KEMBA WALKER CONFIRMED yesterday that he will enter June’s NBA draft after completing a College Basketball season that was as close to perfect as could be imagined.

Almost singlehandedly and entirely against the odds, he guided the Huskies to both the Big East and National Championships.

So now the almost 21-year-old can happily bide his time as he prepares to sign a multi-million dollar contract and potentially move further away from the Bronx than he’s ever been.

Walker’s adolescence coincided with a barren spell for top-level basketball in his city but clearly it didn’t stop him dreaming of the big time. Still though, while I don’t know who his favourite NBA team is, it’s not a stretch to suggest he probably doesn’t have one.

The 6’1″ point guard is just one of an entire generation of New York basketball lovers to have grown up without knowing the real buzz of a New York Knicks NBA play-off, something that would have been unthinkable when Patrick Ewing roared his way through the 1990s.

Not that long ago but still far too long for the sport in this city.

Only once since 2001 have they made it to the post-season – a 2004 blowout at the hands of the New Jersey Nets – and now, all of a sudden, they’re facing into a first-round series of games against last year’s beaten finalists, the Boston Celtics, with something approaching arrogance.

It’s been a while since the NBA has been as good as it has been this season and it’s been even longer since the New York Knickerbockers and the Boston Celtics had the sort of rivalry we automatically ascribe to the two teams.

Indeed, Paul Pierce brilliantly expressed his reservations about what he saw as media-inflated hype back in December prior to his Celtics silencing the Garden in clinical fashion.

But maybe now we can start to get excited once the dates for the games are announced tomorrow. It might be a distant memory for the two sets of fans but it’s easy to disregard how much history is involved.

After all, the two franchises are the only NBA teams to have remained in their cities since the league’s inception in 1946. Boston dominated the early years before New York’s 1970s golden era while one of the many great stories that define this rivalry is the then Knicks’ owners passing up on drafting Larry Bird in 1978 despite the wishes of the then General Manager, Eddie Donovan.

Last night, in what amounted to little more than a shootaround, everyone’s favourite team, the Chicago Bulls, visited the Garden with everyone’s favourite player (and MVP-in-waiting) Derrick Rose inspiring a comprehensive road victory for Michael Jordan’s old side.

Doc Rivers’ Celtics also ended the regular season with a whimper on Monday night, losing to the awful Washington Wizards by a point as most of their regular starters sat it out.

Cards are being kept close to chests, making it all the more intriguing for when this age-old rivalry finally gets going again this weekend. But with Boston fading since the trade of Kendrick Perkins to Oklahoma City and New York rising slowly as Carmelo Anthony begins to find his feet, there is renewed hope that this could mark the return of a sustainable basketball-based hatred between the two cities.

With the Red Sox slipping to their ninth loss of the baseball season last night, the timing couldn’t be better.

John Riordan writes a column for the Irish Examiner. He works as a freelance journalist in New York; check out his blog here.

Read his weekly pieces  for TheScore here.