Times Union snubs the Albany Patroons once again

I always wondered if our fair newspaper has something against the legendary minor league basketball team.  For years, as an Albany Patroons fan, I used to grimace when reading team coverage in the TU – there would be articles about how the Patroons were going to move the franchise to another city, how the team was reduced from playing championship games in front of an over-packed Armory to pickup games against the semipro American Basketball Association in front of a hundred diehards.  How the Patroons’ scores were buried on the fifth paragraph while the sportswriters took whack after whack at the Pats.

The Patroons have been gone for about a year now, and I thought that the TU wouldn’t slight them any more.  Oh yeah, there was the occasional dig and jab at the “Recap of 2009” in that the team tried to recapture its former glory and failed (hey, so did the Conquest/Firebirds, so it’s not anything exclusive).

But last Sunday, while perusing the paper edition of the TU, I saw a report on 20 years of the Knickerbocker Arena / Pepsi Arena / Times Union Center.  The article, which can be accessed here, lists all the professional sports teams that have called the arena home.  According to the article, they include: –

Teams that called the arena home: Siena College men’s basketball, Firebirds and Conquest arena football, River Rats, Choppers and Capital District Islanders hockey, and Albany Attack lacrosse.

Now first off, the Capital District Islanders never played home games in this building.  They spent their three-year existence at RPI’s Fieldhouse, and it wasn’t until the team rebranded itself as the Albany River Rats did they even take the ice in the arena.

So where’s the Patroons?

Where are the Patroons, who on their first night in the new building, set a CBA record with attendance of over 11,000 people?

Where are the Patroons, who with a lineup of Vincent Askew, Mario Elie, Paul “Snoop” Graham, Albert King and Willie McDuffie, and with a head coach in George Karl, went a perfect 28-0 at home and 50-6 for the regular season – in that building?

Where are the Patroons, who the next year inked Siena College phenom Marc Brown to a contract to play in that building?

And for that matter, where are the Patroons, who in the 1992-93 season, rebranded themselves as the Capital Region Pontiacs to save their existence in the area, and even after drawing only 3,000 fans a night, still finished their home season with a sound thrashing of the Quad City Thunder?

Well, according to the TU, they never played in the building.  Nope.  Nada.  Never.  We have always been at war with Eurasia.  Eastasia are our friends.  War is peace.  Freedom is slavery.  Ignorance is strength.

Mind you, this wasn’t the first time the Patroons got rooked by the writers of history.  In the team’s final game at the then-Knickerbocker Arena, March 17, 1993, the Pontiacs clobbered the Quad City Thunder 119-96.  3,731 fans attended that night.  Don’t believe me?  Here’s proof.

So a few months later, when the TU did a timeline of the Patroons’ history, suddenly that final celebratory home win turned into a depreciating Patroons loss.

I contacted Carol DeMare, the staff writer who put together the original piece, and she apologized for the omission, that the data had actually come from the arena’s managing unit, SMG.

I gotta take her on face value with this.  But still… I gotta take exception with the omission.

Even with all that, I can at least still recall great basketball moments in that building.  The 28-0 home record.  The come-from-behind victories.  And even the game in December 1992, where I was chewing out the officials at a Pontiacs game for missing an obvious blocking foul – and at the time, a woman behind me was also chastising the ref for the same infraction.

We ended up talking after the game – and got married about 18 months later.  And we’re still married today.