By BILL REITER
FOXSports.com
NEW YORK -- Outside Madison Square Garden on Thursday night, even as city crews continued to clear away a record amount of January snow, this hub of urban energy hummed with life.
Further up 7th Avenue, the lights of Times Square sent neon flashes across deep pockets of slush. Taxis trolled for fares. Bars were filled with the young and the hip, the old and the interesting.
A young man made a documentary of another young man looking for work, men and women hawked wares and promises of cheap drinks, lovers strolled in the snow and the powerful moved past them in heated cars.
Oh, and the New York Knicks had a game against the Miami Heat -- one, finally, every bit as interesting as the things going on outside.
In a city that never ceases to reverberate with life, action and excitement, there was the mark of a basketball sea change going at that game at Madison Square Garden.
For the first time in a very long time, basketball is on top again -- from New York to Boston, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles.
For maybe the first time in league history, this country's coolest cities have many of its best basketball teams.
The Miami Heat, Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers are championship contenders. The Chicago Bulls are, if not championship contenders, very close. The New Jersey Nets, with an upcoming Brooklyn relocation, have a billionaire Russian owner who is more interesting than the past few Nets teams.
With his money and high profile, odds are that could change, too.
Even the Los Angeles Clippers are a source of interest and conversation as they march steadily toward relevance. With Blake Griffin, the laughing stock of the league has become dynamic and fun to watch.
Suddenly, the biggest and most important cities have NBA footprints worth taking note of.
This is the year of the NBA's rising tide. Interest in Miami's Big Three has mushroomed into a basketball renaissance. Television viewership is up. Agents feel the hope of a new era of fan interest. If the league and players can avoid a lockout after this season, basketball could gain a foothold in American culture unmatched since Michael Jordan's heyday.
Consider this: The Knicks, Heat, Bulls, Lakers and Celtics never have had winning records in the same season.
Never.
Until now.
As long as the 24-22 Knicks keep it up.
But the malaise these critical NBA markets are emerging from runs deeper than that one fact.
The Knicks have had nine straight losing seasons, averaging just 31 wins per season over that span.
That's an entire decade in which one of the country's most fabled teams, in one of its most fabled arenas, in its most important market, was absolutely irrelevant. The Bulls stumbled through the 12 years after Jordan's retirement with only two winning seasons.
Now Derrick Rose, Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah are changing that.
After Larry Bird retired in 1992, the Celtics had 15 years of mediocrity before their 2007 breakout. This year, they're again the team to beat in the East.
Over the past month, the Heat have been on a countrywide tour of all this change. Stops in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles were reminders that the good old days have returned to some of the league's most storied -- and in Miami's case, cool -- locales.
This trend also points toward another change: The probable pooling of talent in such places.
Carmelo Anthony is clamoring to be a Knicks player; two sets of Big Threes (Boston in 2007, Miami this year) went to major cities. Boozer chose Chicago. There are rumblings that Dwight Howard wants to be a Los Angeles Laker someday. Even Chris Paul had been talking trade early in the year.
With Miami now the example of how to chase a championship, plan on more players orchestrating schemes to play together -- and probably not in places like Portland, Charlotte, Toronto, Sacramento or Houston.
That is the cost of the NBA riding high on the backs of its most important cities rising up at once. Players notice. And they want in -- in the most relevant places possible.
On Sunday, the Heat will take on a team outside this collection of big-market franchises.
In playing the Oklahoma City Thunder, they'll get another look at why things are progressing so well -- only this time in the form of the exception that proves the rule.
At 30-16, good for fourth in the Western Conference, the Thunder are a young, exciting team capable of being very dangerous in the years ahead.
But they're also built on a confluence of factors that will be very hard to reproduce.
They drafted the right young talent. They were hugely correct on a young star in Kevin Durant. And then they found that their star wants to stay in his part of the country, away from the glamour and clamor of a place like New York.
It's commendable. It's also good for the league to have small-market teams capable of battling the big boys. It might become rare to see.
In the next few years, Dallas and San Antonio will age; Miami will upgrade and tweak its already formidable team; Chicago will keep improving; the Clippers will be formidable; and the Lakers and Boston almost surely will be able to attract new, top-tier talent. The Knicks probably will land Carmelo. The Nets will use a billionaire's money to claw their way into contention.
And, perhaps, Durant and the Thunder will be the best bulwark against the bigger cities taking over the league entirely.
You can follow Bill Reiter on Twitter.
