Re-printed with permission from the April 4, 2022 version of the Daily Bugle®. NEW YORK — A lost season in Manhattan turned into the best stretch of professional basketball the Big Apple has ever seen. Led by midseason addition Joel Embiid, the Manhattan Spiders went on a 30-2 tear down the stretch, including a near-sweep of powerhouse Hamburg BSV in the COMO Finals, to capture the city's first hardwood championship since 1973. The Spiders started the season 3-11 and 11-17 before getting healthy and climbing up the North Star standings. They overwhelmed Shorewood and Sunnyvale in January and February to claim the top seed in the conference, a run that coincided with a trade for Embiid on Jan. 13. Billy Sunday's team earned a first-round bye, swept Sunnyvale 3-0 in the North Star finals, and then defeated Hamburg (the league's regular-season champion) 3-1 in what would've been another 3-0 sweep had Manhattan's Montrezl Harrell not laid a rare "zero" at the end of Game 2. The Spiders didn't blink, winning two straight to close it out, and had perhaps their best performance of the season in the clincher. "It feels even better than we thought it would!" co-general manager Alex Krause yelled in the locker room. Krause, who officially added co-GMs Jack and Abbey Fink this season, has fielded a few good teams since founding the expansion Spiders in 2015. But they've never come close to winning a ring before this year; perhaps their best shot was in 2020, when key players were kept out of the COMO Bubble that provided a somewhat unsatisfactory ending to an endangered season. After missing the playoffs last year and starting very slow this past October and November, fans began to call for Krause's job. Sunday night, he was suddenly a champion, and was already talking about becoming the first back-to-back champ since Shorewood in 2016 (three straight). "Our blend of organizational teamwork was the key to our success," Krause said. "We are grateful for what we were able to accomplish this season. But one championship isn't enough for any of us. We'll see you all again this fall." Notes
List of COMO Finals MVPs
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