There must have been a dark and wonderful star shining on New York athletics in 1969-1970. Joe Namath practiced the art of trash talking at a celebrated level that may never be surpassed. The Mets proved that anything could happen, bolstered by the full page ad Tom Seaver took out in the New York Times declaring, in heartfelt but questionable logic, "If the New York Mets can win the World Series, the United States can get out of Vietnam." Enter the Knicks.
The 1969-1970 Knicks were the team that made the term "basketball groupie" mean something. They were so wildly popular that local bars had to install a strange new service called cable television so that the patrons wouldn't go on in that lovable New York way. The 1969-1970 Knicks were the team that made the Knicks the Knicks.
Of course it hadn't always been that way. The Knicks had existed for 23 years without evoking a great deal of interest out of any but the most loyal New Yorkers. They'd ranged between mediocre and awful. One early Knick, Darrall Imhoff, was so proud of being a member of the squad that he'd carry his road bag in a manner designed to hide the team logo. Imhoff notwithstanding, the Knicks were in need of new players, and in their search for talent they took to recruiting raids against the Harlem Globetrotters.
It all began to change when William "Red" Holzman was named head coach in 1967. He'd already been a Knick assistant for ten years, and his coaching career meandered back through early NBA history back to 1953. He was credited with helping make Bob Cousy, Bob Cousy. He'd played nine years, mostly with the Rochester Royals who won the NBL championship in 1946 and the NBA championship in 1951.
Red was a classic gym rat in the finest urban tradition-he was a disciple of aggressive defense and seemingly lost arts like boxing out. "If you play good, hard defense," he'd say, "the offense will take care of itself."
Red built the team with characters that wouldn't be believable in a Woody Allen movie.
Willis Reed was the heart and soul. He was a big (6'9" you could be a center in those days) soulful street-brawler of a player. He had all those intangibles of a leader in spades. His teammates, well known for calling each other and everyone else a variety of uncomplimentary things, simply called him "the Cap'n."
It was Reed who was destined to give the NBA one of its most dramatic moments, when he hobbled forth from the tunnel onto the court with one minute of practice left before game 7 of the championship series against the Los Angeles Lakers of Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, and Elgin Baylor. Reed was hurtin', everyone in the house knew he'd been taking injections against the pain. His teammates stopped what they were doing to watch him hit his first practice shot.
As Frank Deford wrote in Sports Illustrated, "The Garden erupted. And then there was a very special reaction. All the people in Madison Square Garden, as if on cue, began to smile."
Reed scored the first two baskets of the game before hobbling off the court. By all accounts it was all over, he had given the Knicks all the fire they'd need.
Dave Debussure may have been the second most important guy on the team. He was one of the best, if not the very best, defensive forwards of all time. He stood only about 6'6", but it was Debussure the Knicks turned to, to guard Wilt Chamberlain when Reed was in trouble in game 5. Not as great on the offensive end, but nothing to sneeze at, Debussure came out gunning from outside in game 7, then moved inside working Elgin Baylor on the boards.
Compared to many of his teammates, Debussure was a dull guy. The only particularly notable thing about him was that he loved to guzzle beer at all times, with legendary regularity, as he had done since the age of 7 (his dad was a distributor).
How can you describe Walt "Clyde" Frazier if someone doesn't already know? He was the most charismatic figure in the game, he dressed in wide-brim hats and wide-lapeled suits, he kept classic Rolls Royces and went through a cattle call of spectacular women. He had very large sideburns. He played riverboat gambler defense, his defensive equal as a guard has never been born. He was absolutely unselfish on offense but somehow scored 20+ points a game.
Clyde fed on the crowd as much as they fed on him. He loved practice, practiced like the title depended on it. In scrimmages he called the second team "chumps." He didn't bother practicing during the off-season, he preferred keeping vampire hours on the club scene.
His sidekick in the backcourt was Dick Barnett, an older guru-lookin' brother with a goatee. His offense was as unusual as his appearance, a goof lefty jumper and all kinds of off-balance stuff, but effective.
Then there was Bill Bradley, the guy who was in the senate, and ran for President as endorsed by Michael Jordan. Bradley was a scholar from Princeton who'd taken over the forward spot when Cazzie Russell got hurt the year before.
Cazzie Russell got hurt? How could Cazzie Russell got hurt? He was an early proponent of all things healthy (unlike some teammates), an enthusiastic imbiber of things like bee pollen and wheat germ.
Cazzie wasn't the only health case. Dave Stallworth and Mike Riordan had cardiovascular problems. Actually Stallworth had suffered a heart attack two years earlier which left him hospitalized for more than a month. When he rejoined the team his "friends" wanted to see his pacemaker. Riordan was an 11th round pick who wasn't going to be invited to camp until management saw him play in a media event they'd arranged to show off Bradley.
The unforgettable back-up center, Nate Bowman. Bowman was more of an offensive threat to his teammates (who called his passes "facebreakers") than the opposition, but he could play big D. He rivaled Clyde as the embodiment of the Jet ideal, after the game he would don floppy hats, smoke long thin cigars, and slide into his altar ego, Psychedelic Sid.
Bowman kept things loose by insulting everyone regularly. In his great book on the team, Miracle on 33rd Street , Phil Berger relates how once when the team bus driver got lost and was, naturally, being energetically abused, Bowman intervened by yelling, "Don't take that shit from those black bastards!"
Black bastards maybe, but what's a championship team without two white guys from the same high school in Dayton, Ohio sitting on the bench and getting confused about the city way of life? Don May and Bill Hosket fit the bill perfectly, as reflected by the moniker they quickly earned, the Dayton Sissy Mothers.
Oh yeah, there was this other guy, 6'8" Phil Jackson. I think he went on to coach or write a book or something. He was kind of a counterculture guy. He'd been in a back brace since the year before, and wouldn't get out of it until November. For six months he couldn't drive or have sex. His concerned teammates suggested that he get a chastity belt for his wife.
It was a magic year. The Knicks ran off an 18 game winning streak early and never looked back. They won a league-high 60 games. They took the Lakers in seven. Red Holzman, Willis Reed, Clyde Frazier, Dave Debussure and Bill Bradley ended up in the Hall of Fame.
The guys watching in the bars ordered more drinks. From what I hear everyone got laid. It was a helluva year.
this Old School lesson was initially sprung on the masses in Hoop Nation
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