strong and tenacious.
What I would give to have one more moment on the couch with him, watching the historic game 4 comeback in real time and experience basketball euphoria in a way I’ve never felt before next to him instead of alone trying not to wake up my loving wife and kids. He’ll never know what it felt like to cheer for one of the most dominant playoff teams of all time, but this championship felt like vindication for a lot of us.
Wherever you are, Dad, you can stop cursing at the TV. They finally did it.
And so it’s in honor of this historic event and the memory of my dad that I wanted to analyze the players who made this possible, not from a basketball perspective, but from a personal one. What special quality did each of these players bring to the table in terms of their identities that not only led to the most important win in New York sports history, but that we can learn from and internalize for ourselves?
I’m sitting down here trying to write this post and it feels impossible.
Not because I have writer’s block.
Not because the subject matter is difficult to talk about.
Not because what I’m about to say is any way remotely controversial.
But the idea that someone is taking their spare time to sit down at a computer to type out their thoughts, unassisted and devoid of any influence from outside technological agencies…it just feels like the dying embers of a lost art. And it’s incredibly depressing to think about how something as fundamental as WRITING could even be in this realm of thought in the first place; that it could be one day soon be rendered an obsolete practice.
Friends, artificial intelligence is ruining everything that we love, and if we let it, could do so in such a way that it could be irreversible or have ripple effects that last for generations.
I’ve been in the blogging game for a long time. Never really found much success in it, but when I was posting consistently I was getting a decent amount of eyes on what I considered very valuable to me: my poems, short stories, and general random quips and thoughts that came to me as a young college student.
As I’ve grown and matured I’ve sporadically added to that original blog, but it feels more like a time capsule now; a relic from a time that doesn’t fully represent who I am anymore, nor what I want to talk about.
And so here I am with what I consider to be a fresh start; a new, more singularly focused blog beyond just the musings of youth. A commentary on the greater world around us, digesting it through the eyes of an informed everyman, and processing it in a way that not only adds to the din of the rage inducing stream of the algorithm, but allows us to see a path and a way forward through the darkness.
I’m not prideful enough to think that I would be a beacon, but someone who humbly lights torches along the way.
The name of the blog also was carefully considered. In one very real aspect, Star Wars is a large part of my personality and upbringing, and so to be able to take one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite shows and utilize it for this purpose was a tremendous honor (shoutout to Tony Gilroy). Beyond that, though, is the beating heart of these writings.
I think that it has become incredibly easy to be crushed by the oppressive weight of bad just seeping into every discernible part of our lives, and in that light it’s easy to only focus on that. But you don’t rebuild on an unstable foundation. Uncertainty does not power a movement.
But HOPE can.
Hope allows us to dream beyond what is possible.
Hope gives us the strength to carry on in the face of defeat.
Hope is the spark that leads to the fire of change.
And so here at Built on Hope, the goal is to inspire and motivate, but also to knock down lies, manipulations, and bullies and bad actors.
Because Hope is not quiet or timid or ashamed. It is bold and risky and requires courage in the face of evil, ignorance, and greed.
I can’t promise that I’ll always get it right. But I can promise that I will always give it my best effort, fully authentic and fully informed as often as I can.
As I write this, it’s important to know that I’m also as big of a sports guy as I am a nerd. And my favorite basketball team, the New York Knicks, are in the midst of one of the greatest playoff runs of all time as they’ve reached the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999.
The reason why I mention this is because the mantra that has carried them this far is one that I think represents the purpose here well:
“Job’s not done”
There is no time to rest on our laurels and kick back while the world around us is scrambling around to sell off our society and humanity piece by piece. The job isn’t done. It likely never will be, but we must trudge and continue onward.
I don’t know how often you can expect to see my posts, but I’ve got a lot of time on my hands lately with paternity leave and summer vacation looming ahead of me. I hope you’ll follow me along on this new journey.
In the meantime, stay tuned, hold fast, and remember above all else —
Built on Hope 