When the Garden Becomes Eden

Notes from a lifelong relationship with the Knicks

In honor of the NBA Finals, Hoopology is offering free essays for all subscribers on both participants. First up: My long platonic relationship with the New York Knicks. (A gentle reminder that paid subscription rates are $5 a month/50 a year.)

Upon entering my home, the first thing a visitor sees are two framed prints by the celebrated FreeDarko artist, Jacob Weinstein. Together, these portraits represent my two biggest basketball influences.

Nice plant. .

In the top frame sits the ‘72 Knicks featuring (from left to right): Clyde Frazier eyes up, leading the break. Willis Reed inhaling a defensive rebound. Dave DeBusschere with the up-and-under move. There’s the Pearl in motion, about to do something outrageous, and Dollar Bill deciding when, where, and how to make the next pass. Five players from completely different backgrounds blending their talents into a loosely constructed circle that allowed them the freedom to play for the betterment of each other.

In the background, our heroes are drenched in ink from the finest newspaper scribes the nation has to offer. The New Journalism is taking over New York, and the Knicks are its adopted cause. With every attention-grabbing headline and razor-sharp lede, these writers are not merely painting a portrait of a basketball team with their words. To them, these Knicks represent nothing less than the epitome of total team basketball. To the degree that the New Journalists will one day become cranky tabloid wretches constantly reminding the new Knicks how they’re nothing like the old Knicks.

The artwork on the bottom depicts the 1960s Celtics’ dynasty. They are the spiritual precursors to every championship collective defined not by the sum of its various parts, but by how those various parts fit together. Quite simply, these Celtics are the example by which all other champions are judged.

What’s striking about this illustration is that for such a tightly-knit group, all their activity feels like barely organized chaos. Sharman the sharpshooter aims his bow, Cousy has already unfurled an outlet pass, while Heinsohn readies his unstoppable hook. Those three are all going one way while KC (on the bike), Sam (knocking in two more off the glass), and Hondo (always in perpetual motion) are busy going in the opposite direction. Their swirling energy powered by outlet passes and fast breaks fueling an assembly line of championship rings.

These Celtics are everywhere, all at once, and you can’t beat them because at the far left edge sits the mighty Bill Russell blocking everything in sight. Meanwhile, Red sits in the opposite corner, greatly amused by the unstoppable machine he has created. Their style of play is both relentless and ruthless.

I have these prints on my wall because they each represent my idealized vision of what a basketball team can become when players perform as a collective whole. This is a different perspective than idealizing stars. It’s true that stars win championships, but how many stars never won anything because they never had the right team around them? And while losing nobly may be more poetic, winning at this level is the only career achievement that truly matters.

The dynastic Celtics did it first and for the longest. The early 70s Knicks may have done it best, and in the place where basketball matters the most. As the great Pete Axthelm wrote in “The City Game,” his seminal account of the 1970 Knicks and their resonance with New York’s finest playground legends:

“Their achievements were meant to be savored, immediately and viscerally, like the theater of the playgrounds. And no one could have reveled in that kind of experience more than New York fans.”

It may surprise people to know that my local NBA team growing up wasn’t the Celtics, but the Knicks with Marv Albert and Johnny Andariese on the call. First on WOR and then on MSG after we got cable in the fall of 1985. I watched nearly every game of Patrick Ewing’s career and counted picks during the 1987 draft when Mark Jackson fell into their laps. As a teenager, I wanted nothing more than to play for Rick Pitino some day. (My game could be charitably described as a far less-talented version of Providence College era Billy Donovan.)

I really didn’t care whether the Knicks won or lost because they offered such great theater on a nightly basis. I listened to the Fan constantly and read the tabloids back to front. I bought every tell-all beat book as soon as it came out, and tried to figure out each particular writer’s various anonymous sources. If anything, watching the Knicks taught me how to watch basketball with a critical eye, rather than through an emotional lens.

Love them or loathe them, the Knicks were simply inescapable from the late 80s through the 90s. Do you remember Digable Planets?

Wake up praying that a game’s on

Maybe it’s the Runnin Rebs

Maybe it’s the Knicks

That was every weekend during college. Roll out of bed around 11, hungover and disheveled. Crawl into the common room of our dorm at 1, flip on the television, and the first thing you heard was the organ, like an old friend saying hello. We’re at MSG. The Knicks are playing the Bulls and Oakley’s mixing it up with somebody. Or maybe it’s the Heat where Oakley and Mason are mixing it up with everybody.

I remember where I was when Scottie Pippen “fouled” Hubert Davis because I was in the same place when Reggie Miller broke New York’s heart. It was the very same common room of our college apartment and one of my roommates just threw a beer bottle at the wall that happened to narrowly miss my head. Nothing personal. It was just those god-damn Knicks.

The Knicks spent decades chasing stars trying to recapture the magic of those early 70s teams. Every so often, they’d almost get it right. The ‘84 team was like a comet. It couldn’t last, like the cartilage in Bernard King’s knees. The Pitino-era Knicks made NBA games at the Garden an event again. The 90s Knicks were cursed. Charming and memorable, but cursed.

Then the Knicks spent the early part of the 21st Century being largely irrelevant. There would be a glimmer of hope, then they’d get goaded by the tabloids into doing something big and dumb that every intelligent Knicks fan knew was doomed to failure. What choice did they have? Being a Knicks fan may occasionally become trendy and chic, but it’s something you’re born into with no way out.

I know because I know so many of them and I am genuinely happy for those people who suffered through all those years of gobsmacking ineptitude to finally have a basketball team that’s worthy of their affection. As a relatively neutral observer, I can appreciate the manner in which they’ve been constructed with a series of bold trades and free agent signings and how they’ve been coached under Mike Brown. God help me, after decades of impassively consuming Knicks games, I actually enjoy watching them play.

These Knicks may not have my heart, but they have somehow gained a small slice of my basketball soul. At long last, perhaps a worthy successor to the early 70s Knicks has finally emerged.